After days of publically-silent deliberation, the New York Mets officially cut ties with their newly-hired manager and former Mets standout, Carlos Beltran on Thursday.

Beltran, 42, was implicated in Major League Baseball’s report on the Houston Astros sign-stealing operation in 2017, resulting the suspension and eventual dismissal of Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch, as well as former Astros bench coach and now-former Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who relinquished his post on Tuesday.

Reports on Wednesday had the Mets “wavering” on keeping Beltran (Buster Olney, ESPN). Rumblings of an announcement or statement from the team later that evening never came to fruition, but with Mets COO Jeff Wilpon scheduled to meet with the media on Thursday at 11:30 in Port St. Lucie (Mets great and Hall of Famer Mike Piazza was honored), it became clear a resolution would follow shortly thereafter.

That resolution came with force, and now the Mets are tasked with finding a suitable replacement for Beltran with just weeks until Spring Training kicks off.

Within Beltran’s staff lies three viable candidates to assume his duties in former San Francisco Giants coach and current Mets bench coach Hensley Meulens, New York’s quality control coach and longtime organizational mainstay, Luis Rojas, and first-base coach Tony DeFrancesco.

Meulens, 52, was on Bruce Bochy‘s staff (first as hitting coach, then bench coach) in San Francisco for all three of the Giants’ World Series victories in the 2010s (2010, 2012, 2014; employed by the club from 2010 to 2019) and also managed the Netherlands in the 2013 and 2017 World Baseball Classics.

Having learned from one of this era’s best skippers and with a track record to back it up, Meulens would immediately command respect in the clubhouse and brings a level of experience that a shotgun, January managerial search normally wouldn’t produce.

And, since his name has been floated as a potential replacement for Cora in Boston, if the Mets are looking to move on from Beltran and have interest in Meulens, they’d better act quickly on all fronts.

Rojas, 38, has been with the Mets since 2007 and has coached or managed at every level of the organization short of Triple-A. He knows this team and this system well and the feeling is presumably mutual. With Meulens (hopefully) at his side, he’d have a go-to resource if need be.

DeFrancesco, manager of New York’s Triple-A affiliates since 2018 (Las Vegas then Syracuse) and now entering his first season on the Mets’ staff, could also fit that bill. Familiarity with this roster can not be discounted when attempting to fill such an important position with such little time, and DeFrancesco brings plenty of that to the table.

Dusty Baker or Buck Showalter would bring credibility and oodles of experience, but are they the right guys for this job? The Mets’ recent commitment to advanced analytics suggests a hire within the same vein, as Beltran and pitching coach Jeremy Hefner were.

Eduardo Perez and Tim Bogar both advanced into the final rounds of interviews with the Mets in October, indicating at least some level of interest on both sides, but both would need to play catch-up on an entire offseason’s worth of lost time trying to learn a new roster. Either would be solid choices, but in a situation like this, the Mets need to play it safe.

Rojas knows this team in and out, spent last year as an informational conduit for the Mets passing along data from the analytics department to the coaching staff and players, and was gearing up for his second season in that position.

Eliminating the middle man in that equation would certainly streamline things. And with a coaching staff constructed for a first-time manager around him, a solid support system is already in place.

The Mets have limited time to make a fairly huge decision. What could go wrong?