Mets disaster of a season are a result of decisions by David Stearns
NEW YORK — After the New York Mets finally put an end to their 12-game hitting streak last week, setup man Luke Weaver had a quote that summed up the Mets in a way that few have ever been able to: “It’s not very often you have such a talented team where everything just doesn’t really click in the right way. It’s quite an impossible feat, but we made it possible. ” The Mets have long been known to make the impossible possible.
A star-laden team should be better than this, but at 9-19 this, the Mets are tied with the Philadelphia Phillies for the worst record in baseball. After being swept by the Colorado Rockies over the weekend to lose 15 of their last 17 games, fans were expecting a Monday bloodbath. The fact that the Boston Red Sox fired manager Alex Cora and six other members of the coaching staff over the weekend has little to no bearing on what the Mets are doing.
President of baseball operations David Stearns is not reactionary. Rarely does he let what other teams are doing influence his own decision-making, so if you think the dominoes are starting to fall, then think again. This is not to say manager Carlos Mendoza doesn’t have any responsibility in this mess, but he didn’t sign these players or hire these coaches.
It was Stearns who let an All-Star first baseman known for his durability walk in the offseason and replaced him with Jorge Polanco, a middle infielder with an injury history who had never played first base before this season, and only played two games before getting injured. Managers have fewer and fewer responsibilities than they used to. The top baseball ops executive makes most of the decisions, along with teams of analysts.
Typically, managers are hired to be the fall guys for the executives, in today’s game, if the executives have all the power, then maybe they should be the ones to be fired before the managers. Stearns chose the hitting coaches, promoting Jeff Albert to director of Major League hitting after a few years in the organization, and bringing in Troy Snitker after he was fired from the Houston Astros. Beyond them, the hitting group consists of roughly 20 or so coaches, assistant coaches and analysts whose jobs range from strategy and game planning to biomechanical information.
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