Paul Articulates - Is there enough time?

The Mets have certainly made some key hires this year, from the all-important David Stearns hire as the President Of Baseball Operations (POBO) to the new manager Carlos Mendoza to last week’s hires of Andy Green for Player Development and Kris Gross for Scouting.  Stearns was on everyone’s wish list, but the other three were not on a lot of peoples’ radar.  That said, there is really not anything negative being said about those three, which is New Yorker for “Great Hire”!

Clearly these moves needed to be made, and all of the newly ordained staff will have input into the players that are retained, the players that are added, and the players that are sent away via trade or release.  It had to be a front office priority to get these people into place.  Many say that a GM is needed, but David Stearns seems to feel that it is not a priority right now – code for “I’ll do that job”.

Now that those hires are in place, there is a learning curve for everyone – the new guys learning the organization and the existing organization learning the new guys.  Somehow the perspectives need to be blended into a single vision for the organization to succeed.  The problem, of course, is time.  We are a full week into open free agency, a week away from the winter meetings, the MLB draft lottery, and the Rule 5 draft.  Teams are already in the press making moves, including early announcements from our NL East rivals the Braves (traded Sikora, signed Murfee) and the Phillies (signed Nola).

I feel like the Mets are off to a delayed start due to their (appropriate) priorities on aligning their management team while the clubs with more stable, mature front offices have been focused on player personnel.  It has caused me to lower my expectations somewhat on this offseason being the one that sets the Mets on fire.  The moves they have made will contribute more to the strategic than the tactical, meaning that success is a little further out.

This doesn’t mean that I am disappointed – I am someone who favors a strategic approach.  Unfortunately, there is a fan base out there that has grown impatient with every year that passes since the 1986 ticker tape parade.  My hope is that the fans can muster the patience to rally behind our “competitive” 2024 team; to encourage all the young players who will inevitably make some mistakes in their learning process; and to give the new manager an opportunity to learn the ball club.

As of last night, there were 27 names on the 40-man roster, and some of those names are there to protect them from the Rule 5 draft while others are probably on a board somewhere like chess pieces in a trade strategy.  That means that there is a tremendous amount of work to be done in a few months by a brand new brain trust that is still figuring out how they will work together.  

I don’t think there is enough time to out-position all of our rival teams and have the “best” off-season.  I think we will have some modest success, and then we will see a new manager and many new faces out on the fields behind Clover Park in St. Lucie this February.  They will need time to gel.  The front office will still need time to shape the future.  The new, high-tech player development tools will need time to impact the quality of our players.

This is a reality that we need to face, which is far different than the lofty expectations that followed the Mets’ 101-win season into spring training 2023.