Nobody asked, so here’s my take on the new Mets manager, Luis Rojas.
I don’t know if he’ll be a good manager. Can you say for sure? I do think it’s a smart hire, given the team’s situation and the forced end of the Carlos Beltran regime before it began. They really had little choice butto facilitate that, but it was terrible in terms of PR and timing. Let me count the ways they may yet bounce back…
1. Rojas was already with the organization and managed some of the players when they were in the minors, so they know him and consider him a wise baseball man.
2. Other teams were sniffing around, saying that he was an up-and-coming manager of the future. The baseball gods owe them in the up-and-coming manager department after Mickey Calloway.
3. With the team’s first-ever Fan Fest coming up, it’d sure look dumb if the Mets didn’t have a manager at the event. And do we really need the Mets to look dumber?
4. His dad, Felipe Alou, was a very good manager the Mets should have hired long ago. Let’s put it this way, Alou was available when the Mets hired Art Howe. Let’s not relive that nightmare.
5. People whose job it is to shake their heads in disbelief at what the Mets do thought it a good hire. In the words of ESPN baseball smart guy Keith Law put it: “The Mets have inadvertently hired a highly qualified manager.”
Baseball’s original smart guy and huckster Bill Veeck famously said, “Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make.” Maybe we can switch that around to say: Sometimes the best moves are the ones you don’t plan.