Reese Kaplan -- Great Scott! You Can't Write This Stuff...

One of the more aggravating things to happen is to be prepared for the hatchet to fall after a particularly embarrassing public debacle only to compound the situation and make yourself even more worthy of exclusion from future consideration as a part of the organization.  We’ve all had this type of experience from time to time, and the best we can hope to have happen is that we learn from our second mistake.  One can only wonder if the educational cap is currently on the head of “acting” General Manager, Zack Scott.  

By now you’re surely heard the tale about his 4:17 AM snooze in a Toyota Highlander down the block from the police station in Westchester after partaking in too many adult beverages at a charity fundraiser hosted by none other than his boss, Steve Cohen.  Surely Cohen was planning to spend some time (not necessarily that same evening) asking Scott about his decision to acquire the less-than-popular Javy Baez which had recently led to the whole thumbs-down fiasco.  

Now none of us are inside Scott’s head and don’t know exactly what was on his mind.  Surely the whole Baez situation was a topic of conversation among the invited guests.  That discussion would naturally exacerbate the stress Scott must have been feeling, knowing full well that someone needed to be a scapegoat for the Baez behavior.  Given the historically abysmal August exhibited by the men in Mets uniforms, there was no margin for personal peccadilloes on or off the field.  Consequently, the thumbing of one’s nose at the fans incident after performing at about a .333 winning percentage, Scott knew the worst was yet to come.

Truth be told, we’ve all had occasions when we swallowed a bit more alcohol than our body was prepared to handle.  It could have been a wild frat party in college, a parents-out-of-town high school rave, a wedding, a bar mitzvah, a celebration of some kind of emotional victory, or an attempt to render its memory something gray, hazy and best forgotten.  At those times it’s important to have a designated driver, a bed close to a bathroom and understanding companions who are willing simply to write it off as, “Oh, he’s had one too many” and understand it’s not a part of expected or normal behavior.

For Zack Scott, it would appear to be one of those memory-blotting attempts that went awry.  While the players took a bus back to their central meeting location that brought them up to Connecticut, Scott opted to take his own car to the Cohen household.  While there he apparently indulged with the bartender or serving staff way too many times and it resulted in his drunken nap on the side of the road.

The good news is that he was not in motion in his car when the police found him and thus didn’t cause himself or anyone else harm.  However, the very behavior of getting behind the wheel after galloping past a reasonable limit for booze suggests that Scott was not making a very good judgment.  When you add the questionable decision making that led to Baez’ acquisition a month earlier, perhaps it is somewhat understandable that Scott’s desire to turn chemically invisible.

As the season draws to a close, there was no guarantee that the emergency GM would be granted longevity in his role.  He hadn’t exactly set the world afire with any of his transactions and the most recent one was an especially heinous blot on his record.  Maybe realizing this inevitability also preyed upon his stressed mind, too.

Then today the Mets announced not only wouldn't he be joining the club on its upcoming road trip, but that he'd also been suspended (or "put on administrative leave") while Sandy Alderson took over his GM duties presumably through the end of the year. It's not surprising that there would be repercussions, but it is in a way refreshing to see them happen so quickly as compared to the Wilpon era when Steve Phillips and others were allowed to parlay their misdeeds for way too long before any action was taken.

Now with the drunk driving citation the ice over which Scott would traverse towards his future with the Mets that had already been fairly thin, now would unlikely support the heft of a fruit fly.  While it’s true that GMs, team presidents and players have withstood similar situations and continued their careers, here it is another brick on the already burdened load which will surely push him out the door.  

Going forward the Mets need to find someone to head up baseball operations to replace Sandy Alderson.  Generally the time you hire a new head honcho you expect that person to want to bring in his or her own staff to help make his vision into reality.  Having Sandy Alderson retire (which is more dignified that being fired) and sending Zack Scott out the door allows this scenario to unfold.  

The one thing that is somewhat amusing in this whole debacle is that many people are chomping at the bit to get the Mets to hire Theo Epstein to lead their organization.  Ummm...wasn't Theo Epstein the guy that hired Zack Scott in Boston, the same Zack Scott now the object of criminal investigation and universal ridicule?

I honestly feel a little bad for Zack Scott.  He was not expecting to have GM responsibilities when the season began, but then the Jared Porter sexting and related inappropriate behavior towards women thrust him into this role.  Maybe he was not ready for it, maybe he expected the players acquired to perform as they had historically or maybe it was a combination of the two.  His future was shaky at best before the Baez thing and certainly before the asleep-at-the-wheel drunken nap.  His potential future in the game is already pretty sketchy but stranger things have happened.