Jeff Wilpon explained the Mets “were open for anything” when it came to hiring a general manager, and yet revealed none of the 12 candidates granted two hours each to offer their visions recommended a rebuild.
“Every one of the 12 we brought in, they all felt we didn’t have to do a teardown,” Wilpon said. “Nobody was talking about teardown, start from scratch. They thought there were too many assets here to exploit and use to become a contending team.”
So the Mets were open for anything and nevertheless not one candidate — not a single one — advocated a theory that recently led to the Cubs and Astros winning championships.
And about those 12 candidates and two hours each. Let’s just say Brodie Van Wagenen had much more than that. As an agent who has many players on the Mets, Van Wagenen had regular conversations over multiple years — but particularly in the last few months — with Wilpon in which they talked baseball, in general, and the Mets, in specific.
Wilpon said he initially asked Van Wagenen to provide thoughts about potential GM candidates a few months back and it evolved to asking Van Wagenen about his interest — kind of like when Dick Cheney ran the search for a running mate for George W. Bush and ended up the vice president himself.
So in the process to succeed Sandy Alderson: 1) No one who suggested a rebuild — like Ben Cherington would have, for example — was going to be seriously considered despite total teardowns being in such fashion these days and 2) the person who had the most face time (and ear time) with the head of the search won the job.
Perhaps this will turn out wise.
Comfort with an involved owner such as Wilpon is important. But I am reminded of all the outsiders such as Dallas Green, Syd Thrift and Bob Watson who said upon taking a job with the Yankees that they knew how to handle George Steinbrenner from previous dealings with him. They encountered the seductive Steinbrenner, who could be so charming when wanting something. That was quite different from The Boss once you were in his employ — I would use the cliche “day and night,” but that would not give the full hellish extent of what night was like.
As an agent, Van Wagenen was able to work with Wilpon to get deals for many of his clients — the Mets have been Team CAA — and the two have a convivial Darien/Greenwich, Conn., relationship. (Again, the idea that Van Wagenen had only two hours to sell himself like Chaim Bloom or Doug Melvin did is naive. There was a long, established relationship here.)
But it is one thing to pitch your players when there are 29 other potential shoppers and another to have one boss — or in the Mets’ case, two, with Fred Wilpon the other. A silly caricature that has emerged over time is the idea of the Wilpons as one entity as opposed to two people with different tastes and different needs from their GM.
Van Wagenen now has to satisfy those needs — and that includes one the owners do share, which is instant success. Which full circles back to avoiding a rebuild.
The Mets do have assets to win (namely a powerful rotation) and Van Wagenen alluded to the successful teams of recent vintage in 2015-16. But there also was 2017-18, when the Mets were a combined 30 games under .500, and Van Wagenen has much to do to tear down and reconstruct the infrastructure that has been unable to sustain success.Yet, Van Wagenen promised winning today and tomorrow, but was vague publicly on how that will be accomplished. I do believe he will get a honeymoon period — the new guy almost always does — to deepen departments such as analytics and buy a free agent or two. But I also believe the history with this Mets ownership is not a patient one, nor one that blames itself for failure.
So, for Van Wagenen to succeed — to keep having the Wilpons backing and funding his vision — then the need to avoid a rebuild must be more than just a sales pitch to an ownership that was known to be against a rebuild. Instant success will keep the Wilpons’ attention and affirmation. There can’t be quick failures like, for instance, the free-agent investments in Yoenis Cespedes, Todd Frazier and Jason Vargas — all now former clients of Brodie Van Wagenen.