MLB Roundtable: Who should the Mets hire as their next manager?

The Atlanta Braves We World Series Champion and now baseball is in the middle First layoff since the 1994-95 strike. MLB and MLBPA could not agree to a new collective bargaining agreement by the December 2 deadline, so the owner locked the player, and hot stove has been kept to the foreseeable future.

Throughout the season, CBS Sports MLB scribes will bring you a weekly roundtable that breaks down almost everything. Breaking news, a historical question, thoughts on the future of baseball, all that. Last week, we discussed which pre-lockdown contracts surprised us the most. This week we will solve the problem Mets‘three finalists: Joe Espada, Mike Quatraro and Buck Showalter.

Who should the Mets hire as their next manager?

RJ Anderson: I don’t have a strong opinion here. It’s hard for us outsiders to judge any of these candidates in a meaningful way – especially since two of them haven’t managed a game before. I’d love to see Espada get a shot because he’s been competing for what feels like a handful of jobs over the past few seasons without landing any of those gigs. Basically, he was due. Will he be fine? Possibly, but I can’t guarantee it; I definitely doubt he’s the reason why the Mets won (or didn’t win) this year.

Dayn Perry: I think Espada deserves a chance how many times he’s been a strong candidate for management, but with the Mets upheaval since Steve Cohen’s acquisition of the team, I think they need to go with the numbers. known safe amount. That’s Buck Showalter. He has made his mark on winning seasons with 5 different brands and he has guided 4 of them to championships. He also recently managed in 2018, so this is not the same as removing Tony La Russa from antiquity like White Sox did. I think the safe choice is the right choice in this case.

Mike Axisa: I don’t think you can go wrong with the Showalter, the kind of instant respect that would give the Mets a much-needed adult in the room. That said, I think Espada has the tools to be the next great manager, and I’ll go with him. He has player development experience (with Marlins), he has held several major league coach positions (including bench coach under AJ Hinch and Dusty Baker with Astros), he has office experience (with Yankees), and he was praised for his communication skills (he is also bilingual, which is a plus). Espada checks a lot of boxes and the Mets may never get another chance to hire him, so do it now. With rookie managers, you never know what you’ll get until you see him work, so it’s risky. Even so, the Espadas qualify as rookie managers, and I’d be on the next captain’s ground floor if I were the Mets.

Matt Snyder: Adam Jones once told me that what makes Buck Showalter great is “he makes you play as if you had a pair, “and, that’s good enough for me with this Mets team. It’s been used as a loophole in the past that Showalter was fired from the Yankees and Diamondbacks one year before each team won the World Series (and Rangers won two consecutive AL pennants just a few years after his departure), but I suppose if that’s not a coincidence, Showalter is getting those teams more championship-ready. is that he needs to be fired before they can win. He’s so brilliant at building championship caliber teams, a major tournament hasn’t happened to him yet…? If he gets the Mets job and gets over that final hump, eventually people will join all of the former Showalter players to know how great he is.