The Mets continue to troll through an A to F list of candidates to be their new manager. Stop the search. Spend a week with Carlos Beltran to sort this thing out…
The Mets, with a delaying eye on the 2020 season and much like eight other teams searching for a manager, are embroiled in a puzzle of this and that about this one and that one that could last for months. For reasons, I’ll explain, select Carlos Beltran out of the pack and spend a week with him.
Bring in Allan Laird, Omar Minaya, and Terry Collins to pick his brain. Do it separately in a variety of scenarios, and not only in offices at Citi Field. Meet his family for a day at the zoo.
Invite him (or maybe he can invite you since he works for the Yankees) to attend an ALCS game at the Stadium. Encourage him to critique the game as he sees it.
Mets: If At First, You Don’t Succeed…
Look, the Mets thought they had found The Change they were looking for when they hired Mickey Callaway. They daringly went outside the box when they brought Callaway on board with zero experience as a manager. The experiment failed. But the idea should still be alive.
You can’t find one bad thing about Carlos Beltran, no matter how long you spend on Google, and that’s a fact inside and outside of baseball.
Check his stats as a player with both the Mets and Yankees. They won’t overwhelm you. But that’s precisely the point. Nothing about Carlos Beltran will overwhelm you.
He’s not stand-offish like a Joe Girardi. Nor is Beltran bent on being a Field “General” like Buck Showalter. Beltran is in the middle somewhere, and somewhat of a mystery.
Which, falls into what the Mets players need, and not a “name” who comes in with preconceived ideas as to how and why things are going to be done my way – or the doorway.
Here’s the other thing about Beltran. Unlike most of the other candidates, Beltran has singled out the Mets as the team he wants to manage in 2020. Several sources are reporting he has turned down other requests from teams for an interview, including the Cubs and Padres.
"I love the game, I love to compete…I feel like I can impact players' lives in a positive way"
Carlos Beltran makes his case to be a big league manager with @martinonyc: pic.twitter.com/d7X4q2m4hv
— SNY (@SNYtv) October 13, 2019
Carlos Beltran does not want to be a manager – he wants to be the manager of the New York Mets – and he’s said so.
Mets fans may not like this, but Beltran would be coming to the Mets from the well-oiled machine of the Yankees, where he has spent the last four years in their front office. That’s a plus in his favor, not a demerit.
Carlos Beltran has observed how Joe Girardi and now Aaron Boone earned their stripes by merely managing the team and forgetting about all the other political stuff that can impede on a developing relationship.
Because let’s face it. The number one impediment any manager the Mets hire will have is developing a working relationship with Brodie Van Wagenen. The emphasis being on the chosen word – working.
And if Mets fans agree on anything, it’s that the Mets have a dysfunctional nature and tendency at the top.
The focus of Van Wagenen and the Mets with Carlos Beltran must be to drill down to determine whether or not “The Rep” he has is real or not. If it’s real, they’ve found their man for the job.
Mets: Cut To The Chase And Get This Thing Done
Time’s a-wasting, and there is a boatload of areas the Mets must tend to. Zack Wheeler and his free agency, together with an $18 million offer the team can extend to him, is looming. Nine players are eligible for arbitration.
Trade talks between teams will begin to fire immediately after the World Series. The marketplace for free agents opens at the same time. These are all time-consuming endeavors.
Cut to the chase, and single out Carlos Beltran as the person the team wants to concentrate on. This is no different from looking at the hundred or so free agents this year and singling out one to really go after, Instead of picking out several apples from the barrel, only to find that most have rotted to their core.
Carlos Beltran checks most or all of the boxes. Go after him and make him your own.
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
