Brodie Van Wagenen Should Have Been Fired With Carlos Beltran
On Thursday, the New York Mets took the nearly unprecedented decision of firing Carlos Beltran before he met with his roster let alone managed one game. It was not only an embarrassing day for the organization, but It also overshadowed Mike Piazza being honored with 31 Piazza Drive in St. Lucie.
Somehow, Mets General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen would make things worse, much worse.
During the ensuing conference call confirming the firing of Beltran, and yes, he clarified it was a firing discrediting the “mutually agreed” press releases, he showed how haphazardly he has handled the entire process of hiring a manager.
First and foremost, Van Wagenen claimed no previous knowledge of widespread information about the allegations about the Houston Astros cheating.
There were reports about the Astros getting caught during the 2018 ALCS. There were rumors throughout the game long before that. However, Van Wagenen who represented players like Nori Aoki, who was on that Astros team says he knew nothing.
Taking him at face value, he eventually knew about it because of Mike Fiers statements confirming the sign stealing. Subsequently, there was a report in The Athletic specifically implicating Beltran. Knowing that, Van Wagenen said he still did not inquire further with Beltran.
More than that, after Fiers public statements, the MLB investigation, and various reports, Van Wagenen traded for Beltran’s former teammate Jake Marisnick.
Van Wagenen said in the conference call he did not speak with Beltran or Marisnick about the investigation, and he did nothing to brace the organization for the potential situation where he may have to fire his manager.
Taking Van Wagenen at face value, he ignored prevalent information, and he purposefully left the organization ill prepared for what they eventually did in firing Beltran.
Of course, much of this does not pass the smell test. That goes double when you consider he is good friends with former Astros manager AJ Hinch.
As an aside, during the conference call, Van Wagenen admitted to speaking with Hinch, which based on when it happened, may have been in violation of Major League Baseball’s rulings.
Van Wagenen has painted himself as someone who either didn’t know or didn’t want to know. That is something entirely unacceptable from a team’s general manager. That goes double when it happens in the course of the hiring of your manager who is a team’s most public representative.
Simply put, what happened with the Mets can’t happen.
They can’t have a GM unaware of widely held information. They can’t have a GM who does nothing to be proactive. It’s even worse when he has the means and connections to do it.
Thursday was as bad a day as it got for the Mets. In addition to the embarrassment of firing Beltran and overshadowing the team honoring Piazza, their employee, Jessica Mendoza, attacked Fiers for being a whistleblower. It should be noted Mendoza was hired by Van Wagenen.
Keep in mind, this was the latest embarrassing day under Van Wagenen’s tenure, and it was another day when Van Wagenen seemed incapable of handling bad situations.
When Mickey Callaway screamed at a reporter and Jason Vargas threatened the reporter, no team suspensions were issued. It took multiple times to get Callaway to apologize, and Vargas’ apology was never forthcoming.
We have also seen the reports of Van Wagenen throwing chairs in meetings with his coaching staff. Worse yet, Van Wagenen has broken MLB rules by texting in-game decisions to the clubhouse.
While some have tried to paint the picture as it was an isolated incident with Jacob deGrom, it wasn’t. It happened on multiple occasions. When you look at Van Wagenen’s tenure, he’s already broken MLB rules, and he hired a manager who had broken rules.
Even putting aside what suspicion could arise from that, he has shown he’s not up to the job of being the general manager of the Mets.
In his short tenure, he got the Mets wrapped up into a scandal where his team was not being investigated or implicated in any wrongdoing. He has been ill prepared to handle problems which have arisen with his team, has broken MLB rules, and behind closed doors, he is throwing chairs.
Before you even address his poor player decisions, Van Wagenen has shown himself to be unaware of what has been happening in baseball and has made the Mets ill equipped and ill prepared to handle situations which the team should have seen coming.
Remember, Beltran was purportedly Van Wagenen’s hire, and his failure to conduct the NEEDED vetting before, during, and after embarrassed the organization and led to Beltran’s firing. Seeing Van Wagenen’s tenure and conduct, he should have followed Beltran out the door.
Why would you fire him now? Makes little sense to do anything until Cohen takes over. Cohen will want BVW or his own guy. You let it play out until next season. Otherwise you run the risk of firing BVW, hiring new guy or 8-15months and then firing and hiring a new guy. Too much change. Just hold-off until then.
You need to fire him because he’s incompetent, and you can’t let him screw up hiring another manager.
As for Cohen, let him have input.
I agree totally with you, you dont survive this kind of mistake. Unless, as in this case, Jeffy is culpable too. And thats what is saving Brodie. You will know they did know, as I say they have known the whole way, when they name Luis Rojas or another coach as manager. If they are going outside the candidate would be interviewing now. Two other teams need managers now too, the due diligence on the available guys has been done because they interviewed before or in the case of Dusty or Buck they are well known.
Its gonna come out that they knew weeks in advance because now everyone is digging. Brodie and Jeffy are the liars here. I would agree they have the fallout scenarios planned. This is the spot where you make your choice and dont let him out of the building until you have him. Ill say it again, a new manager has a lot of work to do to get ready. A veteran can implement it faster obviously except for one problem. These are not his coaches. I can see Dusty working around that, I dont know about Buck. But its irrelevant because they are going to choose someone who is here already and thats a big mistake. That manger will always be in Beltrans shadow and with whats happened he will be wading into the deep end of the pool and a negative spotlight right away. If you go outside and experienced he will be seen as the white hat riding in to save the day. Perception is not everything but it helps get you off on the right foot which critical in this situation.
One important thing with Jeff is this is no longer his job in perpetuity. He now has to prove himself, and seeing this fiasco, he’s not impressing anyone.
Broadie is not going to hire a strong manager who can throw a chair back at him.
This is my favorite comment ever made on this site
“Brodie Van Wagenen Should Have Been Fired With Carlos Beltran”
—–I’m not a neutral judge, given my dislike for Van Wags, but firing him and giving Showalter the reins as GM and manager would be an interesting way to go, if he can still handle both jobs at his age.
Another alternative would be to hire Show to GM and let him pick his manager from the list of candidates the Wilpons approved, assuming they have to be permitted say in the process. If it’s going to take 2-3 years to unwind the Wilpons from ownership, if I’m Cohen I’d like some assurance we’re not going to see another Cano-Diaz fiasco.
Has Showalter gotten on board the analytics train? That’s essential. Otherwise, and if Wags has to continue as GM, the team should just move on to its 2nd choice to manage. If this drags on it’s probably because Beltran was some sort of compromise choice between Wags, Jeff, and Fred, and now they have no idea how to do this to everyone’s comparable dissatisfaction.
Btw, Syndergaard appears to have returned to the same workout routine that led him to miss most of 2017 when he showed up highly muscled and promptly tore a lat. Those images appeared in my twitter feed and I promptly reduced my projection from 85 to 84 wins for 2020. Excessive? Maybe. Petty? Perhaps. But when’s the last time extreme workouts were reputed to have helped a pitcher throw a baseball?
Hey, sorry to talk about baseball, 🙂 but I was just noodling through Baseball Savant and noticed that Rosario was average in the field from May on, and that Alonso was only -7 in Statcast’s infield outs related to average. That last is really not bad at all, and certainly a number you can live with, while if Rosario keeps it up and is an average fielder, that’s gold given where he was in 2018 and in April 2019. Interesting–Rosario was -7 in his lateral move towards 3B, and +2 moving the other way. Makes sense then that he’d be better with Frazier at 3B, where Frazier could cover some of that ground for him, and that Rosario was at his worst in April when Frazier was out, mostly.
Ah, but apparently DiSarcina (?) put in some work on his first step in April, so maybe Rosario’s less dependent on Frazier than some thought.
McNeil was +2 in a very small sample at 3B, and at 0 overall by OAA, and OAA has Cano as -1 in 2019. Is it possible the Mets IF defense will be average in 2020 except for Alonso, and will be around -7 with him? That’s not bad. Not bad at all, considering.
Baseball Savant also has Nimmo at +1 in LF, CF, and RF; Marisnick as +8 in CF; Conforto was +7 in RF, and -1 in CF.
Huh. The Mets with an average defense, overall, when Marisnick’s in CF?
If you dig through the numbers, Rosario had issues going right, and Frazier’s range going to his left counterbalanced that.
If you look, his training routine is significantly different than that. There’s more agility and less bulk
Problem with just going to your second choice is the proximity to the season, and the Mets admission they screwed up the vetting process