SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — There was going to be very little risk with Craig Counsell.
Perhaps he could be a little prickly with large groups of reporters and, as one executive said if he took the Mets manager job, “He was going to face more criticism next April than he did in nine years in Milwaukee.” But when it came to leadership and in-game strategy and squeezing the most out of the least, there was no doubt about Counsell.
You can argue that Counsell, at 53, is at the top of his craft and the top of the field among current major league managers. You want to take Bruce Bochy or Kevin Cash? Fine. Counsell is on the short list.
But the Mets couldn’t land Counsell to reunite in Queens with David Stearns. Instead, Counsell got everything he wanted — a one-stop dream.
Once an active member of the MLB Players Association who fought for players to be paid what the market would bear, Counsell had made it clear he wanted to re-establish that the best managers should return in annual salary to where Joe Torre was 20 years ago. He got that on a record five-year, $40 million managerial deal. But he also got what Steve Cohen could not offer, for Cohen could move a lot — but not the map.
Counsell stayed near his Wisconsin roots and in Big Ten country, where he has children in college, by taking the Cubs managing job — a position that was not publicly open since David Ross was not dismissed at the end of the season.
Thus, Counsell stayed in the NL Central, but picked a big market, just the Second City, not the First.
The Mets — even the Cohen Mets — might not have wanted to go to that financial region for a manager and they simply could not change region of the country. Still, what they decided to do instead is place a bet that probably has implications beyond $40 million — that Carlos Mendoza can be a major league manager. Now.
Stearns is going to put a $300 million roster and the demands of the New York market into the hands of a 43-year-old with no major league managerial experience.
Stearns is showing yet again that he is prioritizing the big picture regardless of payroll, market size and the demands that come from all things New York. He picked a manager who he hopes will grow in the job, rather than a plug-and-play skipper. Stearns could have stuck with Buck Showalter, but what would have happened if the Mets thrived in 2024 and Stearns found out — despite the success — that he didn’t want to extend the Showalter relationship.
Instead, like Showalter, Mendoza has deep Yankees roots. He has worked for the organization since 2009 in a variety of roles on and off the field, in the minors and the majors, and in the last four seasons as Aaron Boone’s bench coach.
Here is the thing: To watch the Yankees is not to see a team that you feel is outfoxing others strategically. You didn’t think, for example, that the bench coach was whispering sweet genius in Boone’s ear.
But what skills Mendoza possesses, a modern head of baseball operations — such as Stearns — would covet. Like another former Yankees bench coach who has made good as an NL East manager in Philadelphia, Rob Thomson, Mendoza ran the Yankees’ spring training, producing the military-precision schedule to have multiple players in multiple places at multiple times. He is viewed as extremely detail oriented.
The native Venenzuelan and former minor league infielder also is process oriented, structured and steeped in analytics, which should fit well with Stearns. Anyone who has dealt with Mendoza — Mendy around the team — knows how convivial he is. This is a nice person. Yet, word is that behind the scenes with the Yankees he could get tough, even with the players, when necessary.
In many ways I have given up on knowing exactly who will work as a manager and who wouldn’t. But I don’t think there are many Bochys or Dusty Bakers, who have the skills to improve a situation anywhere. Most of this is atmospheric — who do you work for in ownership and heading baseball operations with what financial commitment and what stresses to win on what horizon? I truly thought Luis Rojas would be a good manager and maybe he would have been if he had not walked into a disaster after Carlos Beltran’s hiring/firing while working for the Wilpons.
So without Counsell coming, the weight also is on Cohen and Stearns to create an environment for Mendoza to succeed. A manager’s job is to put the players in the best position; and it is the owner’s and president of baseball operation’s job to do the same with the manager. Counsell would have been a no-brainer. But he was just 44 when he started in Milwaukee with no clue how he would do.
Mendoza, who turns 44 on Nov. 27, is now where Counsell once was in 2014. A risk and also now a reflection on whether Cohen and Stearns have gambled well.
