CARLSBAD, Calif. — The Yankees were a mess in the early 1990s, so much worse on and off the field than the Mets are now.
After the 1992 season — the first in which Gene Michael and Buck Showalter formed a GM/manager tandem — a decision was made to try to upgrade significantly. They fixated on the starting pitching market and identified the right two free agents in Greg Maddux and David Cone.
They thought they had Maddux, but the Yankees were so undesirable he pivoted and took less money to join the Braves. Cone, who adored New York, agreed to return to his native home in Kansas City rather than join the Yankees. Desperate, the Yankees ranked the next six best free agents and had the first five reject them: Chris Bosio, Doug Drabek, Jose Guzman, Pete Schourek and Greg Swindell.
So that left them with the last guy on their list. The Yankees signed Jimmy Key to a four-year, $17 million contract, literally finalizing the deal with difficulty in an age without cell phones while Key was on a cruise with his then agent wife.
Key as much as any player pre the Core Four’s arrival became a fulcrum from the Yankees being a laughing stock to a champion. He proved impervious to New York while performing brilliantly.
I offer this to suggest that an avenue remains for the Mets to survive the criticism and the sense of disarray in their search for someone to head baseball operations. In a 30-minute briefing Tuesday with reporters, Sandy Alderson stated that they were going to get the hire right. And, of course, what else would the team president say? But also, of course, that is all that will matter in the end. Can they find someone impervious to New York who performs brilliantly regardless of where that person was ranked before the process began?
The Yanks might have been ridiculed for failing to land their big fish in Maddux and Cone and then having a bunch of comparative guppies also spurn. In the end, history will show they signed Key, who nearly won a Cy Young for them, then served as the unflappable No. 3 starter on a champion.
The Mets targeted the right people and failed to land Billy Beane, Theo Epstein and David Stearns — the Maddux and Cone of this search — either because of non-interest or pre-existing, inescapable contracts. Now, they are into the public scorn sector as one candidate after another has rejected them — often without even a desire to speak to the Mets.
Alderson said the Mets would “not just hire someone to fill the spot. Steve [Cohen] has a high standard. I believe I have a high standard. I believe we will get the right person.”
Having said that, Alderson admitted, “We already have blown through what people would think is a reasonable timeline (to make a hire).”
Indeed, they are at the GM Meetings, without a GM. For the second straight year, they have eliminated a search for a president of baseball operations because they could not find someone suitable for that elevated position and, thus, are just again looking for a GM.
Alderson said the lack of candidates reflect people under contracts who cannot gain permission to interview and those who do not want to be part of the process because of fear of the New York market, though I can’t remember any other New York team since George Steinbrenner’s villainous worst struggling this much to get qualified candidates to interview for major positions — especially when you consider it is two years of this now.
Alderson acknowledged there remains some uncertainty and trepidation about working for Cohen, but downplayed it (though many candidates I have spoken to insist that it is a big issue, like many used to privately bow out because of Steinbrenner). Alderson said worries about his overreach as team president were misguided because, he insisted, he gave more and more responsibility without obstruction to Zack Scott during last year, although Scott just had an interim GM tag.
He called concerns about the presence/influence of his son, assistant GM Bryn Alderson, “a red herring,” saying there was a “firewall” around this search and that Bryn does not even know who is being interviewed. Still, it is his son and a sense has arisen that he would hire someone who would protect the job of his son. It offers irony because in his own stint as GM, Alderson bristled at the interference of Jeff Wilpon, who but for nepotism would never have been positioned to influence a Major League Baseball operation. Would Bryn Alderson be an assistant GM on any of the other 29 teams?
Alderson also agreed some candidates are probably hesitant that a year from now the Mets will hire a president of baseball operations (Stearns?), putting the new GM at risk immediately with a new boss. But Alderson said the new GM — and he said that a hire will be made, though not at these GM Meetings — will have a one-year runway to prove themselves. Is that enough to get the best to apply/accept?
There also is a sense of dysfunction that continues to envelope this organization from the field to the executive level. Alderson agreed that is the “narrative,” but that in the day-to-day running of the franchise there have been substantial upgrades to the baseball and business operations and that the Mets have to get to the point where “reality becomes perception, as well.”
All of this is part of the mountain that has blocked the Mets from making a speedy, popular hire to change the conversation away from incompetence. But, really, this plays familiarly to where the Yankees were nearly three decades ago and they made decisions in that 1992-93 offseason — notably signing Key and trading for Paul O’Neill — that began shifting their trajectory.
The Key matter really emphasized — whether through fortune or brilliance — you just have to get it right. The same is true for Alderson, Cohen and the Mets now. They have to make their own Key decision.
