The Other Mets Managerial Candidate

As of this writing Mickey Callaway is still the manager of the Mets.  That has not stopped people from guessing who the next manager of the Mets will be if he does get fired. 

Two different recent articles each listed 13 different possible candidates.  Besides the usual suspects, Joe Girardi, Joe Maddon, and Buck Showalter, one even included Yankees broadcaster David Cone and another MLB Network’s Mark DeRosa. 

Watch out, the Yankees hired a broadcaster with no managerial experience and won a division. The Mets sometimes like to copy their cross-town rivals.

What do both of these above articles have in common?  They both exclude the man that won a championship for the Brooklyn Cyclones, Edgardo Alfonzo. 

So, he won a championship in Brooklyn, what’s the big deal?

Well, it was the first time anyone did that since 2001, the year the Mets put a team in Brooklyn.  That year, as the championship series was cancelled due to 9/11, Brooklyn was declared co-champions.  Fonzie was therefore the only manager to ever win an outright championship in 19 years in Brooklyn.

The NY Penn League is not an easy league to manage.  Teams are comprised with a very diverse group of players.  This includes college players that have come right from the June draft, players from the Dominican leagues and non-drafted free agents. 

More than the fact that Fonzie won, it was the way he won, how the team played, the emphasis on fundamentals, the emphasis on defense, the emphasis on the running game and the emphasis on manufacturing runs.  They scored runs on outs time and time again.  Brooklyn was a flat-out exciting team all year. 

They hit against the shift.  Took extra bases when the shift had players out of position and bases uncovered.  Scored from third if the ball got by the catcher.  Even when they were thrown out by being a little too aggressive, it was great to watch.  

It was the type of baseball that helped the Royals beat the Mets in the 2015 World Series and those Cardinal teams in the 80’s beat the great Mets teams though those 80’s Mets were much more talented on paper. 

Fonzie was able to win despite the fact that the 2019 Brooklyn team was not a team with many top 20 Mets prospects. Only when 2019 draft picks Brett Baty and Matthew Allen were added at the end of the year for the playoffs, did they have any.  The team they beat for the championship, the Lowell Spinners, were better on paper.  According to Sox Prospects.com, 10 of the Red Sox top 20 prospects were on the Lowell roster.  

Fonzie had the team working on fundamentals and defense everyday including daily bunting drills. Remember last year when Mickey Callaway was asked why he didn’t have Dom Smith bunt in a given situation and Mickey answered something like “I don’t think Dom has ever bunted before”?

In Brooklyn last year, they all could bunt.  Even catcher Jake Ortega was able to bunt.  In the ninth inning of the deciding game in the first playoff round, Jake bunted over what proved to be the winning run.

They played hard.  They played baseball the right way.

Remember when much heralded Mets prospect Fernando Martinez came up to the Majors, hit a pop up near home plate that ended up landing in fair territory and he didn’t run?  He was tagged out by the catcher.  

In Syracuse this year I was at a game when the backup catcher, Colton Plaia, with men on second and third and one out, hit a pop up to the catcher that landed in fair territory.  Colton did not run and was tagged out.  (He also hit about .150 and stayed on the roster all year when Patrick Mazeika spent his second full year at Binghamton but that is another story).

In the first Brooklyn playoff game, first baseman Joe Genord (not a speedster) hit a pop up to the infield that the Hudson Valley catcher did not handle and it landed in fair territory.  When it did land, Genord was standing on second like he should have been.  He later scored on a single.

Could the Mets use Fonzie in Queens?  Yes.  However, they could use him in Syracuse, Binghamton, St. Lucie, and Columbia.  More importantly the style of play in Brooklyn, and the fundamentals that Fonzie emphasizes needs to become the norm for the Mets, not the exception. 

That style of play.  The emphasis on defense and fundamentals is the right choice for the organization.  No matter if the Mets manager in 2020 is Mickey Callaway, Joe Girardi, Joe Maddon, David Cone, or Mark DeRosa. 

Do the Mets share this opinion? Well, Fonzie won the championship in Brooklyn but the Mets named David Davalillo, the Gulf Coast League Mets' manager, the Mets Minor League Coach of the Year.

That could be why no one is leaking his name as a possible future Mets Manager.

Surprising, huh?

What do you think?