Baseball What are the Mets trying to do with these Baseball Operation hires? by Chris Passarelli March 6, 2019 Brodie Van Wagenen is trying to change the way the Mets think, conduct business and how people think of them. It’s no secret that the Mets have been second fiddle to the New York Yankees for a long time, and for the most part have been looked at as a second class organization. Van Wagenen most recently hired former Met pitchers Al Leiter and John Franco to be special Baseball Operation advisers as well as Sunday Night Baseball analyst Jessica Mendoza to the same position. For Leiter and Franco, their roles will encompass scouting for the Mets, player development and focus on mental preparation for young pitchers. Essentially they were hired to both be ambassadors for the Mets (Franco was already on staff as an ambassador for the team) and mentors for young pitchers. That’s perfectly fine but how many advisers does Van Wagenen need? As for Mendoza, she is being brought on for player evaluation, roster construction, technological advancement and health and performance. Okay, let’s start at the beginning. Jessica Mendoza is a well versed mind in softball/baseball and has a lot to bring to the table. In my opinion, she is absolutely terrible on Sunday Night Baseball but in fairness so is the rest of the team. It’s a bunch of voices trying to talk over each other for 3 hours with Alex Rodriguez trying to dig too deep into every pitch. Anyway, I digress. I’m not sure what Van Wagenen is trying to do here hiring THREE advisers for evaluation that should have already existed. How do the Mets need a viable pitching scouting system where they need to bring in Leiter and Franco as special advisers? They already have three of the best young pitchers in the game, and that’s not even including Steven Matz and formerly Matt Harvey. They were legitimately on Sports Illustrated’s cover for having such a good rotation. In addition, shouldn’t the Mets already have an entire team dedicated to player evaluation (scouts), roster construction (THE GM OF THE TEAM), technological advancement (advanced statistics analysts, etc.) and health? Their analytics must be so archaic in health and performance because they’ve botched plenty of delicate health situations over the past few years, with Yoenis Cespedes and Matt Harvey just scratching the surface. To me, it’s a lot to put on those three people alone. Also, it seems like Brodie Van Wagenen is just throwing random titles at them because he likes them. It’s like being a fry cook at McDonald’s then fluffing up your resume to say you were managing the kitchen staff. It’s all just words and until there are legitimate results Mets fans should continue to be skeptical. Look, the Mets are entering a new regime and hopefully all works out, but to say the Mets are cheap with their players then have their GM spend money on completely unknown positions is silly. Post Views: 1,033 The following two tabs change content below.BioLatest Posts Chris Passarelli Football Editor - Hockey Editor - New York Islanders Lead Writer - New York Lizards Lead Writer - UConn Football Lead Writer Latest posts by Chris Passarelli (see all) NFL Network to Premiere ‘The Top 100 Players of 2020’ on July 26 - July 22, 2020 The ‘Toilet Bowl’ may be coming to Western New York - July 16, 2020 Bigger is Better; SoFi Stadium Completes Largest Videoboard in Sports - July 1, 2020 Smoltz, Vrabel and Brown talk American Century Championship and Everything in Between - June 30, 2020 Related TopicsAl LeiterBrodie Van WagenenJessica MendozaJohn FrancoNew York Mets Click to comment You must be logged in to post a comment Login Leave a Reply Cancel replyYou must be logged in to post a comment. Newsletter Subscription Can't Miss Posts! 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