Mike's Mets - Another One Bites the Dust

 

By Mike Steffanos

Billy Eppler, we hardly knew ye.

I wrote a piece last month titled "The Mets Are Still Searching for Stability." The Mets had just decided to hand pink slips to some director-level employees. At the time, it was speculated that the firings could be a sign that a new President of Baseball Operations was coming in, which proved accurate when David Stearns's hiring was announced a couple of weeks later. While the thought of Stearns coming on was exciting, one of the big hopes was that the constant comings and goings of key personnel would slow down a bit as the Mets transitioned to a more mature, steady operation. This made the news of GM Billy Eppler seemingly out-of-the-blue resigning an unpleasant reminder that we just aren't there yet.

It wasn't that Eppler seemed irreplaceable. While I wasn't rooting for him to get canned, the idea of Stearns being gifted the opportunity to hire an up-and-comer of his choice to fill the GM role is actually intriguing. And it certainly was disappointing to learn that Eppler pressured manager Buck Showalter to keep Daniel Vogelbach in the lineup long after it became clear that Vogie didn't offer enough value to offset his limitations. Eppler did some really good things in his time as Mets GM, but his trades for Vogelbach and Darin Ruf were clearly fails. And that's not a crime.

A consequence of having a job where you need to make big decisions is that you will face-plant on some of them. Mistakes are going to happen. But missteps become magnified when a leader can't acknowledge them, learn from them, and move on as quickly as possible. It's human to stubbornly cling to the hope that an important move will eventually pan out, but that's not an approach strong leaders utilize.

Let's be clear: Eppler's stubbornness in trying to validate the Vogelbach acquisition didn't cost the Mets their 2023 season. There were more significant reasons why they spent so much money only to finish under .500. It didn't impact the decision to hire David Stearns and place him above Eppler in the baseball ops hierarchy. That was clearly going to happen as soon as Steve Cohen got the person he wanted to agree to take the job — even if the club had played better and made the playoffs. But Eppler's failure to acknowledge the obvious sooner caused the manager unnecessary angst, made the fanbase quite unhappy, and made Vogelbach a target of fan outrage. It was a lose-lose-lose for everyone.

While I continue to give Billy Eppler credit for some good things that he accomplished here, the slowness of some of his decision-making and his failure to find value in filling out the roster doomed him as the ultimate decision-maker. On the other hand, reporting indicated that Eppler was a good administrator for whom people enjoyed working. And David Stearns seemed happy to have a capable man working underneath him in such a demanding job. This made Billy Eppler's sudden resignation incredibly puzzling when first announced but much less so when the news leaked that he was the target of an MLB investigation.

If MLB's investigation turns out to really be about the infamous "Phantom IL," it's a mystery to me why Eppler felt that he had to resign. Sorry, but it's one of the worst-kept secrets in the game: IL shenanigans are common across baseball. I'm sure there will be penalties for the Mets if this can be proven, but this is hardly compatible with the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal or more recent ones involving international prospects. The idea that Billy Eppler needed to resign over improper use of the IL doesn't compute.

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