The Mets have found their man.
Nearly three months after their 2021 season mercifully came to an end, the Mets have named a successor to Luis Rojas. On Saturday afternoon, team owner Steve Cohen announced Buck Showalter as their new manager in a Twitter post.
“I’m pleased to announce Buck Showalter as the new manager of the New York Mets,” Cohen tweeted at 1:44 p.m. ET.
Showalter beat out Matt Quatraro and Joe Espada (the other two finalists for the job), and well-respected baseball men Brad Ausmus, Bob Geren and Clayton McCullough, who each interviewed for the vacancy as well.
Showalter, 65, did his in-person interview on Friday, one day after Espada and three days after Quatraro. Each finalist advanced to the final round after doing a preliminary interview over Zoom. Cohen was a part of the entire interview process.
In fact, the Mets owner was so eager to announce his new hire that he scuttled the team’s original plans to announce Showalter on Monday so that he could break the news himself on Twitter.
Showalter, whose deal runs for three years, becomes the 20th full-time manager in Mets history, counting Carlos Beltran who was officially hired but got fired before ever seeing a game. The franchise has also had four interim managers. In his 20 years of MLB managerial experience, Showalter has a 1,551-1,517 record (.506 winning percentage). He ranks 24th in all-time wins by a manager and needs just 69 to enter the top 20. His journey across big-league dugouts includes stints managing the Yankees (1992-95), Diamondbacks (1998-2000), Rangers (2003-06) and Orioles (2010-18).
His best regular season record came in 1999, when he guided the Diamondbacks to 100 wins before losing to the Mets in the National League Division Series. When the 1994 season was shut down by the strike, Showalter’s Yankees were on pace to win 100 games as well. He has never managed in the World Series, and has only been to a League Championship Series once, with the Orioles in 2014. Showalter has won the Manager of the Year award three times (1994, 2004, 2014) and finished second in 1993 and 2012.
Showalter replaces Luis Rojas, who the Mets fired after their miserable 2021 campaign. Rojas was not the first choice for the job when he was hired. He wound up as the Mets’ skipper only after they fired Beltran for his role in the Houston Astros’ cheating scandal. Rojas went 103-119 (.464) in his two years at the helm, one of which was the 60-game COVID season. The Mets did not have a winning season or qualify for the playoffs in either of Rojas’ seasons.
With this move, the Oakland Athletics are now the only team that still needs to hire a manager.
