Despite the owners locking the players out, the Mets have kept active over the last three weeks with a manager search. That came to a head this week as the Mets dugout now has its leader.

The Buck Stops In Flushing

Last week, I predicted the Mets would settle on a manager hire by the end of this week, and sure enough, Steve Cohen took to Twitter–lack of punctuation an all–Saturday night to say the Mets would hire Buck Showalter as their next manager.

The Mets settled on Showalter, long thought to be the prohibitive favorite through the whole process, after interviewing a total of six candidates. The three who made it to the second round were Showalter, Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro and Astros bench coach Joe Espada.

Jon Heyman reported that he will get a three-year contract to manage the Mets, and Mike Puma said Showalter will get more money guaranteed than any Mets manager has before. (Art Howe’s $9.4 million was the biggest before the Showalter signing.)

The 20-year veteran manager has a career 1551-1517 (.506) record in the regular season, though he’s managed just 23 postseason games (9-14, .391) after leading the Yankees, Diamondbacks (he was their first ever manager), Rangers and Orioles in over 3,000 games.

Showalter hasn’t managed since 2018 with the Orioles, but he’s had three- or four-year gaps between each job since he first started managing in 1992.

Though the team hasn’t officially announced Showalter, 65, with a press release or press conference, Cohen clearly was ecstatic with the hire. NY Daily News‘ Deesha Thosar said Saturday night that Cohen reportedly asked Showalter if it was okay to announce the news on Twitter before the originally planned Monday reveal.

CBA Update

MLB and the MLB Players’ Association reportedly met this week. It was their first bit of negotiations since MLB owners instituted a lockout of its players as a negotiation tactic.

The meeting “centered on non-economic issues, such as scheduling, grievance procedures, and drug/domestic violence policies,” as Rich Sparago wrote for MMO on Saturday. While certainly important, the economic issues are the biggest pillars of whatever new collective bargaining agreement comes. Some news and connection on the negotiation front is better than none at this point, though.

What’s Next?

Showalter has a lot of work ahead of him, as the Mets only have one coach on staff still: pitching coach Jeremy Hefner. Basically every other coach from the 2021 season was let go, given the opportunity to find a job elsewhere or reassigned within the organization. (Like in Hugh Quattlebaum’s scenario, he was reassigned to the organizational hitting director role he was originally hired for ahead of the season.)

The 65-year-old will likely spend the next week or two filling out his coaching staff. (Though the general process could be slowed by the holidays, it feels like the next natural progression–especially with no contract negotiations or trades happening.) It wouldn’t be a surprise if the team makes some quick hires on that end, with Showalter already having an idea of what his coaching staff would look like. It was likely a topic in interviews and contract negotiations. It’ll also be interesting to see if the Mets push for a manager-in-waiting type of scenario where they hire an outside person to develop under Showalter and staff.

The team will also have a press conference this week with Showalter, Cohen and company. It’s reportedly going to be on Monday or Tuesday.