With the Major League Baseball lockout in full effect, there remain many uncertainties to this year’s offseason, and amongst the leading poles of curiosity remains, are the New York Mets finished adding positional players.

According to a recent Sports Illustrated article, it appears one man may still be on that list: Kris Bryant.

The article states that multiple people in baseball believe the Mets could end up with Bryant, with one agent saying. “If Cohen wants him, he will get him.”

While on paper the Mets have already invested $124.5 million in major league position players this offseason, adding a player of Kris Bryant’s caliber and flexibility may prove too tantalizing to avoid. The numbers circulating around the Javier Baez contract offer, may be enough to lure in the 30-year-old IF/OF, at an estimated value of $125 million over 5 years. But does this fill a hole in the roster? Or a suit a billionaire owner’s insatiable taste for headlines while making certain the New York area knows that cost is of no concern?

It’s both. While Baez clearly would have formed one of the best 2B-SS duos in the MLB, the positional diversity of Kris Bryant is hard to ignore. With the next CBA likely to include a universal DH, having a player that can shift from the corner infield to the corner outfield, could prove immeasurably valuable. The diversity of his right-handed bat would also be a welcome addition, along with Mark Canha and Starling Marte, to what has become a more left-hand dominated lineup over the last several years.

The addition of Bryant could also free the Mets up to trade from their treasure trove of arbitration eligible players, in Dominic Smith, J.D. Davis, or Jeff McNeil, to acquire additional arms for the bullpen and/or rotation.

As one executive put it, “Anything is possible with an owner that is willing and capable of spending whatever it takes to win.”

It appears that at the conclusion of this lockout, we will find out what ‘whatever it takes’ really means.

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Speaking exclusively with Mike Puma of the New York Post, former hitting coach Chili Davis gave a scathing rebuke of the Mets organization on Friday.

While he stressed that replacements Hugh Quattlebaum and Kevin Howard were put in an incredibly tough position after they replaced himself and Tom Slater in May as lead and assistant hitting coach, he was not so kind to former acting general manager Zack Scott and Mets ownership.

“That organization needs a big turnaround, they need to clean house,” Davis said in the interview. “Some of the people that have been there so long during those dismal years, they need to bring some fresh faces and baseball people in there. To be honest I don’t think Zack Scott was a baseball person. He was the head of analytics in Boston. … That’s where he belonged, in analytics.”

Davis did not believe players like Michel Conforto, Dominic Smith and Jeff McNeil would have struggled like they did had he and Slater not been fired after just a month.

He also talked about a game in April where his challenges to the analytics department showcased the chasm between the people at the top and the coaches instructed to follow their analytics driven data to the letter of the law.

Facing Jake Arrieta, the analytics department cited his previous three starts to say he would only throw his changeup 7 percent of the time. Chili, having been with the ball club the prior year, remembered Jake throwing more change ups against the Mets than that, specifically in a game from September 2020 in which he threw the pitch 32 percent of the time. That night, Arrieta threw his changeup 14 percent of the time in the Mets loss, the Post points out, affirming Chili’s belief that experience and analytics have to go hand in hand.

“I look at analytics as information. It could be good information, but am I going to coach solely with analytics? No. Because numbers and computers and machines have a place, but when you are dealing with human beings and you are a hitting coach or pitching coach or any kind of coach, you have to deal with personalities, you have to deal with emotions sometimes. You have to deal with some guys’ psyche. I am saying that as a former player.”

In the interview, Chili painted a picture of the Mets organization that trusts numbers over baseball people, a path Davis believes is one baseball teams shouldn’t travel far down.

“I believe in my heart Steve Cohen wants to win and I know in his business analytics are big,” Davis said. “He’s a hedge-fund guy and analytics are big in that business and they should be because you are dealing with numbers every day. Just like baseball, you are dealing with numbers, but you are also dealing with a lot of human element in baseball. You don’t ever feel the same as a player every day, even when you are hot. Even when you are swinging good. You don’t walk to the ballpark every day and feel the same.”

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Robinson Cano’s 162 game suspension has officially been completed as he was reinstated from the restricted list on Wednesday. Serving the second PED suspension of his career, Canó and the 40.5 million dollars still owed to him over the next two years are officially back on the payroll.

While the Mariners are paying $7.5 million of that money, the Mets options for recouping on their investment are limited. While the club could elect to buy out the 38-year-old second baseman’s contract, they would still be on the hook for the entirety of that contract, per Deesha Thosar of the Daily News.

The one saving grace for this Mets team is the likely possibility that a universal DH could be implemented this coming season. Canó was productive from the plate hitting .316/.352/.544 in 49 games during the Covid shortened season. However, he will have to answer to a clubhouse that his actions impacted this season before he will be accepted back into the fold full time, as was stated by Francisco Lindor at the end of this past season.

So if he remains on the club, can he bounce back? Can he get back in the clubhouses good graces? Well, he’ll have an opportunity to work on his bat debuting November 10th for the Tigres Del Licey of the Dominican League and has a few months until Spring Training to work on that apology.

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Ahead of the GM meetings, which begin Monday, Tim Healey of Newsday reports that the NY Mets are not expected to hire a new head of baseball operations this weekend. Instead, team president Sandy Alderson will continue to lead the baseball operations until a hire is made.

The Mets search for a new head of baseball operations (and/or a new general manager) has been fraught with a series of starts and non-starts. From the early dead end discussions with Billy Beane and Theo Epstein to the multiple denials of requests from members in the Brewers front office such as David Stearns and Matt Arnold, the Steve Cohen-lead group is having a hard time finding any high level executives willing to take on the task of turning around a Mets club that flirted with contention this past season.

Most recently, acting general manager Zack Scott was let go while dealing with an alleged DUI case. Executives like Braves’ assistant GM Ben Sestanovich, Red Sox executive Raquel Ferreira, former Angels executive Billy Eppler and others have been loosely linked to the Mets’ front office radar.

Sandy Alderson has a lot of work ahead as the GM Meetings approach, and it appears, at least through the weekend, that the responsibility to lead will be his and his alone.

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After the New York Mets announced on Monday afternoon that they were not picking up the team option on former manager Luis Rojas, they appear to be moving things along with this offseason relatively quickly.

According to Mike Puma of the New York Post an industry source has told him that the Mets plan on scheduling an interview with former Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox executive Theo Epstein for their front office opening as soon as later this week.

Over the past few months, multiple outlets have reported that Epstein would be uninterested in merely joining a ball club as its President of Baseball Operations. According to Mike Puma, while no word on negotiations could leak until the two sides meet, Epstein could be in line for an increase from his $10 million dollar salary, as well as a possible ownership stake in the ball club.

Joining Epstein on the Mets’ shortlist of potential options are Oakland’s Billy Beane and Milwaukee’s David Stearns. Both would require permissions to be granted from their ball clubs, something the Mets have yet to attempt to ascertain.

Jon Heyman of MLB Network tweeted last week that as of now, Epstein and Stearns appear unlikely to join the ball club. He feels their best bet may be to try to lure Beane, who has a long time relationship with current Mets acting General Manager and Team President Sandy Alderson.

However, the addition of someone of Epstein’s caliber would be of a different tier. He cured the 86 and 108 year championship droughts of the Red Sox and Cubs, respectively.

Pulling Epstein away from a cozy position as a consultant for Major League Baseball might be the greatest gift Steve Cohen could give to Mets fans after a year filled with so much optimism ended on such a sour note.

This is going to be one of the more interesting storylines to watch over the next few weeks. Adding a proven and well-known executive certainly seems to be one of Cohen and company’s top priorities this offseason.

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Updated Post – Sept. 24, 11:15 

Sources tell Mike Mayer of MMO that the Mets continue to have discussions with former Reds minor league pitching coordinator Kyle Boddy. As previously reported by Deesha Thosar of the New York Daily News, the Mets minor league pitching coordinator/assistant pitching coach Ricky Meinhold is leaving the organization.

It was reported last month that both the Rangers and Mets both met with Boddy. The Driveline founder announced last week that he would no longer be working with the Reds because of differing opinions on development.

Original Post – Sept. 23, 20:27

Luis Rojas is not the only coach in the Mets organization with an anxious eye towards 2022.

Mets assistant pitching coach and minor league coordinator Ricky Meinhold left the organization “to explore other opportunities,” according to the New York Daily News‘ Deesha Thosar.

Touted as a big believer in analytics and a holdover from the Brodie Van Wagenen era, Meinhold has left to pursue other opportunities rather than wait to see who will remain after an expected shake up this offseason, Thosar says. This is yet another example of behind-the-scenes tumult that seems to have never-endingly shadowed this iteration of the New York Mets.

Thosar quoted a source saying: “Anybody who has the opportunity to go anywhere else right now is going to take it. … Everyone is nervous.”

From the firing of former GM Jared Porter to Zack Scott’s alleged DUI, which landed him on administration leave just last month, it’s hard to look at the heart warming moments of Patrick Mazeika‘s game-winning fielder’s choices as anything but a footnote to a season marred by constant off-site scandal.

Additionally, Luis Rojas’s contract status is up in the air, and Steve Cohen has found himself in an empty-handed pursuit of a president of baseball operations since day one. From the top down there is a looming anxiety surrounding the direction of this franchise, including major roster decisions such as who amongst their cadre of former all-stars should be resigned and which members of their young core might need to be jettisoned to plug the remaining holes on this should be contender, as the report points out. This uncertainty undoubtedly contributed to Meinhold’s decision to leave and may lead others to reach the same conclusion.

The off-season started early for Meinhold, but with only 10 games remaining, it won’t be much longer until we potentially see others joining him on the list of those who’ve left Flushing.

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