The GM decisions that led the Mets to Billy Eppler instead of Chaim Bloom

At the end of the 2018 season, the Mets were in the market for a new GM. They ended up with three finalists for the job. There was the hot-shot youngster in Chaim Bloom, the old pro in Doug Melvin and the wildcard outsider in Brodie Van Wagenen. At the time, my preference was Bloom then Van Wagenen and then Melvin. As you know, the Mets went with Jeff Wilpon’s golfing buddy in Van Wagenen.

With apologies to Jeff Saturday, in hindsight there’s no way that I should have ranked Van Wagenen over Melvin. Like Saturday, it’s not like Van Wagenen had zero experience that would translate to the job for which he was hired. Van Wagenen was a high-powered agent, one famous for getting his clients lucrative long-term deals. Essentially, he was a taller, handsomer, more-polished Scott Boras. And because he neither looked nor sounded like the troll who lives under the bridge, Van Wagenen got a free pass. Imagine the outcry if the Mets had hired Boras to be their GM!

The honeymoon didn’t last long and Van Wagenen was immediately shown the door when the Wilpon/Katz sale to Steve Cohen became official. After one year with guys who had never been GMs before, even though they had plenty of front office experience, Cohen and the Mets landed on Billy Eppler.

Now Eppler, despite his previous GM experience, was hardly considered a home run hire by the Mets’ fanbase. There were plenty of howls from fans who thought he was a disaster in Los Angeles because he couldn’t build a consistent winner despite having the best player in the game in Mike Trout. There were a lot of high-priced free agent signings that didn’t work out, in addition to questionable draft picks during Eppler’s tenure.

But while I whiffed on backing Van Wagenen over the more-experienced Melvin, my reaction to Eppler helps make up for that. While recognizing his failures, it seemed that his experience and overall competence was what was needed. Before the hiring was official, my reaction was: “My opinion is that Eppler can handle things not being perfect, which might make him the perfect candidate.”

Eppler then proceeded to have a very successful outcome in free agency, along with a nice preseason trade to grab ultimate 15-game winner Chris Bassitt. He made a terrific managerial hire in Buck Showalter and had a very productive MLB Draft. Eppler had his fingerprints all over the Mets’ 101-win season and showed that he was much better at the job than Van Wagenen ever was.

Meanwhile, Melvin – who won awards for his work with the Rangers and Brewers – has not received another shot at running things after being bypassed for the Mets’ GM job. He is currently a senior special advisor for the Brewers, a role he’s held since 2015. At age 70, he’s unlikely to get another shot at running a club.

Which brings us to Bloom.

After working his way up through the executive ranks for the Rays, Bloom became everyone’s favorite pick to be the next boy-wonder GM. He succeeded while working with the cash-poor Rays and the thought became that he would be terrific at the head of an organization that would be near the top in payroll, rather than in the bottom three.

While he missed out on the Mets’ gig, it didn’t take him very long to get a chance to run a large-market club. The next year, he was hired to run the Boston Red Sox, a team that had averaged 94.5 wins the previous four seasons and who had won the World Series just one year before his hire. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for the highly regarded Bloom.

But in a move straight from his Rays playbook, Bloom traded a player about to get super expensive when he sent Mookie Betts to the Dodgers. It was a great move for the bottom line, as Bloom also unloaded David Price, who he also was involved with trading from the Rays back in 2015 for being too expensive, in the deal. But it hasn’t worked out great for the Sox’ won-loss record.

In three years under Bloom, Boston has finished with a sub-.500 record in two of them, including last year’s last place finish in the AL East, albeit with a non-terrible 78-84 mark. And to be fair, the other year was in the Covid season of 2020. But while the Red Sox were finishing in last place, Betts finished second in the MVP race and helped lead the Dodgers to their first World Series victory, their first since 1988.

As you can imagine, the bloom is off for the Red Sox GM. BoSox Injection, the FanSided site for the Red Sox, ran an article on Aug. 30 entitled: “Red Sox fans aren’t happy that Chaim Bloom is coming back,” after news came out that ownership was happy in the team’s direction and that Bloom would continue to run the club.

So, how would things look if the Mets had hired Bloom instead of Van Wagenen?

It’s extremely unlikely that he would have made the Robinson Cano deal. It’s likely he wouldn’t have traded for Marcus Stroman, either. Would he have signed Zack Wheeler to an extension? It’s possible, and it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he would have done it as soon as he was hired, rather than allowing Wheeler to put up another strong season before hitting free agency.

If we continue down this rabbit hole, it’s possible that having experienced success with extending Wheeler early, that Bloom would have continued the trend by signing Michael Conforto and Brandon Nimmo to extensions, too. Would that have been a good thing? Well, getting Wheeler and Nimmo on team-friendly extensions look like home runs. Conforto, eh, not so much.

Ultimately, we have no idea how Bloom running things for the Mets would have turned out. He may have been the right guy at the right time. Or he could have been as popular in New York as he’s been in Boston. It will be one of the franchise’s great “what ifs” when it comes to executives, although still behind what if they promoted Director of Player Development Whitey Herzog to manager back in 1972.

What we do know that the Mets went from 77 to 86 wins when they first hired Van Wagenen. And they went from 77 to 101 wins when they first hired Eppler. The Mets enjoyed tremendous health in their pitching staff in Van Wagenen’s first year, which had more to do with the club’s 9-game improvement in the standings than anything the GM did. Eppler can point to bringing in Bassitt, Mark Canha, Eduardo Escobar, Starling Marte and Max Scherzer, who combined for 15.2 fWAR, which is a pretty nice improvement.

Maybe the Mets whiffed on the GM hire with Van Wagenen. And maybe they whiffed on Jarred Porter, too. But perhaps we should look at the Eppler hire as a clutch two-strike hit. Or the organization taking two steps backwards to make a giant leap forward with their GM.

Eppler has a lot of work to do this offseason and there’s no shortage of ways he can assemble the team because of all of the free agents who are eligible to depart. He’s already re-signed Edwin Diaz and Mets fans can thank Van Wagenen for getting that player in the first place. Regardless of what you thought of the previous GMs to hold the chair, each contributed something to last year’s 101-win team. Even Porter, whose tenure was very brief, was the club’s GM when the giant Francisco Lindor trade happened.

But when the dust settles this offseason, we’ll see even more Eppler fingerprints on the roster. May Mets fans continue to prefer that to having Bloom running the show in Queens.