OPENING BEL'
CARLOS Beltran escorted his family to their seats and before taking the stage for his introductory press conference he patted his youngest child on the butt and 4-year-old Evan Carlos began to cry.
Brodie Van Wagenen opened his introductory remarks by noting it was only 12 months earlier he was being introduced as GM, quipping, “Hard to believe it’s only been one year since I stood in this room. It seems like it’s been a dog year, seven years.” It was meant for laughs and instead elicited the image of drudgery working for the Wilpons, intended or not.
Here is what Beltran should know from experience — you can plot and script to the best of your ability, but when it comes to working for the Mets sometimes the child cries and the GM misspeaks. After all, when introduced 14 years earlier as the then most expensive player in franchise history, Beltran hailed the day by saying, “I call it the new Mets because this organization is going in a new direction, the right direction, the direction of winning.”
But it was mostly the same old Mets during Beltran’s tenure. There was one high mark in 2006 that ended with them and him frozen in NLCS Game 7 by an Adam Wainwright curve. Besides that, there was no new Mets. Mainly there was frustration and dysfunction that included Beltran in a quite open, nasty battle with ownership about whether he needed knee surgery or not.
On the day Beltran was introduced as the Mets’ 22nd manager, all the parties swore wounds and bad feelings were bygones. That another new day was upon us. But this has been heard a lot through the years around here at Jets and Knicks introductory press conferences, and the Mets, too. And until serial success is enjoyed by one of those franchises then I will just wait for the child to cry or the GM to misspeak. There have been a lot of honeymoons. Followed close behind by horrible marriages.
Beltran was pretty much forced into the partnership last time. He offered the Yankees a last-minute discount, but that never came so he signed with the Mets for seven years at $119 million. This time around, the dollar figures on his three-year deal are considerably less. But his passion to be a Met remarkably higher.
He refused managerial interviews with the Cubs and Padres and made it Mets or bust. His Yankees ties this time helped. All parties noted that his one year serving as an adviser to Brian Cashman in 2019 worked as a baseball Ph.D. program in learning how a modern front office works and a manager’s place in it. Beltran had that and his final playing season as an Astro in 2017 “when he was pretty much a coach while playing,” in Jeff Wilpon’s words.
That combined with Beltran’s high baseball IQ eased Mets concerns that Beltran has never even served a day as an actual coach. Wilpon and Van Wagenen said there was no light-bulb moment when Beltran became the clear front-runner, but that it evolved during a three-round process. Van Wagenen noted the “momentum shifted” in Round 2 with how Beltran handled questions from the GM and Wilpon meant to simulate what he would hear at the press conference and over 162 games. Van Wagenen cited the conviction, consistency, poise and polish that Beltran brought in his responses.
Those attributes were accentuated by Van Wagenen when during his introductory remarks he detailed five items that led to Beltran being Mickey Callaway’s successor. When I mentioned afterward to Van Wagenen that I thought those points could have been him talking about himself, he acknowledged sure and that it made sense because the GMmanager relationship is so vital. And that should not be lost in this. Beltran was introduced Monday, but Van Wagenen was the star. He spoke for 7 minutes, 45 seconds in those opening remarks, which the Guinness people might want to look into to see if that is a record. He clearly wanted to define this extended process in which the Mets stayed disciplined without public comment. He never mentioned Joe Girardi, but in saying how he wanted to be able to go to the manager’s office to chat and “exhale” in relief rather than “inhale” in worried anticipation, he explained why the most experienced manager from the interviews was not hired.
Van Wagenen just didn’t feel a connection to Girardi. He did with Beltran. And one of the tethers he mentioned was that neither he nor his new manager needed the jobs. Van Wagenen was a successful agent, Beltran had netted more than $221 million as a player. They are in these roles — with the dysfunctional Mets — because they want to be, because they see the challenges and possibilities; Beltran is here despite what he knows from his playing days, so no feeling sorry for him if this goes horribly wrong.
Van Wagenen has been nothing but bold, from taking the GM job, from divesting from prospects in huge trades, from buying at the trade deadline and now in hiring Beltran. But that did not occur over seven dog years, just one real one. Like Noah Syndergaard squawking about who he pitched to, Callaway delivering a public tirade on a reporter, Robinson Cano not running into controversy, Van Wagenen imploring the rest of the NL East “to come and get us,” Yoenis Cespedes enduring mystery injuries, Travis d’Arnaud being mishandled and Jacob deGrom being remotely removed from a game.
Maybe Beltran’s gravitas and smarts and serenity will put the Mets on a better route, perhaps he will prove himself a savant as a manager.
Forgive me, until proven otherwise, I will listen for the child crying.