Why Haven’t Mets Given Jessica Mendoza A Managerial Interview
What is interesting about the Mets current managerial search is they have cast a wide net. With the caveat these are only the interviews we know, they have interviewed people from all different sorts of fields.
Joe Girardi is the former manager. Derek Shelton is the hot bench coach candidate. Luis Rojas is the internal candidate. Carlos Beltran is the former player. Mike Bell is the player development person. Eduardo Perez is the television analyst.
In essence, the Mets have gone ahead, and they have made sure to interview at least one candidate from each different field. Again with the caveat, it’s only what we know, it is interesting to see they have not interviewed multiple people from each field. If they were, they could consider giving Jessica Mendoza an interview.
Like Perez, Mendoza has been a television analyst. While there are criticisms of her work on Sunday Night Baseball, she was considered a strong analyst on Baseball Tonight. Like Rojas, Mendoza is an internal candidate as she has served as a special advisor to Brodie Van Wagenen this season. In that job, she has partially focused on player development, which is the role Bell currently serves with the Diamondbacks. Finally, as a 2004 Gold Medalist, she is a former player.
What Mendoza doesn’t have is prior managerial experience. However, looking at the Mets current list of candidates, that doesn’t appear to be an issue for them at all.
While Mendoza doesn’t have managerial experience, her role with Sunday Night Baseball does give her some special insight. As noted in the USA Today article on the Mets hiring her, “Before nationally televised games, managers routinely give private briefings to the network broadcasters, and some might be more reticent to disclose information to an employee of an opponent.”
It should be noted Aaron Boone, who once worked alongside Mendoza in the Sunday Night booth, used that position as a springboard to taking the Yankees job. Like Mendoza, he likely benefited from the broadcasting experience, which included those meetings. Of course, Boone was also a longtime player and a member of the well known Boone family.
Another factor to consider about Mendoza is what the Mets said about her when she was hired. Brodie Van Wagenen said of the fellow Stanford alum, “Jessica has a very high baseball IQ. She has aptitude to learn anything, and she knows the game.” (Anthony DiComo, MLB.com).
Those are all attributes you would want from your manager. Certainly, those are attributes which should at least get someone an interview, especially when that person has similar experience to the other known candidates. It also helps she has a relationship with the GM and ownership in addition to working with them for a year.
Overall, we don’t know if she’d be interested, but if she was, it may very well make sense for the Mets to give Jessica Mendoza an interview for their managerial position.
Kapler has gotten two managerial interviews while Callaway has gotten zero. Damn that Brodie!
Given what we know and have found out about Kapler, he should be out of baseball and not under consideration for other jobs.
That’s not the point why is super genius Callaway not getting interviews?
No, that is the point.
As for Callaway, I didn’t once claim he was a genius. Rather, I only said he had positive attributes.
You blamed all of his beer league mistakes on others.
The GM was texting instructions
He had no positive attributes and I’m sure Brodie texted him every game including telling him to walk Knapp to face Harper to get a dreadful reliever out of the game.
This is exactly why I can’t take the Callaway criticism seriously.
I was mocking you how do you not get that? Mickey is a buffoon and every Mets fan but you hated him for how incompetent he was and no gm will touch him with a ten foot pole now.
Yes, he was incompetent because the young players developed under him, the starters stayed healthy, the team played hard, and the GM texted him what to do.
You are the only one that thinks dumb shit like that. Why can’t he get an interview?
Why can’t anyone ever fired from the Mets get an interview?
@David Klein — I’m going to go with…
5.59
2.70
4.66
5.70
2.54
5.06
4.94
8.37
8.34
6.95
4.58
5.51
3.68
6.59
5.19
6.75
4.91
6.14
12.15
10.80
4.26
Those are the ERAs of every Met reliever who pitched more than one inning for the 2019 club. That’s what Callaway was able to coax out of these guys, presumably unaffected by texting. This was Callaway’s ***strength.***
Look at what he had to work with
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“While Mendoza doesn’t have managerial experience…”
—I thought Beltran should be ruled out, easily, for his lack of managerial experience particularly when, unlike Mendoza, he could have parlayed his celebrity and talent as a HOF-caliber player into a juicy managerial gig, probably with the Mets AA or AAA affiliate, and gotten that experience on his resume.
Mendoza’s case is far worse than Beltran’s since she’s never been in an MLB dugout. Her experience with softball is so distant to that that while I wouldn’t completely discount it, it’s close to irrelevant.
When seeking to make a case for peripheral candidates like Mendoza or Beltran, people need to point to some 5,000 word essay on the game by these candidates that shows a powerful understanding of how the game works, how runs are scored and kept off the board, how to deal with players and personalities, how to build a team both psychologically and as dozens of interlocking parts that wins ballgames, how to integrate data into in-game situations and the organization at its broadest.
A spoken interview of comparable length will do, but otherwise candidacies have no merit. They’re just ‘why not’ suggestions.
Fwiw, this is a team that’s going to struggle to play .500 ball in 2020, .475 ball in 2021, and .450 ball in 2022. Jessica Mendoza isn’t the answer to that. The Mets need a manager with comprehensive skills, everything from proven in-game talent to the ability to be persuasive wrt the entire organization and how it feeds into and supports the MLB squad. That’s probably Buck Showalter. You know, if we’re pretending for the moment that the Mets aren’t owned by the Wilpons and GM’ed by van Wagenen.
Mendoza doesn’t need to write an essay. Just turn on an old Baseball Tonight, and you’ll see a person who knows baseball. She can help a team from the dugout. There’s no doubt in my mind.
I didn’t say she needed to write an essay. Why do you keep distorting what I and others write in order to take cheap shots and to try and ridicule others? It’s very, very tiresome and an awful habit.
I wrote, “A spoken interview of comparable length will do,…”
You can see that on your screen, yes? Do you really not understand that it’s easier in this medium, though, to discuss what people have written, since that puts words on the page that can be easily quoted and analyzed? Otherwise we need to make transcriptions. Are you planning on doing that?
Meanwhile, you haven’t pointed to *anything* specific she’s had to say, merely handwaved at the bulk of her time onscreen. Fwiw, I did that–I just brought up the first couple of old Baseball Tonights involving Mendoza that a search produced. She appears to have a thoroughly pedestrian mind.
On your terms, here’s the first link in a search for Mendoza Baseball Tonight. Tell us why she’s more insightful than most. Worse, explain why her chatter here isn’t fundamentally inane.
You wrote, “When seeking to make a case for peripheral candidates like Mendoza or Beltran, people need to point to some 5,000 word essay on the game by these candidates that shows a powerful understanding of how the game works . . .”
My addressing that while making a more global point is not taking a cheap shot or distorting what was said.
By the way, aside from that not being a BBTN clip, I’d really inquire what was “fundamentally insane” about anything she said
Even here you distort what I wrote beyond any similarity at all. I wrote “fundamentally **inane**,” which is a trenchant criticism of the speaker’s acumen and its lack; not “fundamentally **insane**,” which would be simply ludicrous to assert. This gives every appearance of you engaging in yet another attempt to ridicule your readers through distortion.
Really… what’s the point?
I quoted you.
Would we be having a Jessica Mendoza for Mets manager conversation if She was he?
This isn’t matter of gender being issue blocking her – but that she doesn’t, in my opinion, have the personality and standing to be big league manager. How’s she’s viewed on ESPN as utterly annoying, – that reputation is disqualifying even if she was adequately otherwise qualified.
The first female manager would need to be far more Jackie Robinson-like than Jessica Mendoza.
A good start would be the first female GM, first female full time big league coach and first female big leaguer. First female big league manager might be toughest of all.
The question is actually the inverse. Would she be getting an interview and consideration if she was a he.
As I noted, she had the same job which catapulted Boone to the Yankees job. She works in the front office, and she’s respected in the game for her intellect.
@LongTimeFan1 — quite right. This kind of thing is tokenism of the worst sort, where a female candidate checks none of the boxes you really want and is only pointed to because of her gender.
No one I talk to who is serious about baseball has ever been given cause to even mention Mendoza, let alone give her a second thought because she’s said something illuminating about the game. She’s just another talking head, essentially indistinguishable from someone like Jeff Francouer who has a thorough grasp of baseball cliches but little understanding of the deeper game. She never, and I mean never, comes up in conversation when people who know the game talk about interesting points of view or refer to insightful tv analysts–in short she’s not even remotely noteworthy in her already narrow bailiwick.
The most important line on a managerial candidate’s resume is experience AS a manager. If you don’t have that you’d better be a huge standout in other areas, with a sterling reputation for relating to players, or with a terrific resume as a player, or for giving a strong performance in a front office, or for your regular and impressive insights as an analyst… and ideally you’d be notable for all four of these.
Not to mention that being notable for all four of these should get you in the door when a franchise is looking for a AA manager.
At this point it’s hardly clear why the Mets would invite Mendoza to interview for manager of the Cyclones. As the manager of a fringy MLB contender that will shortly need to dramatically rebuild? It’s a baffling proposal, at best.
I provided her credentials and compared them to those interviewed.
This isn’t “tokenism,” but rather, showing how there is another qualified candidate using the Mets standards.
If the Mets only interviewed Girardi, Buck, and Dusty, no, she’s not in that class, and she doesn’t merit an interview.
In a world where Beltran, Hill, and Perez get an interview, Mendoza merits one.
I don’t think she would get interview if she were a He and that was my point. Not the right person for the job.
Future big league GM – I can see that.
Field manager – Not at this time.
Mets Daddy, you’re getting really silly. Now’s she more qualified than Carlos Beltran and players will embrace her because she is. Sounds like click and comment bait to me – not common sense.
Integrating women into MLB as player, coach, manager is complicated as it was integrating people of color. Integration starts bottom up – not top down. Jackie Robinson’s integration into MLB didn’t start as manager, nor was he softball player and MLB radio analyst.
There are several women who’ve been hired in MLB as uniformed MLB coaches in spring training. The next step logical step should be in-season in minors, working their way up the ranks and figuring out how to navigate the issues. That roadmap could then be used to promote women to full time big league coach, and manager – and that players are ready for that.
Furthermore, I think softball should gradually be replaced with baseball for girls and women. If females are to break into MLB as players, they have to play baseball as much as males from young age and be given the opportunity to shine and develop the skills to play at the highest levels.
Tell me what qualifications Beltran has over being an analyst who routinely met with MLB coaching staffs and front offices and having worked over the past year as an advisor to the Mets front office.
Just stop.
I notice you’re not answering my question