Ladies & Gentlemen...Buffalo's new manager Wally Backman

Hello folks, I have just listened to Wally Backman's introductory press conference as the Buffalo Bison's new Manager and thought the readers of Mack's Mets might be interested in what good old Wally had to say. After the usual chit chat about how he preaches fundamentals, and expects his players to give 100% all the time, he gave a summary about what type of manager he believes that he is. This could be summed up with the word "aggressive". "Intelligently aggressive", is actually how he put it and I guess if you're going to be aggressive, that's the way to go about it. Good thinking, Wally! I know those of you who are reading this might not actually care about how the Bison's are run on the field, but since it's pretty obvious that Wally truly believes he'll be given the Mets to manage one day, why not get to know his style right now, right? Anyway, aggressive....that's Wally Backman!

Also, and this is where my ears perked up a bit, Wally went on to say that he believed that Matt Harvey and Juerys Familia are both ready for the jump up to the AAA team. Which is something you could believe too, because pitching wins ballgames, and what new manager would openly ask for a couple of pitchers that weren't ready for the competition they'll face once they get promoted? Wally wants to put his best foot forward, aggressively if possible because that's big Wally's style, and win as many games as possible. Knowing that with top prospects on your team, the media and fanfare follows, which could only mean good things for Wally. Of course, that all depends on if the roster put together in Buffalo is successful. He also said that he believed that only one of the two top pitching prospects would actually start the year with Buffalo, but in any case he would fight to try to get them both promoted to his team. Considering that Familia seems to be moving along just a step ahead of Harvey, I'm sure we all can assume that's who he was referring to.

Backman also mentioned Gorski, when talking about the Mets pitching prospects, and said that they'd all have a good shot at making it to the Bison's at some point in the season.

Wally Backman is truly devoted to this franchise at the moment. He talked about other opportunities for himself that came up right after the season, possibly with the Nationals, but after talking to ex-Mets skipper Davey Johnson, he decided that ultimately the Mets organization held the most promise for himself. I believe that he thinks the Mets will be his team to manage one day and I personally wouldn't mind that one bit. However, it could be awhile since Terry Collins seems to be entrenched into that position at the moment. Either way, it's always good to have a manager of Wally's caliber anywhere in the organization, especially if he himself came up with organization.