PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — At the dawn of a new baseball season, Mets owner Steve Cohen feels at the precipice of reaching his World Series goal.

He got a taste of reasonable success in 2024, and he wants to continue to live through the high-intensity moments and champagne celebrations that came with the Mets' rampant run through the playoffs.

But to achieve regular trips to the National League Championship Series and take it two steps further, the Mets owner knows there are some harsh realities that need to be absorbed.

Despite entering the offseason with the intentions of trying to tamp down the payroll to around $301 million — the final luxury tax threshold — a record $765 million contract for Juan Soto and bringing back Pete Alonso, Sean Manaea, Jesse Winker and Ryne Stanek, among others, should help the World Series aspirations, but that spending is not optimal to how Cohen wants to run the team.

"I've always wanted to feel more measured in payroll growth, and then we get there, and it's never quite there," Cohen said of this season's payroll, which sits at an estimated $331 million, according to FanGraphs. "I have the ability to spend if I have to, and I want to win, and I want to put the best team I can on the field. There's certain things — free agency’s expensive. It's just the way it is, and it's always more expensive than you can imagine."

Cohen is trying to chisel away Mets fans' deep-seated skepticism and help usher in a new era of sustained winning. After making two postseason appearances in the 14 years before Cohen bought the team, the Mets have now clinched the playoffs in two of the last four seasons.

While the Mets have yet to cash in on Cohen's promise of winning a World Series in his first five years of ownership, they have inched closer to that goal. In bringing in the superstar Soto this winter, Cohen doubled down, saying that his hope is to win two to four World Series in the next decade.

"You always want to set high standards and high goals," Cohen said. "There's no guarantee in anything, right? It's really hard to win a World Series, but the thought of, we're putting together a team, not just a team good for one year, but we want to create sustainable success. If we keep making the playoffs, why can’t we get to the ultimate goal?"

Carlos Mendoza addresses the start of Mets spring training in Port St. Lucie

This season, Cohen said the floor on this team's potential should be a second straight playoff appearance. But there have been harsh lessons early in his ownership, like 2023, when the Mets capsized under a $346 million payroll and finished 12 games under .500.

Cohen reiterated that for the Mets to create a consistent winner, the organization needs a thriving farm system that produces cheap, controllable talent. When asked about the impending free agency of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. next offseason, Cohen noted how double-digit long-term contracts can curb roster flexibility and hurt a club in the long run.

Cohen is intent on making all facets of the Mets organization "elite," but there were still some shortcomings last season. The Mets owner was "really bothered" by the fact that the club finished 17th in attendance, netting an average of 29,484 fans per game at Citi Field.

"I'm told that usually attendance lags performance, and so I'm really looking forward to this year being a year when the fans come out," Cohen said. "I think the fans are having a great time. When I look out on the stadium, I think it's a great game presentation. We have a great team, I think. I'm really excited."

The Mets have made a major investment in their pitching lab to try and continue to develop the backbone of their team. Beyond that, Cohen said that the Mets are continuing to deploy technology in innovative ways to try and take the club to the next level.

While there might be a hankering to curb spending on players, the richest owner in baseball is willing to do whatever it takes to put a winning product on the field and experience a celebration unlike anything anyone has since 1986.

"I don't know if I ever felt anything of that type of emotion that was on almost a daily basis," Cohen said of last season's run. "And so when you get that feeling, you want more of that."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Steve Cohen: Does winning a World Series supersede NY Mets' payroll?