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Steve Cohen’s Deal to Buy the Mets Unlikely, M.L.B. Commissioner Says

Sasha Arutyunova for The New York Times

The potential sale of the New York Mets to Steve Cohen, a billionaire hedge fund manager, is all but dead, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday.

“My belief is there’s not going to be a transaction,” Manfred told reporters at an owners meeting in Orlando, Fla., though he held out hope that the deal could be resurrected. “My soothsaying isn’t great. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Cohen had been negotiating with the Wilpon family, which controls the Mets, since the middle of last year. The Mets and Cohen announced in December that they were negotiating a deal in which Cohen would become the team’s majority owner.