SH W MUST GO ON!
Why Mets need sage skipper like Buck or Dusty to navigate them out of Carlos chaos
After parting ways with manager Carlos Beltran on Thursday, the Mets have just 25 days until pitchers and catchers report and could use an experienced leader such as Buck Showalter (above), Dusty Baker (inset left) or John Gibbons to save them.
THE METS hired Carlos Beltran to be their manager less than three months ago. By Wednesday night, they were convinced they no longer had that Carlos Beltran.
They knew a rookie manager — especially in New York, particularly for a win-now team — would face substantial obstacles. But one of those would not be credibility with players. He was Carlos Beltran. He could walk into a room and instantly command the attention and respect of those inside it.
This was a huge selling point when the Mets decided to forgo experience and go with Beltran. So was the edge they believed he would give them in game preparation. So was his positive relationship with reporters.
Now, they doubted all of that. They could have worked with Beltran to try navigating the issues. But they decided his significant involvement with the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, his misleading initial accounts to reporters of his involvement and the judgment on all of this left his integrity damaged. And the Mets worried it was a problem with the potential to endlessly resurface.
New stories from the cheating scandal implicating Beltran could surface. Or a player or players who needed to be lectured could have questioned the moral authority of this manager. Or the Mets could have lost five in a row and fans could have heckled, “Maybe you should start cheating again.” It was a tinderbox of unpleasant possibilities.
The Mets played upside/downside and just projected too much downside. They decided it was better to deal with the humiliation that comes with firing a manager before pitchers and catchers report and the arduous path of having to hire a skipper so near spring training rather than to navigate the new unknowns that would come with Beltran. Better to just rip the bandage.
Is it the right choice? It feels as risky as hiring Beltran, who always was a boom-or-bust figure — a chance his package of skills could morph into managing excellence or his shortcomings would mean crashing failure.
The Mets, of course, do not get the benefit of the doubt here. This just adds to their history of leading the majors in botches. Just consider they had been working for months to get Mike Piazza back from Italy to rename the street leading to their minor league complex in Port St. Lucie, Fla., for the Hall of Fame catcher. They settled on Jan. 16, 2020, 11 a.m.
Then before the ceremony, special Mets adviser Jessica Mendoza went foot-in-mouth criticizing Athletics starter Mike Fiers for going public by name to reveal the Astros’ cheating. And not long after the Piazza ceremony, the Mets were announcing Beltran was no longer the manager. They called it a mutual parting. But it was the Mets who decided the parting had to occur.
“As we look to our club, we have to think about distractions,” Brodie Van Wagenen said. “We have to think more importantly about focus. And we have to think about putting ourselves in the best position to win going forward.” Van Wagenen has his own credibility issues after a rocky first season and having to fire his first manager despite being the rare Mets manager who didn’t lose more than he won — Beltran forever frozen at 0-0. But as long as he is in charge, he has to follow his belief system, his protocols. One of those was an extended, multi-interview process that netted Beltran. One of those was reading the pros and cons of a wounded rookie manager and deciding the Mets had to go in a different direction.
Here the Mets are not alone. As a result of the Astros’ sign-stealing fallout, three teams with big payrolls and contending aspirations are looking for managers — the Mets, Astros and Red Sox (Houston also needs a GM). Van Wagenen must decide whether to go with an outside candidate with experience (especially at handling baseball crisis) even if it means a Buck Showalter or Dusty Baker would have to inherit a staff not of their choosing, or to stay internal with inexperience from Hensley Meulens, Luis Rojas or Tony DeFrancesco, who at least have been involved with readying the 2020 Mets for a couple of months.
It is not an easy choice. Neither is firing your manager on Jan. 16. But the Mets felt they just didn’t have the same manager they hired. And they believed it was more harrowing to continue with this version of Beltran.
They ripped the bandage. But until they prove they can get this decision right, they will bleed.