Two new people are leading the Mets since my last post. One is David Stearns, now team president, and the other is his first hire, manager Carlos Mendoza. I’ll say right off the bat, my specialty is dealing with baseball things that have passed, not things that will happen soon. I have a bad track record with first takes.
To wit:
Carlos Baegra: Franchise-changing second baseman stolen from Cleveland!
Roberto Alomar: See above!
Joe Torre: A lousy Mets manager, he’ll surely crash and burn with the Yankees!
Bobby Bonilla: The power bat the Mets need! We’ll never regret this!
1988 Playoffs: The Dodgers are a speed bump! Next stop: 1973 World Series rematch!
Reacquiring Tom Seaver in 1983: They’ll never let Tom leave again!
Richie Hebner: This guy’s a professional hitter! He’ll thrive in New York!
Almost every manager the day before he gets canned: The Mets won’t fire him!
We can keep going back in time and you’ll see how wrong I am at interpreting events through my crystal ball. But let’s stop—the Mets and me.
I listened to the new manager’s press conference on the radio—it is a little jarring that the station that carries Mets games doesn’t have the presser, but those constant traffic reports pay the bills at WCBS—and then I watched the talking head portion on SNY. Mednoza seems like a nice guy. What would be great, though, is a guy who can manage a winner.
Then there’s this:
Other than Bobby Valentine, who managed for one disastrous year in Boston in 2012, no Mets manager has been hired by another organization as a major league skipper since Jeff Torborg. And he was on the one guy I knew would get canned. That was the only action available aboard the moribund SS Torborg less than 200 games into his disastrous New York tenure in 1993. Torborg didn’t deserve to be hired by another club, much less two. Torborg was the stale goody bag that Jeffrey Loria took with him when MLB allowed a trade-in of the beat-up Expos for the dented Marlins model that would suddenly transform into a world champion racer mere months after Torborg was fired in 2003.
Sure, I hope Mendoza is the guy who wins it all with the Mets, but that’s a lot to hope for with this team. I’ll start with him being a good enough manager to be hired by another team someday. Out of the 24 managers in Mets history (counting interims), only seven have been hired by other teams after parting ways with the Mets. All managers are hired to be fired—I’ll exempt the two who had their numbers retired by the Mets: Casey Stengel (#37), who made a terrible team into a crowd favorite before breaking his hip at 75, and Gil Hodges, who tragically died just two seasons after the miraculous 1969 championship. A manager who is good enough to be hired elsewhere means he has done something right or at least he gave the impression that he might do something right—hence the recycling of the Jeff Torborgs, Wes Westrums, and George Bambergers of the world.
What the Mets don’t need is another two-year managing hire—like Buck Showalter, or Luis Rojas, or Mickey Callaway. Add these last three to Terry Collins (seven seasons) and Mendoza makes five managers since 2017. We all deserve better than a continuing game of musical chairs. Winning would sure be a bonus.