OPEN THREAD - Brody Van Wagonen

In my opinion, it's hard to find anything wrong yet about this guy.

He's first taking look at the internal organization and shuffling around the pieces. 

The hitting coach is gone while the others have been either reassigned (play out their existing contract on the bench) or shifted positions.

For the first time in ages, the Manager had full import on who his coaches would be.

Omar Minaya has been named the Director of What Comes Out Of The Islands, which the other two members of the troika's future remain undetermined (I will say this... Ricco is very close to the Wilpons and does an awful lot of internal corporate stuff in the past, reporting directly to them, I expect him to survive).

Some of you are already calling for his head if he keeps certain players at certain positions (a recent comment about our current third baseman created this post). I disagree with rushing into player decisions.

Case in point.

I was in the radio industry (yawn). I went into a new GM job with one approach... I wanted to get to know my divisional managers, get a gut feel on both their ability and loyalty, and then begin a confidential search for any replacements needed at those slots. I had to have strong middle management before I started to thing about hiring either salespeople or disc jockeys. 

The best example was when I went to WYKZ/WBEU which served Beaufort SC, Hilton Head SC, and Savannah GA. 

The sales manager their was a man named Robert 'Jet' Angel. An internal dinner with him, as well as a couple of outside inquiries to key advertisers, told me that he was the most qualified for the position. So I kept him, but I also gave him the task of finding the 'best available' salesperson for all three markets. 

Jet determined that someone on our staff (Linda Morlan) was the best in Beaufort. He then determined that Bill Scott, who worked at a rival radio station on Hilton Head Island, was the best for us to cover that territory. And lastly, he determined that the best available in Savannah was a lady named Lou Ten Eyck. 

Jet (not me) made those decisions and he proved out to be as good a 'scout' as he was a sales manager. In one year, we became the number one revenue producer in both Beaufort and Hilton Head.

Our new Mets GM is following a similar path. Clean it up inside, get new, younger brains to head critical positions, and if the Wilpons want to add old bones to the Terry Collins/Tim Teufel old guard down in Florida, that's fine. They can sit around the Duffy's bar and tell old stories of failed teams.

Your thoughts?