Reese Kaplan -- Players Aren't the Only Ones Slumping for the Mets

While people are looking at the performance of the various players on the 2023 New York Mets as the cause for the below .500 record through the beginning of May, another group of people have thus far relatively quietly started vocalizing and blog-spitting their opinion that the rationale for the unexpected won and loss record should be laid at the feet of General Manager Billy Eppler.  

To refresh your memory, the Mets after the 2021 season ended began a relatively unsuccessful recruiting process for someone to take the helm from retiring Sandy Alderson.  To be fair, the recruitment and hiring activities of any key executive in a non-entertainment business is rarely an overnight accomplishment.  

The difference here is that while finding a new executive in, for example, the clothing industry, there would be literally hundreds (if not thousands) of prospective candidates.  In major league baseball that field is restricted considerably to ex baseball senior administrators no longer employed by a major league affiliate or unwanted talents that the 29 other ballclubs are willing to allow to be pursued while under contract to their current employer.  

The Mets, with the deep pockets of Steve Cohen, would have seemed to be a hot-as-an-ember spot for any baseball executive to want to land.  He or she would have a drool-worthy budget, the media attention capitol of the world, and the opportunity to be a part of the storybook rebuilding of a baseball dynasty.  

Conversely, that's not exactly what transpired.  The Mets found themselves on the "verboten" end of many conversations about hiring away existing front office personnel.  While no one expected, for example, that the creme de la creme of GM candidates would quit their current job simply for the opportunity to interview with the Cohen committee, it was reasonable to expect that the ones employed who were readily available were likely not considered the upper echelon of choices.

That then led the Mets to find former executives and former high level baseball people who were no longer directly employed by competing ballclubs.  This tier of candidates immediately were underscored by a big "WHY NOT?" question as to their inability or unwillingness to land another MLB-affiliated job.  

As candidate after candidate was deemed inappropriate, underqualified, a bad fit or simply not interested in becoming a part of the Mets front office, the Winter Meetings were rapidly approaching and the Mets had no one at the helm to take control when issues regarding the shape of the Mets ballclub and the construction of the roster.  Hiring ANYONE became an immediate necessity regardless of the caveats that would normally go into this magnitude of recruitment.

Enter from stage left the unheralded and unemployed former left coast Angels GM Billy Eppler.  During his unsuccessful five year career alongside another mega-rich owner Artie Moreno, the Eppler Angels were losers of more games than winners despite having personnel the likes of Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout and Albert Pujols on the roster.  It was telling that no one else was rolling out the red carpet to invite him to come aboard.

When in November of 2021 the Mets announced the new four year deal granted to losing executive Billy Eppler, there were no fireworks shot off in celebration nor were there long media epistles extolling the wisdom of the hire.  The decision to bring Eppler on board seemed a bit off kilter and a misstep along the path Cohen had seemed to be building.  

Some among us were willing to reserve negative judgement until we had a chance to see the things Eppler would do as GM.  Unfortunately even the most patient among us have begun to wonder the very same things the harshest critics said around Thanksgiving two years ago.  Let's take a brief look at the transactions made.

The very first free agent signed by Eppler and the Mets was relatively unknown Oakland outfielder Mark Canha.  Glancing up and down his stat sheet you were left feeling he was at best adequate but certainly not the headline grabber people had hoped to find.

He followed that up with a universally praised acquistion of Starling Marte who everyone knew could hit, deliver power, steal bases and play highly regarded outfield defense.  This move temporarily righted the shaky ship after the Canha deal.

When they added on all-world pitcher Max Scherzer to the Jacob deGrom-led rotation, people were ecstatic.  He was costly but regarded as one of the top five pitchers on anyone's list.  Yes, he was approaching the latter stage of his baseball playing career but no one could argue with his track record, awards and the fact he did what he did best no matter what club was his employer.

At the time the Mets added a seemingly powerful slugger in Eduardo Escobar who appeared to address the team's seemingly never ending quest for a third baseman save for the Howard Johnson and David Wright years.  OK, things were looking a bit better.  

There was then a long period of limited major league activity before Eppler would strike again.  He made a trade of a pair of minor leaguers to bring in quality Oakland starting pitcher Chris Bassitt.  Then he signed veteran relief pitcher Adam Ottavino to supplement the pen.  People had begun to sing the praises of Eppler and apologize for their early judgment of his ability to judge talent and build a roster.

Unfortunately, then came the next trade.  The Mets sent functional right handed reliever Miguel Cairo across town to get southpaw Joely Rodriguez.  Aside from the fact Rodriguez was a lefty, there didn't seem to be any major nor compelling reason to feel this deal made any sense at all.

The next few months were a bunch of minor league transactions, injury call ups, non-performer demotions and the muchly praised release of veteran slugger Robinson Cano.  Nothing earth shattering positive nor negative took place while the Syracuse Uber account went over budget.

Then came the All Star break as the beginning of the end for how Mets fans felt about Eppler.  First was the odd trade of seemingly quality reliever Colin Holderman to the Pirates for oversized and underperforming slugger Daniel Vogelbach.  While it was not hammered badly at the time, the careful phraseology during the press conference about building a platoon-based DH to allow the left handed half and right handed half only have to perform when they did their very best seemed disingenuous.  

The Mets next acquisition before the deadline was outfielder Tyler Naquin, another OK-to-have type of player but not one who caused champagne bottles to be put on ice.  It got people wondering what was going through Eppler's mind if this level of player was the best he could find.  It couldn't get any worse...until...

On August 2nd Eppler sent J.D. Davis, Thomas Szapucki, Carson Seymour and Nick Zwack to the San Francisco Giants for Korean league reject Darin Ruf.  A career .240 hitter with just 67 home runs over parts of 9 seasons in the majors, Ruf quickly demonstrated why he was not only the wrong answer to the right handed half of the composite DH but also a gross overpay by Eppler in the trade.

We won't go through the collapse of the 2022 Mets in September nor the questionable late season call ups made far too late to have any significant impact.  Pretty soon he would have to convert his at best Grade C rookie season atop the Mets front office and get a chance to improve significantly.

As we all know, the Mets lost a huge number of impactful players to free agency once the 2022 season limped to a finish.  The question was not what Eppler did to stop it from happening as you really can't blame the management when an employee chooses to get a fresh start and bigger paycheck elsewhere.  No, the real question is what did he do to make up for the now weakened roster.

It turns out, that money alone wasn't the only way to aid in building a winning roster.  Let's start with the easy and good moves made -- Justin Verlander, David Robertson and Kodai Senga brought in on free agent deals.  Everyone was happy about all three of these moves and despite some injury issues, they are still content.  Then came the injury issues unforeseen which have rendered the deals given to Jose Quintana and Omar Narvaez big fat incompletes.  

The termination of Darin Ruf was, of course, welcome, but nothing much was done to make things any better.  Tommy Pham has not been productive.  Mark Canha has backslid from his 2022 campaign.  Eduardo Escobar mirrors the long-slumping version from the previous season.  Daniel Vogelbach is drawing walks but otherwise doing very little.  

Now Brett Baty's promotion has been mostly a positive one and Francisco Alvarez after a very slow start is beginning to look like the hitter and catcher they thought they had in the minors.  However, nothing has been done about sluggers Mark Vientos nor Ronny Mauricio while the club still toils with very little in the way of spare outfielders, bench options and designated hitter.  

Right now the grade for Billy Eppler has dropped at generously a C- or perhaps as low as a D.  He cannot control injuries from happening.  However, he can and should rework the roster go compensate for the losses.  Thus far he has not done that and waiting until the July trade deadline to do so may be the functional equivalent of closing the barn door after it's already empty.  

We hoped to see better performance from the front office, not a nostalgia-clouded perspective that Sandy Alderson was significantly better (even under the Wilpons).