The 11-game road trip the Mets are currently embarked on pulled into Chicago for four games beginning on Thursday. The Windy City’s National League inhabitants, the Cubs, have given the Mets fits recently beating New York in 10 of their last 11 encounters.
But it wasn’t the varying winds at Wrigley Field that greeted the Mets, it was the winds of change, as before the first pitch was thrown in this series, Mets General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen decided to make his first big firing of his tenure.
“As we evaluated the season so far, we have fallen short of a variety of things as a team, and we all have to look ourselves in the mirror for that shortcoming,” Van Wagenen said Thursday at Wrigley Field. “And we have to make the best decisions we can in that moment to improve our stock.”
The decisions were to dismiss pitching coach Dave Eiland and bullpen coach Chuck Hernandez, and replace them with Phil Regan and Ricky Bones respectively. Also, the birth of a new position, the pitching strategist, was engendered and to be manned by Jeremy Accardo.
Van Wagenen refused to take complete responsibility for the moves according to Matt Ehalt of Yahoo, instead deeming it an organizational decision because the team has “the talent to be better than we have performed.” He continued, “As we look forward, we want to make improvements to our performance — especially in the bullpen.” He mentioned that the decisions were made Thursday morning with Mets manager Mickey Callaway present.
Reporters questioned Van Wagenen has to the main cause of the dismissals, and here was less candid than usual but continued to point to the bullpen as the ‘root cause.’ “When we assessed the first two and a half months of the season, in particular over the course of the last several weeks, we felt like the bullpen performance had a lot of room to improve,” Van Wagenen said. “I think that is the root of this move.” Asked if it was more of a front office responsibility for the make-up of the bullpen rather than Eiland’s, Van Wagenen danced around a bit before saying, “we all have to look in the mirror.”
When pressed even further as to the exact cause of Eiland’s firing, Van Wagenen refused to go into a specific reason. But the reason may have been disclosed indirectly by the creation of a pitching strategist, whose job is to improve communication between the field staff and the front office. Near the end of the impromptu press conference, Van Wagenen mentioned that collaboration needed to improve.
Pressed on why the three new hires would mesh well and have an excellent chance for success Van Wagenen said, “Phil, Jeremy, and Ricky were all working together in the minor leagues. Most of the players here, including guys like deGrom and Matz and many others have come through Phil’s guidance. … Phil’s understanding of what it takes to succeed at the big league level is something that was attractive to us.”
The move to dismiss a high level coach prompted reporters to inquire about Callaway’s status. Here the GM was poignant saying according to Tim Healey of Newsday, “Mickey has my full vote of confidence, he’s our manager. This is a scenario where we want to continue to give Mickey the best resources and the best coaching staff to be able to help him achieve our goals.” When asked if Callaway’s standing has changed at all, Brodie quickly said, “absolutely not.”
Callaway, for his part, shouldered much of the blame for Thursday’s moves. He said, “I take it as a failure on my part, I’m the manager, and that’s a tough thing to lose coaches. No manager wants that under his watch. I’ll continue to look in the mirror every day. It’s tough, but we’re gonna move past this. We have a job to do. I feel like we can do better than we’ve done. And that’s our goal every single day, to get there.” When asked how his team will respond to Regan, Callaway simply said the Mets, “respect the hell out of him.”
A problem resides in the fact that Dave Eiland was a very popular coach and deemed an excellent clubhouse presence. Both Jacob deGrom and Zack Wheeler credit Eiland with much of their success in the 2018 season. Eiland, a two-time World Series winning coach, certainly had the support of a third starter, Jason Vargas.
DeGrom spoke to Eiland by phone when he learned of the news per Deesha Thosar of New York Daily News. Jake said, “Dave called me and I told him thank you for everything he did and I was going to miss him. He helped me out quite a bit last year and I’m thankful for the time that I had with him.” When asked of his opinion on the firing, Jacob said, ” That decision came from above us to be honest with you. The goal is to win baseball games and we haven’t been doing that. It seems like somebody always takes the blame for something like that.” It is clear that this firing came as a complete surprise to many of the Mets starters
Vargas spoke in a very downtrodden tone when asked of the firing and said, “It definitely caught everyone by surprise. He’s a big reason why I’m here. He’s a big reason why I got back on track.” Vargas’ tone was akin to him having lost a family member, not just a coach.
And therein lies the issue. A very popular and well-liked man was let go by the Mets on Thursday.Was Eiland simply a scapegoat for the Mets recent problems? Was there indeed a communication breakdown between the front office and him? Did he not fit into the analytically driven Mets culture? Van Wagenen left those questions largely unanswered. There was no comment from ownership. And Callaway did a mea culpa for most of of the presser.
Only time will tell if the new trio that was brought aboard today will be a success. They all were hired on an interim basis, so they have two-thirds of a season at most to make an impact.
Mark Twain once said of Chicago, “She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.” The Mets are certainly a different team from the last time they visited the Windy City. Only time will tell what the Mets will be like when they return to Chicago next year, or even when the Cubs visit the Mets in late August.
