Reese Kaplan -- A Doff of the Chapeau to the NL Manager of the Year

In a losing year you look for any positives you can take away from the final outcome.  Yes, the Mets won 101 games.  Yes, Jeff McNeil won the batting title.  Yes, Pete Alonso won the RBI crown.  Yes, Max Scherzer pitched like, well, Max Scherzer (except for the final week).  Yes, Edwin Diaz was on a stratosphere all by himself.

Now most folks are instead dwelling over the midseason failure to add a significant bat that made a pennant winning difference.  Others fret over the late season failures by the top three starting pitchers.  

Still others want to know why the Mets waited so long to dip into the minors and then only gave their rookies lip service rather than genuine chances.

What no one until yesterday is talking about is the kind of job new manager Buck Showalter did with this expensive yet perennially losing team in Queens.  The Sporting News for the fourth time named Buck Showalter its Manager of the Year.  According to the publication, it's the 4th time in 4 different decades and with 4 different teams that Showalter was given this recognition and honor.  Apparently Steve Cohen and company made a good choice getting rid of the manager wannabes like Mickey Callaway and Luis Rojas, replacing them with a seasoned, reputable and respected guy to hold the lineup pencil and motivate the team to contention.  

So what kind of a job did Showalter do?  Let's see...his starting pitching staff was down for the count at various times during the year, yet the team kept winning.  His bullpen had a few regulars but more who also missed a significant amount of time on the IL, yet the games got finished.  

He had slumping players like Eduardo Escobar (with the exception of September) and the catching crew, yet the team stayed in first place for almost the entire year.  

He got virtually nothing out of the DH position, but still managed to finish with one of the best records in baseball.  While it's a little too early for long term accolades, the team felt as if it was a Gil Hodges or Davey Johnson at the helm, folks who knew what they were doing and whose confidence rubbed off on most of the players.

Of course, Buck was not in this gig alone.  He had a coaching staff working to execute his goals.  Headlines have popped up this week about the Mets working to bring back Jeremy Hefner whose short stay in the coaching ranks overall has been highly successful.  The only flaw in this regard could be hitting coach Eric Chavez.  

While you can point to great positives from Alonso, McNeil, Brandon Nimmo, Starling Marte and Francisco Lindor, the team didn't get as much out of LF, 3B, C or DH as had been hoped.  Granted, it's not the hitting coach who swings the bat during the game, but it is incumbent upon Chavez to take the corrective actions necessary to get players to respond when things are not going as expected.  

Come back to the final result once again -- 101 wins.  It's really hard to fault too many under Buck's leadership for failure to get their jobs done.  You can point to performances by various players that were subpar, but roster changes will take place during the off season to address what went wrong. 

Imagine how many more wins Showalter would have on his stat sheet had the hitters done what they'd done in previous years in their careers and if the pitchers were able to stay healthy enough to remain on the mound when needed.  

To go from a year in 2021 with a 77-85 record under Luis Rojas to a 24-game win improvement under Buck Showalter is almost unfathomable to conceive.  This Sporting News honor as Manager of the Year was well deserved and should be applauded by fans, not skewered because the Mets fell out of the playoffs in the first round.