Blog Entry #7

When Sandy Alderson was hired as the Mets’ team president in late 2020, there was an expectation that he wouldn’t be in charge of baseball operations. With the 2021 offseason now underway, the Mets have failed that expectation two years in a row.

The recent weeks of searching for a new general manager and President of Baseball Operations have gone similar to last year with nearly every top name and candidate either turning down interview requests or being blocked from their current team in interviewing with the Mets. It’s as if the Mets have the worst pickup game in the world.

Last year they eventually found their new GM, Jared Porter, but it came after an entire month’s worth of free agency. They made their decisions based on Alderson’s vision for that month until Porter’s vision could be applied for the rest of the offseason. Of course that only lasted a month before he was fired in shame and replaced by assistant GM Zack Scott who was initially hired alongside Porter. Once again this year they will have a GM or POBO take over after moves have already been made.

When a Major League Baseball team fires their GM after a season, they usually hire a new one in October or November. Although it seems like the Mets are taking abnormally long to hire somebody, waiting until mid-November isn’t unheard of, as 13 of the 28 current GMs around the league were hired from Nov. 9 or later in the offseason. Of those 13, only four were hired without a POBO above them and no prior experience in the organization (minus the Braves and Astros who hired new front offices as a result of different scandals). The date isn’t the issue here, it’s the fact that the Mets have had a revolving door of leaders in the front office which leads to worse and worse consequences for each day that passes in the offseason with a vision differing from the one that’s going to be in place any day now.

There’s no direction with the Mets because their leadership is completely unstable. Alderson’s vision with the 2018 Mets got changed when he stepped down due to a recurrence of cancer and was replaced by an interim trio of men, none of whom stayed with the team. Brodie Van Wagenen, unfortunately to Mets fans, called the shots in 2019 and 2020 but was replaced by the returning Alderson once Steven Cohen bought the team. Whatever Alderson’s vision was in the 2020 offseason got shifted by Porter and Scott. Now that Scott has been banished, Alderson retains full power once again.

Whoever gets hired as the new GM or POBO will have a completely new vision, meaning instability in the roster due to so many different visions being applied, exacerbated by the fact that Alderson is controlling the Mets during the start of the 2021 free agency period and making moves that the new leader may disagree with.

The Mets extended qualifying offers to Michael Conforto and Noah Syndergaard, moves that were obvious and likely not conflicting to anyone, but they shouldn’t have been made by Alderson. They should have been made by whoever they pick to control the team for the next number of years. We’re into the second free-agency of Steve Cohen’s ownership and the guy making the baseball decisions essentially said at his introductory press conference that he doesn’t want to be making the baseball decisions.

Of course, this issue isn’t entirely the fault of Cohen or Alderson. It’s not their fault candidates like Mike Chernoff, Billy Beane and Theo Epstein decided to stay in their current job or location to not displace their family. It’s not their fault the Brewers refused to let them interview David Stearns and Matt Arnold. The damage dealt by the Wilpon family to the Mets’ reputation isn’t their fault either. But to strike out on every single candidate other than the dick-pic sending creep and the drunk driver gives the impression that something in the process is being done wrong.

Maybe the solution is to aim lower. Maybe the Mets and their fanbase shouldn’t be aiming for the stars in the form of obvious up and comers from the Rays and Brewers organizations, and should instead aim for candidates that would be excited to come and won’t be blocked by their current team. Despite the clear omission of character evaluation in the hiring process from last year, the Mets had the right idea in hiring Porter and Scott with the understanding that they aren’t the best of the best but the expectation that they will evolve into that same tier.