The Mets Need To Move On From Buck Showalter And Get A New Manager

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Clem wrote a blog today about the Tommy Pham proclamation that the Mets have the "least-hardest working group of position players he's ever played with". It's a great blog that talks about who or who isn't to blame from the player side. Check it out below but I wanted to focus on the Buck Showalter element in all of this.

In my eyes, this falls on Buck Showalter. I understand we are talking about very highly-paid professionals who should not need motivation from a manager. But that's not reality. If it was, you wouldn't even need a manager. There does have to be someone in charge and that same person bears responsibility when things go wrong in the clubhouse.

I'm not saying this lost season is entirely Buck's fault. Sometimes a guy can be a great manager but the wrong one for a specific group. Maybe not even a love child of Brian Snitker and Winston Churchill could fix this 2023 disappointment. But along the way, it's clear Buck lost the clubhouse. I imagine it's much harder to lead a group of veterans than a younger team. You're not going to have an easy time telling guys like Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Francisco Lindor what to do. But you still need to find a way to get through to the team. 

This was a Mets team that seemed more corpse-like than I do on certain days. I have an excuse of being far too skinny and odd looking. The Mets were just disinterested and unmotivated. You'd see players like Jeff McNeil or Starling Marte underperforming and not seem to give a shit. I get not everyone is as fiery as Paul O'Neill but can they at least look like they care a little bit?

Yeah thanks Buck. No shit that Tommy Pham is entitled to an opinion. Notice how he didn't even actually disagree with Pham. If he was wrong, you'd see players up in arms screaming about this. Pham said that multiple players on this team don't work hard and the reaction from the manager was a shrug. This isn't the first time Buck lost a veteran clubhouse. He got fired after the 2000 season with the Diamondbacks after an underwhelming season where they missed the playoffs. They brought in a much weaker strategic manager in Bob Brenly…who went on to win the World Series.

So, where do the Mets turn to? They just hired David Stearns to run the baseball operations and I am sure he'd prefer to bring in his own guy anyway. I mentioned Craig Counsell in this blog a couple weeks ago. Frank The Tank wants the Mets to look at Joe Espada, the bench coach for the Houston Astros. Not a single manager got fired during this season so I expect a purge of sorts in the days following the regular season next week. Hopefully, they stay far away from Aaron Boone if/when he's fired.

This season being the biggest disappointment since The Godfather III isn't entirely on Buck's shoulders. But he is a symptom of the disease and needs to be removed. This team needs as much of a fresh start as possible. Let the enema begin on October 2nd.