Reese Kaplan -- Will David Stearns Begin with Changes at the Top?

One of the hot topics that's arisen frequently throughout the baseball universe after the announcement that David Stearns is indeed the New York Mets new President of Baseball Operations (POBO) is what the future holds for Hall of Fame destined manager Buck Showalter.  He signed a three year deal when he came to work for Steve Cohen in the dugout.  No one could have hoped for more than what Showalter delivered to the moribund team in 2022.  

Yes, people would have preferred a deeper penetration into October baseball after a 101 win season, but it's hard to be critical when the team hadn't sniffed competition in many years.

Then came the 2023 fiasco during which players including Edwin Diaz, Justin Verlander, Jose Quintana, Pete Alonso, Starling Marte, Tomas Nido and many others went down with injuries lasting from weeks to the length of the entire season.  

Then there was the lackluster efforts to begin the year by sure-thing players like Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Mark Canha and nearly every player delivering far less than was expected based upon their professional careers, well, the results were shocking and disappointing.  How much of the injuries and slumps were the manager's fault is difficult to ascertain, but many people are looking for justifable moves to rid the team of this all-time but suddenly over-the-hill manager unable to figure out how to win.  

So with the arrival of the POBO many people are already dancing up and down at the prospect of a new dugout maestro of Stearns' choosing to take over for the man who brought the Mets up until Monday of this week an overall record of 167-139.  Taken as a measure of relative baseball success or failure, that would make his thus far New York Mets managerial record a .546 winning percentage.  For his career Showalter has a twenty two year winning record that is positive at .509 but that falls well below what he's actually done during his tenure with the Mets.

Stepping back and looking at what Showalter has done right and wrong, based upon traditional metrics you cannot fault his output while at the helm for New York's National League team.  It does call to mind that old philosophical question about would you want to cross a stream that is on average three feet deep.  

Most people immediately say yes as three feet is not enough to cause a hardship to adults of typical size until the person asking the question points out the word "average" to indicate that the three foot metric can be the result of tremendously deeper streams and significantly drier ones.  Then that three foot average is not quite as harmless as it seems.

When you choose someone to head up a department, division or in this case essentially an entire company, you grant that individual the autonomy to make decisions without having to check with someone for approval.  

Many people are jumping on the Craig Counsell bandwagon as his contract expires at the end of the 2023 season with the Brewers and folks make the easy connection between he and Stearns as a marriage made in heaven.  Furthermore, they point out the tremendous results the much younger Counsell has obtained while leading the Brewers team and it's understandable that folks would nod in approval of this change.

Now to complicate matters, Counsell has been fairly public about his desire to take a year away from baseball management to spend time with his family.  As a former player and then a baseball manager he has spent a quarter of a century away from the people he loves in order to travel around the continent to play a game.  That conjecture about Counsell going on a baseball version of a sabbatical may or may not be true, but you can't fault the man either way.

On the Showalter side a new and interesting tidbit emerged that Showalter may indeed resign rather than return for what is likely a lame duck year in 2024.  No one saw that option as being a viable choice, but approaching age 70 it is also reasonable for someone to think it might be better to hang them up than it would be to continue the stress that 162 games all over the country for more than six months of the year would bring.  

If Showalter did voluntarily give up the third year of his contract with Steve Cohen, he would likely be rewarded with some small fraction of the money he was legally entitled to earn for the 2024 season and despite the 2024 disaster, it would be leaving a huge pair of shoes to fill.

In a Mets version of the Aaron Rodgers debacle, what if Counsell indeed opts for a year off or gets romanced to continue his tenure in Milwaukee?  He would then be off the table.  What if Buck Showalter took his own time away from the game and gave up on the 2024 season?  Then the Mets wouldn't have him there either.  

So the question to ponder is who is Plan C if neither Craig Counsell nor Buck Showalter come through as Plans A and B (or B and A)?