Mets360 - Poll: On retaining Luis Rojas as manager

 

By Brian Joura October 8, 2020

There are things that happened on the field in 2020 for the Mets that it would be nice to know who should be held accountable. Who thought it was a good idea to give Robert Gsellman a start when he had pitched one inning in the last 364 days? Who thought it was a good idea to bat Amed Rosario and his lifetime .305 OBP coming into the year and his .231 OBP during the year in the first slot in the order? Who thought it was a good idea to give Michael Wacha a start following one bullpen appearance after he was demoted for having allowed a 9.00 ERA and a 1.895 WHIP in his previous five starts? Who thought it was a good idea to make Brandon Nimmo, who had a lifetime .783 OPS versus LHP coming into the year, a platoon player based on 20 PA? Who thought it was a good idea to pitch a middle reliever four times in six days with a 10-man bullpen? These are the ones off the top of my head. No doubt if you looked at the game logs you would come up with others.

In the 20th Century, you’d lay the blame for each and every one of these decisions at the feet of the manager, in this case Luis Rojas. These days, though, who knows? It’s very possible that Brodie Van Wagenen ordered Rojas to do several, if not all of these moves. Based on his performance in the traditional GM role, Van Wagenen deserves to be fired. If he had a hand in any of the moves listed above, that just makes the case for his dismissal even more concrete.

The buzzword these days around managers is “communication.” There’s seemingly no higher praise you can give a skipper than to say he’s an excellent communicator. While not suggesting that a manager should be a mute, is it possible that we add that he doesn’t do knucklehead things during a game to the list of admirable traits?

Back when Terry Collins was managing the club, he received a ton of praise for having a good clubhouse. That always struck me as strange, in that with David Wright, Curtis Granderson and Asdrubal Cabrera – Collins had universally acknowledged high-character guys. A good clubhouse should have been expected, not fawned over like it was some special accomplishment. And of course, when Collins was in his last few days as club manager, Marc Carig wrote a scathing piece over his tenure, busting a lot of the myths that had been built up around the Collins-era Mets.

Mickey Callaway was hired to replace Collins. Callaway’s starters were remarkably healthy during his tenure, which may have been the result of something Callaway did or it might have been blind luck. Other than that, it’s hard to point to achievements during his tenure and few were sad when he was let go roughly a year ago. One of the things that made the Callaway era so difficult was that in his second year, he worked under a different GM than the one who hired him. Van Wagenen felt Callaway wasn’t the right fit and he didn’t do a whole lot to hide that impression.

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