My podcast questions for Billy Eppler

In another lifetime, I used to cover high school and college sports for newspapers. It amazed me what horrible questions reporters would ask in news conferences and it didn’t matter if it was for a tiny high school or a major Division I sport. My highest-profile gig was doing a bowl game and someone asked a very specific question for an angle he was going to use and the coach pretty much scoffed at how wrong the premise was.

Anyway, listening to the Jon Heyman and Joel Sherman podcast yesterday for the first time brought back memories of sitting in press conferences and hearing stupid questions. The reason for me tuning in was because they had Billy Eppler as their guest. My hope was that something useful would come out of it, a great quote or some insight. But that was a pipe dream.

The hosts tried oh so hard to get Eppler to say which free agents were coming back. Perhaps that’s a question you have to ask. But everyone and their brother knows that Eppler’s not answering that question. So, ask it once and move on. But they stumbled and bumbled and asked again and again and again.

Heyman and Sherman are reporters and it’s not fair to expect them to be DJ-level smooth in their podcast questions. But, at some point, you’ve got to be good at something. Maybe you can’t speak for more than 10 seconds without tripping over your tongue but you can make up for it by asking good questions. Maybe you don’t have great initial-question-asking skills but you listen to what the guest actually says and ask an interesting follow-up question. Maybe you stink at all of the above but you have great rapport with your co-host and you can tell a joke.

Much like last night’s Knicks game, I turned the podcast off before reaching the end. That goes against my nature but the thought that popped into my head was – There’s got to be a better use of my time than this.

And perhaps that’s the trouble with podcasts. You can read faster than other people can talk, especially if talking isn’t a strength for the hosts and guest. You can be in the middle of reading this piece and decide it’s not worth your time and you’ve wasted about a minute. The Heyman/Sherman/Eppler podcast was around 45 minutes long and after 40 or so minutes, I bailed, leaving frustrated over the whole experience.

To be fair, if you ever listened to one of the Mets360 podcasts – you heard some “ums” and “uhs.” Okay, you heard a lot of them. But I’d like to think you left the podcast with something. My hope was that the listener would say – Well, that wasn’t the smoothest thing ever but there was some real good content beyond the “ums.”

In an effort for yesterday’s listening experience not to be a complete waste, let’s see what questions Eppler would face if he was a guest on the Mets360 podcast. Our format was to have 10 questions, with one of them being the same each week, asking the guest to make some crazy prediction. So, here are my questions for Eppler, with the understanding that he was going to be mostly uncooperative on any post-2022 season questions.

Your tenure as the GM in Anaheim wasn’t exactly a smashing success. What did you learn there that helped you do better your first year as Mets GM?

Compare and contrast Arte Moreno and Steve Cohen.

Talk about your working relationship with Buck Showalter. Allegedly, you wanted to hire him in Anaheim but you were overruled by Moreno. Is that true? What’s drawn you to Showalter and how is the dynamic between the two of you, both on a day-to-day basis and a big-picture point of view?

No one wants to hear how the September/October results were random. They want to see them as a result of some team weakness. What’s the one key area where the team could be better in 2023?

For the season, the Mets were middle of the pack in the NL in homers and third in runs scored. In the final month of the regular season the Mets were third in homers and first in runs. Were the HR in September random? Is it a top priority to add more HR power to the lineup going forward?

With so many key players from the 2022 team soon to be free agents, you have the opportunity to shape the team in a way even more drastic than you did a year ago. Do you think there should be some kind of ratio between payroll dollars allocated to hitting and pitching, in an ideal world, if not specifically for the Mets this offseason?

This is a simple yes or no question, with no follow-up. If Steve Cohen gave you a blank check, would you re-sign all of the following – Chris Bassitt, Jacob deGrom, Edwin Diaz, Seth Lugo, Brandon Nimmo, Adam Ottavino and Taijuan Walker.

We’ve reached the point of the show where we give a crazy prediction. I’ll give you mine and then ask you to comment on it. Then I’ll ask you to give a crazy prediction of your own. My crazy prediction is that Brandon Nimmo gets George Springer’s AAV of $25 million, if not the six years that Springer did. How crazy is that?

Obviously, you’re not going to come on a podcast and say what your offseason plan is. But is it possible for you to make a big free agent move – say one where the total outlay exceeds $20 million – before knowing how the deGrom situation works out?

We saw the Braves have great success with rookies in 2022, with Vaughn Grissom putting up a 121 OPS+, Michael Harris putting up a 135 OPS+ and Spencer Strider putting up a 153 ERA+. Meanwhile, no Mets rookie came anywhere close to that type of production, outside of Francisco Alvarez in 14 PA. Was it that the Braves gave their rookies a legitimate shot at regular playing time while the Mets didn’t? Or was it another example of outstanding fortune for Atlanta? What can the Mets do so that their rookies can give a triple digit OPS+ or ERA+ in 2023 and moving forward?

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One of the keys to a good question is one where you can realistically get an informed answer. Sure, the questions everyone wants the answer to are how much money can Eppler spend and which guys are coming back. But Eppler may not know the answers to those and if he does – he’s sure not saying that now. So why waste time asking them in the first place?

My hope is that Eppler would answer all of these honestly because none of them give away vital information to the team’s plans, with the possible exception of the penultimate question. But it’s possible he’s just not a good interview subject and he wouldn’t give interesting answers to these questions, either.

We have to be open to the possibility that Eppler can wheel and deal and be a good GM but be lousy answering interview questions. It would be no different than Heyman and Sherman having the ability to write good stories but being lousy hosting a podcast. I’ll try to listen to another Eppler interview, hoping for better results because I believe that’s possible. That will be my last Heyman/Sherman podcast, though.