Welp, It Sounds Like Billy Beane And David Stearns Are Both Out As Candidates For The Mets President Of Baseball Operations Job
So it looks like the Mets swung and missed on Theo Epstein, Billy Beane, and David Stearns as the three big name candidates for the President of Baseball Operations job, which I believe they call a strikeout in the old ballgame. Good times!
I already blogged about Theo passing on the job after it became clear he wasn't coming.
David Stearns always seemed like a long shot to land in Flushing due to the Brewers having the right to refuse any interview and Stearns seemingly being happy in Milwaukee. The one X-Factor was I thought there was a chance Stearns being a Mets fan growing up would motivate him to do whatever to become the King of Queens. However, any Mets fan worth their salt would think twice before taking a job with this historically cursed franchise.
Which takes us to Billy Beane, who I was hoping would jump at the chance to link up with his former mentor Sandy Alderson and finally leave Oakland in order to see if the whole "Moneyball With Money" strategy using his brain and Uncle Stevie's wallet would lead to a World Series. I even convinced my dumb baseball fan brain that the story of Beane flaming out as a Mets first round pick helping shape his views on scouting that they hammered home in the Moneyball book (that I read and liked more than the movie, nbd) would be the perfect narrative for the media to run with during said World Series run.
Instead, the Mets are back to where they were last offseason except we can't blame the pandemic or the final T's being crossed and I's being dotted from a never-ending sale of the team as the reason the biggest names said no to becoming the Czar of Mets Baseball.
There are still plenty of great baseball minds out there, some of which my guy Joe DeMayo listed out here.
I am not going to try and pretend like I know which of these guys will be best with the Mets or even may want to even work for the Mets since it's clearly not a job people are climbing over each other to get. Getting one of the big dogs mentioned above would've been great since they have a track record of success. But I'm more than fine hiring a guy that a casual idiot like me has barely heard of.
Regardless of who is hired, I only have one request for the next President of Baseball Operations: Please for the love of God, just be a normal human being. Or at least as normal a human being as someone who knows a shit ton about baseball and advanced analytics can be. A World Series or at least making the playoffs relatively often would be pretty sweet too. However, I am just asking for someone who doesn't embarrass this franchise any more than it has been embarrassed for my entire lifetime.