It was Christmas week during a lockout, and the Mets still managed to generate some sort of news, primarily thanks to Buck rolling into town.

Buck Showalter Impresses

The Mets began the week with Buck Showalter‘s introductory press conference on Tuesday.

Lasting around 45 minutes, the veteran manager brought directness, charm and a pretty clear mission to the chat with the media. A wide range of topics and concerns were covered, including:

  • His relationship with analytics (he called himself “spongeful” with knowledge, which is a good thing but also not a word)
  • The goal of the team, which is winning a World Series, to which he also acknowledged is a very hard process
  • Understanding the team’s needs and individual players’ needs (though he hasn’t been able to touch base with players yet)
  • The actual process of interviewing that Showalter went through
  • Weeding out who is willing to step up and deliver what the team needs and who isn’t
  • Touching base with older managers in the game like Joe Maddon and Dusty Baker

Billy Eppler and Sandy Alderson were around to comment on the hire, too, with the latter calling Showalter’s hire “as close to a 10-out-of-10” as any option they had.

Showalter was an exciting hire for the fan base (we covered that here, too), largely due to his track record of teams improving over the course of a couple years after he gets hired. But, as he acknowledged in the press conference, the most important statistic is wins, and you can’t get an MLB win during a press conference.

Minor-League Signings

The Mets made two minor-league signings this week:

They’re allowed to sign players to minor-league deals so long as they didn’t finish the 2021 season on a 40-man roster.

Palka last played in the majors in 2019 with the White Sox, but he had an .836 in Triple-A with the Nationals in 2021 over 102 games. Gadea, on the other hand, had a 2.61 ERA in 41 1/3 innings in the Yankees farm system. He hadn’t pitched since 2016 before that due to arm issues and the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s the Holidays…

So not much else happened. It wouldn’t be surprised if next week was quiet, too, given a short work week and whatnot.

Showalter and the Mets may not finalize a coaching staff until the New Year, and there is no end to the lockout in sight. (ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported this week that the owners and Players Association wouldn’t link again until 2022, and they’ve only met once since the lockout started at the beginning of December.)

If that’s the case, we’ll save you the trouble of another offseason recap next week with bupkis.

Have a Happy New Year, everyone!