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Latest On Mets’ Managerial Search

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OCT. 22: Luis Rojas will also interview for a second time, Anthony DiComo of MLB.com tweets.

OCT. 20, 8:55pm: Tim Bogar is also getting a second interview, Ken Rosenthal reports (via Twitter).

7:50pm: Joe Girardi will also receive a second interview from the Mets, as per Ken Rosenthal (Twitter link).

7:33pm: The Mets are entering their second round of managerial interviews, with two names already scheduled for another meeting with team brass.  SNY’s Andy Martino reported yesterday that long-time Mets star Carlos Beltran was expected to get another interview, and Mike Puma of the New York Post writes that the Mets have indeed asked the Yankees for permission to speak with Beltran (who is a special advisor to the Yankees GM Brian Cashman).  Eduardo Perez, the former first baseman and current analyst for both ESPN and MLB Network Radio on Sirius XM, is also being asked back for a second interview, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports.

At least one more candidate is expected to join this next stage of the interview process, though the identity of the third person isn’t yet known.  Joe Girardi, Skip Schumaker, Derek Shelton, Luis Rojas, Tim Bogar, and Mike Bell are the other six candidates who have received interviews to date.  Martino also tweets that the Mets are still looking into some other candidates who have yet to be revealed.

Beltran and Perez aren’t under consideration for any of the other seven managerial openings around the game, though Beltran has said that he is only interested in managing in New York, to the point of turning down requests to interview with the Padres and Cubs.  Perez was interviewed by the Reds and Blue Jays about their managerial vacancies last offseason.  Though Beltran and Perez have 33 combined seasons of MLB playing experience between them, neither has managed at the big league level, which means the Mets would be following up Mickey Callaway’s short-lived tenure with another first-time skipper if either Beltran or Perez (or, in fact, any of the known candidates except Girardi) are hired.

Perez has been a manager in Puerto Rico and also managed Colombia’s team in the qualifying rounds for the 2013 World Baseball Classic.  Perez’s resume also include a stint as a special assistant in the Indians front office, as well as one season as the Astros bench coach in 2013 and roughly a season and a half as the Marlins’ hitting coach from 2011-12.

Beltran only hung up his spikes after the 2017 season, and after taking a year away from the sport, joined the Yankees’ front office as Cashman’s advisor.  Beltran came relatively close to becoming a New York manager two winters ago, as he was one of the six candidates interviewed by the Yankees for the position that eventually went to Aaron Boone.

Reflecting On Canó's Disappointing 2019

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  • It was a forgettable first season in Flushing for Mets second baseman Robinson Canó, one of the team’s crown jewels from last winter. Anthony DiComo of MLB.com reflects on the disappointing year for Canó while looking ahead to the future, which includes four more years of Canó, who turns 37 on Tuesday. While he seemed to find his stroke after the All-Star break, the overall numbers were still a far cry from the slugger that New Yorkers have come to know and love. Injuries no doubt played a considerable part in those struggles, with Canó landing on the injured list on three separate occasions, leading him to enter the offseason aiming to strengthen his legs. Still, the outlook for 37-year-old position players is not an especially promising one—and Canó won’t be given any breaks, given his hefty paycheck.

Mets Interview Skip Schumaker

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The Mets have interviewed Padres first base coach and former big league utility man Skip Schumaker for their managerial vacancy, Dennis Lin of The Athletic tweets. The interview took place yesterday, Joel Sherman of the New York Post adds.

Like the vast majority of the Mets’ candidates to this point, the 39-year-old Schumaker (40 in February) lacks any managerial experience. But since hanging up his spikes after the 2015 campaign, he’s worked in the Padres organization in a variety of capacities. Schumaker first joined the front office as a special assistant to the baseball operations and player development departments. He worked with the Padres’ minor league affiliates in that capacity and has since taken on a prominent role on the Major League coaching staff, beginning in 2018.

General manager Brodie Van Wagenen is surely somewhat familiar with Schumaker; while Van Wagenen didn’t represent him directly during his playing career, Schumaker was a client of Van Wagenen’s now-former agency, CAA Baseball (where he was represented by agent Nez Balelo). He joins a growing list of interviewees that includes Joe Girardi — the only candidate with Major League managerial experience — as well as D-backs director of player development Mike Bell, former big league outfielder Carlos Beltran, former Astros bench coach Eduardo Perez (currently of ESPN fame), Twins bench coach Derek Shelton and current Mets quality control coach Luis Rojas.

Notably, that list doesn’t represent the entirety of the Mets’ search, per Andy Martino of SNY (Twitter link). Additional candidates could yet receive interviews as the team continues its quest to replace the recently fired Mickey Callaway. You can keep up to date with the Mets’ managerial search as well as the six other active searches throughout the league by bookmarking MLBTR’s 2020 Managerial Tracker.

Tim Bogar To Interview For Mets Managerial Opening

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FRIDAY: Bogar is indeed getting an interview, Heyman tweets.

WEDNESDAY: According to a tweet from Jon Heyman of MLB Network, Tim Bogar, first base coach for the Nationals, is under consideration for the open Mets managerial seat (link). It is not clear if Bogar has interviewed for the position, but Barry Svrugla of the Washington Post confirms that Bogar is “involved to some degree” with New York (link).

Being that third base coach Bob Henley was linked to the Padres opening today, it seems the World Series-bound Nats are in danger of having their coaching table rightly pillaged by the rest of the league. Bogar, for his part, offers a pretty sterling resumé, as far as coaches go. The 52-year-old, Chicago-bred baseball man has worked on the coaching staffs of managerial big-shots like Joe Maddon, Terry Francona, Bobby Valentine, and Ron Washington. He earned the opportunity to serve as Texas’ interim manager in 2014 after Washington stepped down, leading the Rangers to a 14-8 record in the season’s final month. Bogar also has spent a little time as a front office assistant to Jerry DiPoto while the latter was in Anaheim, and, of course, logged a 700-game playing career that began with–you guessed it–the Mets.

If interviewed, Bogar would become the seventh man to sit down with New York brass since Mickey Callaway was dismissed on Oct 3. To this point, Diamondbacks player development director Mike Bell, Yankees assistant Carlos Beltran, former MLB manager Joe Girardi, ESPN analyst Eduardo Perez, Twins bench coach Derek Shelton, and Mets quality control coach Luis Rojas have been reported as Mets interviewees.

The Mets’ Payroll Predicament

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The first anniversary of the Mets’ hiring of Brodie Van Wagenen is fast approaching. There have been some ups and downs, as might be expected. He’s currently looking for a new skipper and plotting a course for the coming offseason. One thing that is clear: the Mets are trying to win now. Van Wagenen’s task is to end a three-year postseason drought. But he’s going to have a tough time adding to his existing slate of talent unless he’s handed a larger purse to work with this winter. It’s not exactly a new situation in Queens, but it’s one worth examining anew with the market soon set to open.

The win-now mission was already evident, but its immediacy was highlighted and enhanced by the organization’s mid-summer transactions and non-transactions. On July 12th, the Mets sat 11 games under .500. By the time they had agreed to acquire Marcus Stroman on July 28th, they had closed that to five games under. And on the day after the deadline, the Queens denizens were three shy of even and in the middle of a wondrous hot streak that totally flipped the script on the season.

Trouble was, the Mets’ fate was always been tied inextricably to stumbles from the teams ahead of them. And they needed more than they could get. The Mets matched or bested a laundry list of mid-level National League teams. That was something of an accomplishment. But the outcome — no realistic hope entering the final week of the season — was exceedingly likely at the time of the deadline. With so many teams clustered ahead of the Mets late this summer, it was all but inevitable that a few would emerge. As it turned out, two of those ballclubs played about as well as the Mets have over the final two months of the campaign. With their preexisting advantages, the Nats and Brewers cruised ahead of their rivals in New York. This is why those playoff odds charts seemed so gloomy in late July.

So what was the point of that win-now-oriented deadline approach? Well, it certainly put more butts in the seats down the stretch. It helped breathe life into what had been a moribund season. It enabled the Mets to return to the ranks of the winning (86-76) and perhaps launched some forward momentum.

More importantly, though, this past summer’s decisionmaking was the start of the construction of the 2020 roster. Adding Stroman, while dumping Jason Vargas, was mostly salary-neutral for 2019. But it put a big number on the books for 2020 and cost the Mets one near-majors hurler (along with a further-off prospect). Hanging onto Zack Wheeler, who seems exceedingly likely to receive and decline a qualifying offer, meant foregoing a chance to recoup upper-level prospect depth in preference for a half season of Wheeler’s pitching and likely draft compensation.

Taking on Robinson Cano’s contract and sacrificing some intriguing prospects to get Edwin Diaz had already set the Mets down this trail. The 2019 trade deadline was Van Wagenen and co. pressing bravely on for glory rather than seeking a path back to relative safety.

So … let’s take stock of where the Mets stand with the offseason upon us. Juan Lagares and Todd Frazier are off the books, but that doesn’t mean there’s money to spend on replacements or other upgrades. Here are some of the major expenses that are either locked in or all but assured to be picked up:

Guaranteed Salary

  • Yoenis Cespedes: $29MM
  • Robinson Cano: $20.25MM (net of Mariners’ portion of obligation)
  • Jacob deGrom: $23MM salary ($12MM deferred); $10MM signing bonus payment 1/2/20
  • Jed Lowrie: $9MM salary; $1MM bonus payment in 11/15/19 & $500K bonus payment 1/15/20 (contract also includes $2.5MM bonus payment 1/15/21)
  • Wilson Ramos: $9.25MM
  • Jeurys Familia: $11MM ($1MM deferred)
  • Justin Wilson: $5MM
  • Total: $105MM payable during 2019-20 offseason/2020 season

Projected Arbitration Salaries

Other Obligations

There are many ways to tally all of this, and we don’t know exactly how the Mets are thinking about it internally, but that’s a big slate of preexisting commitments. In the past, the club has reportedly treated Wright’s ongoing payouts as part of its payroll, even though he’s finished playing. Whether that’s the case — and what exactly the insurance work-out looks like — isn’t known. It’s also not totally clear how the club views the deGrom and Familia deferrals or Lowrie’s final bonus payout.

If we tabulate only cash owed this winter and in the 2020 season, and presume the team will be paying $3MM of the Wright contract, that still puts the cash payroll at a minimum of $161.5MM (presuming league-minimum salaries for ten roster spots not otherwise accounted for by the players listed above). Perhaps the team has it a bit lower or a bit higher for its internal purposes, but that seems like a good number to start with based upon what we do know.

Trouble is, the Mets have never yet started a season with a payroll that reached $160MM. They were close to $150MM in 2009 and over that amount in each of the past three seasons. But it seems the Mets are right about at capacity, barring a northward movement in spending allocation for the MLB roster.

So, unless the Wilpon ownership group is preparing to commit more cash to the cause, the front office is going to have to get very creative. The Mets roster does have quite a bit of talent, but it’s also the same essential unit that fell short this year and could certainly stand to be supplemented in several areas. There’s no true center fielder. We all know how the bullpen looked in 2019. The rotation is missing one piece and still also needs depth. Mis-fitting first baseman Dominic Smith might bring back a useful and affordable player, though it isn’t as if he alone will nab a quality pre-arb starter. And the farm system has already been mined for the aforementioned trades, making it tough to commit further prospect capital.

Big-contract swaps? Trading away quality, younger players? A deeper dig into the farm? There are conceivable possibilities, though none jump off the page as being obviously beneficial. There’ll be high stakes and tough choices to make for the Mets front office this winter — unless, perhaps, ownership has a winter payroll bonus planned for Van Wagenen and company to play with.

Mets Interested In Mike Matheny

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  • The Giants, Padres, and Mets have all shown some interest in Royals special advisor Mike Matheny as a possible candidate to fill their managerial vacancies, MLB.com’s Jeffrey Flanagan writes.  Matheny hasn’t been linked to any of those clubs for an interview, however, and “word has it that the Padres are going another direction,” Flanagan writes.  [UPDATE: Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Giants hadn’t spoken to Matheny as of three days ago.]  All three of those teams have already amassed a long list of candidates for interviews, as you can follow via MLB Trade Rumors’ central post for the many rumors and reports floating around concerning the offseason managerial carousel.  Matheny has also been widely tabbed as the leading contender to be the Royals’ next manager, and while Flanagan notes that Matheny’s hiring is “not as certain as it once was,” the former Cardinals skipper still appears to be “the odds-on favorite” for the job.

Mendoza, Mets Employee, Uncertain To Return To ESPN

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Though broadcast entertainment politics usually fall far outside of the MLBTR purview, the current conversations surrounding ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” program could have minor implications for a few front offices around baseball. As explained by Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, two analysts involved with that ESPN broadcast team–namely, Jessica Mendoza and David Ross–faced some conflict of interest issues this season due to their ties to MLB front offices (link). Mendoza, who is an adviser to Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen, and Ross, who works with the Cubs, were barred from entering the Dodgers clubhouse during media availability before games in 2019. It is unclear if other clubs also denied the two clubhouse access.

ESPN is currently considering changes to its Sunday night booth, per Marchand. Though Alex Rodriguez is expected back, Mendoza and play-by-play announcer Matt Vasgersian are projected to have around a “70%” of returning to the weekly national broadcast for 2020. Whether or not Mendoza’s ties to the Mets are the cause of her current up-in-the-air status with the network is not clear, but it will be worth monitoring if she and Ross will be able to return to the program in a similar toe-the-line situation next year–or if the two will be forced to choose between their on-air or front office gigs.

Latest On Mets' Managerial Opening

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  • The Mets’ previously reported managerial interview with their quality control coach, Luis Rojas, has taken place, Tim Healey of Newsday tweets. They’ve now discussed (or will discuss) the position with at least six candidates, with Rojas, Mike Bell, Carlos Beltran, Joe Girardi, Eduardo Perez and Derek Shelton comprising the group of known possibilities. Meanwhile, although longtime manager Buck Showalter has expressed interest in the role, his chances have “stalled,” Mike Puma of the New York Post reports. The Mets have some concerns about the way Showalter interacted with front offices during his previous runs as a manager, according to Puma.

Sam Fuld Declines To Interview For Managerial Vacancies With Cubs, Mets, Pirates

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Former big league outfielder Sam Fuld, currently serving as the Phillies’ Major League player information coordinator, declined the opportunity to interview with the Cubs, Mets, and Pirates for their managerial vacancies, MLBTR has learned.  The 37-year-old Fuld, who had developed a bit of a cult following as an all-out player for the Cubs, Rays, A’s, and Twins from 2007-15, is quickly gaining a reputation as a future managerial candidate.  The Stanford graduate was hired by the Phillies two years ago shortly after they hired Gabe Kapler to manage.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Matt Breen profiled Fuld last season, examining the manner in which he serves as a liaison between the club’s analytics department and the clubhouse. “I think a lot of the times, the information can get overwhelming. It’s hard to sift through and pick ’OK, what’s important for this game?” Rhys Hoskins said at the time. “To have Sam, he’s recently out of the game, kind of act as that bridge just makes it so much easier on us players.”

Given his Stanford degree in economics and his work both within the clubhouse and interacting with the Phillies’ analytics and baseball operations departments, there’ll likely be multiple paths for Fuld to consider as he determines what trajectory best suits him.  Kapler, meanwhile, is set to interview with both the Giants and the Cubs after being dismissed as the Phillies’ manager.  The Phillies, Mets, Cubs, Angels, Giants, Padres, Royals, and Pirates all have managerial vacancies at present.

Mets To Interview Eduardo Perez

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The Mets will interview former big league first baseman Eduardo Perez as part of their managerial search, Mike Puma of the New York Post reports (via Twitter). Perez joins former Yankees skipper Joe Girardi, former big league outfielder Carlos Beltran, D-backs director of player development Mike Bell and Twins bench coach Derek Shelton as known candidates to replace recently fired manager Mickey Callaway.

Perez, 50, hasn’t yet been reported as a strong candidate elsewhere this winter, but he was mentioned last offseason during the searches conducted by both the Blue Jays and, to a lesser extent, the Reds. Hiring Perez wouldn’t be all that dissimilar from the Yankees’ hiring of Aaron Boone; like Boone was at the time of his hire, Perez is currently an analyst at ESPN (as well as an analyst for MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM). It’d perhaps be a somewhat outside-the-box move, but the Mets certainly didn’t shy away from that last winter in naming former agent Brodie Van Wagenen their general manager.

And it’s also worth noting that unlike Boone, Perez does have prior Major League coaching experience. Back in 2011-12, he served as the Marlins’ hitting coach back in 2011-12, and he was also the Astros’ bench coach in 2013 before leaving the staff prior to the 2014 season and citing a desire to spend more time with his family. Perez also managed winter ball clubs in Puerto Rico from 2008-09 as well as Team Colombia in the 2013 World Baseball Classic.

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