No interim titles. No quick searches. No mortgages.
Sandy Alderson must now take over the management of the Mets baseball operations until next season. He needs to bring stability and confidence to the department and make it attractive so that the best candidates can act in an interview in October / November 2021, as opposed to what happened last time.
The Mets, in Alderson’s opinion, could not recruit enough quality aspirants for president of baseball operations. So they put it on the table and moved on to just appointing a general manager and landing on Jared Porter. And Porter has now landed on the Mets. Changed them back into the Wilpon Mets. An organization embraced by a black cloud.
Alderson delivered a mission statement to Steve Cohen, which led to his appointment as team president. He envisioned the Mets becoming a beacon rather than a laughing stock; implicit was to walk away from the Wilpons to a new reality. At his inaugural press conference in November, he thought these words: “We have a chance to be an iconic franchise … We have a chance to write an epic story.”
Then it turns out that Alderson’s first big rent has a closet full of awful lights. ESPN revealed on Monday night that in 2016, while a Cubs executive, Porter sent more than 60 harassing and obscene texts and photos to a foreign female reporter. Alderson said Porter agreed that it was indeed his texts and photographs. The Mets had no choice and by Tuesday morning Porter was sacked and probably at 41 he was finished with a career in Major League Baseball.
Porter runner-up Zack Scott has also been named executive VP and assistant GM. The two worked together in Boston. But those who know the inner dynamics of the Mets say Cohen and Alderson were so impressed with Scott in the interview process that they pushed the idea more than vice versa on Porter.
So the easy call here is to elevate Scott or at least give him the interim title.
The Mets should not do that. Scott was largely brought up to build and expand the analytical wing of Mets. He was admired in Boston for his work in this area. But he is not considered a dynamic figure, the kind you can imagine sitting at the podium and selling the visions of a large market team. At least not yet. Why then the rush to give Scott even the interim label?
Consider it a 12-month audition. The Mets can see how he works. How he promotes culture within the organization, handles greater responsibility, etc. If all goes well, the job will still be there, come next season and Scott will do the job for which he was hired until then, but with a little more responsibility.
Remember that before Porter and Scott were hired, Alderson led an operation that Trevor May and James McCann signed. They started with the most important bone work in the trade that Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco would utilize. Those dealing with the Mets say Porter only managed Alderson’s playbook.
Alderson presented at that introductory press conference: ‘I’m not going to make the baseball decisions. I expect a seat at the table, but not at the table top. ‘
But there’s Hyman Roth in “The Godfather: Part II” in it. Alderson is too big a personality and thinker to influence and not use. So let’s not even pretend he’s not at the head of the table, especially not now.
And this is where he needs to be.
Because he and Cohen also audition. When Cohen’s money was injected into a large market franchise, the idea was that candidates would flock to run the Mets’ baseball operations. Cohen and Alderson were shocked when it did not happen. One reason for this is that the best and brightest – those who were initially convinced of Cohen and Alderson but would only beg for the job – took themselves out of consideration for their concerns with Cohen.
One of the candidates said that ‘Black Edge’ is passed on like a library book among the best crop. The book described, among other things, a toxic culture at Cohen’s SAC Capital, which expired after paying a record $ 1.8 billion fine for insider trading. Cohen’s follow-up firm, Point72 Asset Management, settled a claim last year with a female employee alleging a sexist work environment.
These cases gave owners a break before approving Cohen’s purchase of the Mets, and giving a stop sign to candidates to conduct baseball operations.
So Alderson and Cohen need to show this year that it’s a new business, a new day and the new Mets. Alderson must find the old Navy within himself and take on the task of managing baseball operations and delivering relentless signs of success, holiness to reality, and sustained competence. It could not be cultivated to Scott or anyone who would appear from another search close to the beginning of spring training if even more candidates would be out of bounds.
Cohen insisted his Mets would have the core of integrity, which he quoted when he fired Porter less than twelve hours after the turbulent revelations.
This is simply the first step away from the first crisis. The next step should be for Alderson to manage baseball operations for this year. This is the best alternative to trying to turn another epic Mets disaster into an epic story.