Which Road Will the Mets Travel?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

One needs no special powers of foresight to know that the Mets will almost certainly fire manager Art Howe after this season. Howe has been the subject of harsh criticism over the last two years for his easy nature and questionable tactical decisions. This is unfair: The failure of the Mets on his watch says a great deal more about the organization than it does about him. When Howe leaves he will do so with honor; finding himself in an impossible position, he has worked no miracles but done no harm.
That’s more than can be said for his employers, who seem to have collectively lost their minds this summer.
For two years, the Mets front office has refused to choose between two irreconcilable goals. On the one hand, they have asked Howe to win now, giving him not only old, limited stars like Mike Piazza and Tom Glavine, but old, limited role players like Todd Zeile and John Franco. These decisions are consistent with trying to squeeze one more playoff run out of the Piazza Mets.
On the other hand, Howe has been asked to conduct a player development program at the major league level, placing the greatly talented but completely immature talents of David Wright and Jose Reyes in key roles.
The inability of the organization’s supposed leadership to decide in which direction they wish to go has turned a promising season into an utter catastrophe. This is a franchise that believed strongly enough in its contending status to trade perhaps the best pitching prospect in the game for an injured no. 4 starter; yet the Mets haven’t had a regular first baseman in three years. There are managers who could, through strength of will, impose order on this, but it’s ridiculously unfair to blame Howe for not being John McGraw, Earl Weaver, or Bobby Cox. The blame lies with the Wilpon family.
Whether or not Howe is to blame, though, is irrelevant. He will be the scapegoat after the season, even if the problems that really matter aren’t his fault. While the natural question is, “Who will replace him?” the more interesting one is, “What sort of traits should the Mets look for in his replacement?”
The first question is an invitation to nonsense about how the Mets should scheme to acquire such-and-such famous manager to signify their commitment to winning; the second forces one to think about what the team actually needs from a manager. It isn’t much, when you break it down.
By far the most important quality a new Mets manager will need is a clear vision for the team. With conflicted ownership, a functionally impotent general manager, scouts with ill-defined portfolios agitating for absurd trades, and influential veteran players, the Mets’ indecisiveness is not the result of one man’s flaws. It is systemic.
It doesn’t matter so much whether the manager sees the Mets as a contending team on its last run or a rebuilding team weighed down with dead wood. What he’ll need to do is pick one and stick with it, arguing strongly for it in every organizational decision into which he has input, every roster move over which he has discretion, and every tactical move in every game.
Absurdities like Joe McEwing pinch-hitting for Jose Reyes and Todd Zeile collecting 300 at-bats must become a thing of the past. The middle-infield and catching situations must be settled; I doubt there’s been a pennant winner in history whose first baseman was the starting catcher and whose shortstop was playing second base.
The second quality the new manager will need is guile. The Mets organization, on all evidence, is full of men who are crafty and self-serving rather than intelligent. Bobby Valentine, who remains as close to an ideal manager for this team and franchise as there is, realized that it was not enough to simply be right, that he also had to protect his players.
He understood, for instance, how fragile Armando Benitez’s confidence was, bolstered it at every turn, and shielded him from veterans like John Franco with flattery and unsubtle manipulations. When Valentine left, a whispering campaign immediately began against Benitez. His fragile confidence shattered and he was run out of town. Pitching for Florida this year, he currently has a 1.06 ERA.
A manager who fits these criteria will be difficult to find. The one who comes most immediately to mind, Buck Showalter, is comfortable in Texas. The other obvious choice, Valentine, isn’t coming back. And it’s not clear that the Mets brain trust wants a manager capable of doing the job right; they may well prefer a neutral and unassuming figure happy to pick up his paycheck and blow with the wind of the moment. It would be a shame if that’s what they end up with, but it would be no worse than they deserve.