Hello, Mets360 readers! It’s the holiday season, and the cynicism seared into our psyches as Mets fans should be shooed away and replaced with a little bit of that baseball-related hope usually reserved for Spring Training. ‘Tis the season to be jolly, if you hadn’t heard, and in Metsland there’s little more that fans could have wished for pre-lockout than the team making a (very) significant splash in free agency, finally signing a General Manager (with experience!), and hiring a manager that players seem to love and has a track record of success at the major league level. It was a regular trifecta of good news for the team from Queens despite the overall negativity surrounding the sport’s lockout.
There’s a lot to be said for gaining some accountability and stability both within the clubhouse and in the front office, and the 2021 Mets certainly seemed to be a team in dire need of both. Beyond the awkwardly childish clubhouse spats, and ignoring the inane “retribution” against booing fans, last season’s Mets were a team seemingly at odds with reality. A case in point was their insistence that if they simply kept executing the same exact way then things would surely turn around for them despite months of evidence to the contrary. It was mind-boggling, frustrating, and indicative of a management team with little ability to correct course when plans went awry. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, or so the saying goes, and last season was a case study in the colloquial definition of insanity.
In Billy Eppler and Buck Showalter the Mets opted for the certainty that comes with experience versus their more adventurous hiring of recent years. Their last three managers (counting Carlos Beltran) had zero experience leading a major league club, and their two most recent General Managers (not counting Zack Scott) had no experience in the position at all (and one was a player agent). Leave it to the Mets to attempt to follow the seas of change in hiring outside-the-box candidates for these positions and failing spectacularly, but kudos should be given for their willingness to take the gamble nonetheless.
Today is all about positivity, though, and with the Mets recent flurry of moves there is a lot to look forward to even if there’s still more work to be done. The influx of talent raises both the floor and ceiling of the team. Players that would make the most impact on the bench can be moved there from the starting lineup, and those that make the most sense on the roster’s fringes can be safely moved down the pecking order and be ready for the call when it inevitably comes.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Eppler hire is his uneven history leading the Angels organization. Specifically, and despite bringing in some of the best position players this century has seen, that organization has utterly failed to develop and acquire competent pitching. The Mets conversely have historically been an organization with a knack for building around quality pitching and, if the current RosterResource depth charts are any indication, the 2022 team will go as far as their projected elite pitching staff will take them. Eppler had to deal with ownership meddling in his previous position, and Steve Cohen’s unproven ability to remove himself from the day-to-day machinations of the team may be a key component of Eppler’s ultimate success.
Admittedly, I was a bit underwhelmed with the prospect of hiring Showalter when his name emerged as a candidate. After all, the teams with the most current success often (though not always) have a newer generation of skipper at the helm with a leaning toward the more modern aspects of the game. The reporting on Showalter turned that opinion around, however, including the public feedback provided by former players and the information on the hiring process as relayed by The Athletic’s Tim Britton. In an effort to gauge the manager’s ability to collaborate with all departments across the organization, the Mets had candidates meet in breakout sessions with those departments (scouting, analytics, etc.) as part of the interview process. The fact that Showalter was hired after such a process indicates that the team determined he was a good fit for the organizational culture they’re currently trying to overhaul. Players like Manny Machado praising his ability to both keep them accountable and to help them grow as players and leaders is huge for a clubhouse that appeared to be in silent disarray for most of the season. That Eppler praised his ability to squeeze every ounce of ability out of his players is another good sign when it comes to a group of underachievers like the Mets.
It could all come crashing down, of course, and it’s no secret that I’m no fan of some of the folks still occupying the executive suites at Citi Field. Still, the huge upside is that this team has the opportunity to build a cohesive and collaborative culture spanning all levels of the organization. It remains to be seen if the personnel imported this offseason are the ones to finally get that done, but the potential is clearly there.
If you’ll forgive another cliché in this piece, hope springs eternal and right now the Mets are in a much better position than they were even just a year ago. Let’s add some pitching, build a killer coaching staff, continue to beef up the team’s analytics and scouting departments, and head into a new season and beyond with dreams of pennants dancing in our heads.
Merry Christmas!