The Mets continued to bolster their front office on Wednesday, as they hired forward thinking and analytically savvy Red Sox Assistant General Manager Zack Scott as their own Assistant General Manager and Senior Vice President.
Scott, 43, was with the Red Sox for the past 17 years and saw the franchise win four World Series championships during his tenure there.
Prior to the Mets hiring Jared Porter as their general manager, Scott was a finalist for the job, but decided to join forces with Steve Cohen and the revamped front office regardless.
“I’ve known Zack for over 15 years, and worked with him daily for 10 of those years, he’s a strong leader who is a very creative and dynamic thinker” Porter said.
“Zack is well rounded in all areas of baseball operations, and will promote synergy and collaboration among all of our departments with an emphasis on research and development.”
With the team brass coming to culmination, owner Steve Cohen is beginning to see his vision: the Mets way.
On the heels of the Scott announcement, Cohen joined longtime Mets play-by-play announcer Howie Rose on Wednesday for a fan Q-and-A about the team.
A big point he drove home was cultivating the “Mets way” which will include constantly adapting to new information and new techniques.
“I think analytics is part of the equation, so I would expect my people to take advantage of data and interrogating the data in a way that gives us the type of answers we’re looking for,” Cohen said.
While it’s no secret Cohen has deep pockets, the plan is to not spend foolishly through free agency, but to build a sustainable and consistent winner over many years.
“As a fan they want me to sign everybody tomorrow, but is that a sustainable strategy?” Cohen said.
“Ultimately you want to develop talent. You want to develop your farm system. To me that is the most sustainable way to create a winning team year in and year out.
“Yes, you can go buy players, but you buy players that are in their 30s potentially and we know there’s plenty of data that suggests performance of players tends to decline once they are in their early 30s.”
Under the previous regime, and especially in the last couple seasons, the Mets chose to compromise their farm system in favor of filling holes at the MLB level in an attempt to win in the short term.
It largely failed, as the team finished above .500 in 2019, but floundered in the shortened 2020 season.
With a new regime heading the team, however, the plan is for the team to think both in the short term, but also to look at the bigger picture.
“Everybody wants to win now — I want to win now,” Cohen said.
“But I also don’t want to put ourselves in a position where if we don’t win now we have just hampered our ability to win down the road. As I am learning, these are hard decisions.”
“They are not easy decisions and you are dealing with imperfect information because you do not know how they are going to perform as they go through the contract.
“The data suggests if you sign enough players in their 30s you are going to regress to a mean and you are going to end up with potentially mediocre performance if you sign enough of them. … I’ve got to bridge that gap. Right now the farm system, at least the upper levels, isn’t where we want it to be.”
So far this winter, the team has signed free agent catcher James McCann and reliever Trevor May to deals, with all the top free agents still left on the board for ripe picking.
But beyond that, the team will have all the resources they need to try and build a perpetual winner.
“They are going to have everything they need,” Cohen said.
“We are not going to be skimping on that type of stuff. Obviously you need to measure if that expenditure was worthwhile.”
“On top of that you have to train the people who will be using this equipment, and the players to get the most out of it. You just can’t install equipment and hope it works. It’s a people problem, too.”
