Mets begin search for manager as spring training looms
In an episode of the TV show “The West Wing,” a White House official was asked if the water was over her head after news broke that the sitting President was hiding an illness. She said the water was exactly at her head.
The Mets, right now, are in a similar position. Except the Mets tend to be unaware of the water until they’re already drowning.
Just three months ago, Brodie Van Wagenen and his staff of front-office officials spent an exhaustive month choosing who they thought was the best person to lead a young and competitive group of Mets players. Van Wagenen referred to the hiring process as “exhaustive and thorough,” but how comprehensive could it have been if the 2017 Astros never came up in conversation? That, though, is besid the point.
At the end of a long and tragic week for baseball, the Mets have found themselves in trouble their dismissal of Carlos Beltran. The league found him to be involved in the sign-stealing scandal in his final year playing for Major League Baseball.
“The emotion of getting to know a person and a player — a person and an employee — as we did with Carlos over the course of the last several months is hard,” Van Wagenen said on Thursday. “This is a person that we grew to know, I grew to know, I grew to like.”
Where do the Mets go from here?
To start, Van Wagenen and the Mets must pick themselves up and quickly find a new manager. Just over three weeks remain until pitchers and catchers report to spring training and Van Wagenen has to start thinking about how the team can put itself in the best position to win in 2020.
Quality control coach Luis Rojas, bench coach Hensley Meulens, veteran skipper Buck Showalter and ESPN analyst Eduardo Perez are all immediate and potential candidates to take over. Rojas and Perez both already interviewed for the managerial vacancy this offseason.
“With camp three weeks away, we will start today on trying to put a plan together in place to have a new manager ready to go, and then we’ll charge forward,” Van Wagenen said.
Rojas, 38, would be a logical
choice for the Mets given their current predicament. The next manager must play catch up in an immense way — they’ll have to get to know the roster, become familiar with their bosses and adjust to the coaching staff. Rojas already checks off all three criteria.
He’s familiar with the organization, having managed minorleague Mets teams since 2011. And as a rookie manager, he wouldn’t cost the frugal ballclub much. The Mets are on the hook for the contracts of three managers in Mickey Callaway his successor. Jeff Wilpon would not comment on whether the Mets are still paying Beltran, but a published reported indicated he would not recieve his salary.
Meulens, 52, would also make sense in the manager role, and not just for the incredible “Bam Bam” headlines he would inevitably provide (as one back page editor at the Daily News pointed out). Meulens was hired this offseason to become Beltran’s bench coach, but he came to the Mets with an impressive resume of his own.
He won three World Series as a Giants coach, he managed the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic and he’s well-regarded around the league. Meulens has learned a lot sitting next to former Giants skipper Bruce Bochy, so he’d lend more experience managing than someone like Rojas would.
Whomever the Mets hire, they must do it hastily and thoughtfully. The water is still rising and they ought to learn how to swim.