Photo by Ed Delany/MMO
It would have been totally normal if not expected that the 2020 New York Mets showed up to spring training a confused and confounded bunch. After losing a manager that was hired in November and let go three months later due to a burgeoning cheating scandal, and after a failed sale of the team in the off-season, uncertainty and misdirection could have been the order of the day.
But new Mets manager Luis Rojas is working hard to make sure the focus is on baseball and only baseball. And his efforts are already resonating with several Mets players.
On Wednesday, Rojas met with pitchers and catchers in Port St. Lucie and the results coming out the gathering were all positive. “I think that he speaks the truth,” veteran reliever Justin Wilson told USA Today Sports. “He feels like this team is built to win. And we do, too.”
“Luis is a very open-minded guy,” Michael Conforto told the NY Post. “He’s really big on the back-and-forth. He’s really big on the communication and always has been that way since I first played with him in the playoffs in Low-A the first year I got drafted.”
Rick Porcello added, “Everyone was pretty fired up after he spoke.”
As for Rojas, he too seemed pleased, telling the media, “It was a lot of fun for me this morning to address them and have an engaging conversation. We all participated, the other coaches got involved. It was a working collaboration, so that was fun for me.”
The tenor that was set steered clear of recent issues regarding the team most notably it’s hiring of Carlos Beltran in November. He was implicated strongly in the sign-stealing scandal that seems to be infecting our National Pastime with more bad revelations coming out nearly daily.
Two Mets were part of the Houston Astros during the time of the cheating: third baseman J.D. Davis was briefly an Astro in the 2017 season and reserve outfielder Jake Marisnick filled a similar role with Houston from 2014-2019.
Conforto said Tuesday that there will be “conversations about it. But there’s not going to be any animosity toward them. When you’re in a team setting, any of these guys that are in here now, they’re our guys. That’s the way winning teams are.”
Rojas will no doubt deal with this and other issues as he meets with the full-team for the first time later this week. He inherits a team that won 86 games last season and had a strong second half. He has one of the best pitching staffs in the league led by two-time reigning Cy Young Award winner Jacob DeGrom and a core of young players led by Rookie of the Year, Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil.
“I’m very comfortable where we are as a team,” Rojas said to reporters. “I am very comfortable leading the guys and the main reason for that is the coaching staff. They are such a great coaching staff and they have been working in collaboration almost the entire off-season. You almost feel like we were attached. It’s up to speed because of the great coaching staff we have. The relationship with the guys and knowing the guys is real helpful.”
The coaching staff that Rojas mentioned is a combination of the old and the new. It includes new additions Jeremy Hefner (pitching coach), Hensley Meulens (bench coach), Tony DeFrancesco (first-base coach) and Brian Schneider (quality control). Returning coaches include hitting coach Chili Davis, third-base coach Gary DiSarcina and bullpen coach Ricky Bones.
Rojas is not coming in as a stranger, as he managed for the Mets minor league system for eight years and coached such players as pitchers Steven Matz, Seth Lugo, Robert Gsellman and Paul Sewald, and outfielder Brandon Nimmo to name a few. He won a championship in 2013 with the Savannah Sand Gnats in the South Atlantic League. He has the pedigree to be a proficient manager and so far the players are impressed.
“Absolutely,” says Porcello. “I’m always of the school that everything has a path and happens for a reason. Maybe that’s why that stuff happened, to give Luis this opportunity.”
The stuff that Porcello mentioned also included a failed attempt by financier Steve Cohen to buy the Mets. The eight percent owner of the team was not happy with some of the conditions of the sale and dropped out. None of this was brought up, however, on Wednesday as the team seems ready to begin the 2020 season. Rojas seems ready as he told the Post:
“[Wednesday] is a big day. The biggest talk is when the full squad gets in the facility, that is when we are going to talk as a whole, as an organization. But [Wednesday] as an organization and having our pitchers and catchers here, we are also going to talk about setting the tone and breaking ground and the new facility.”
“This great facility, great clubhouse and new grounds we have on the field are going to give us more versatility to get our drills going. I am really happy for it.”
If the tenor of spring training and the regular season remain like today’s positive outlook, then Mets fans will be happy as well.
