The Mets serendipitously stumbled onto a manager their players can rally behind.
Jeff McNeil slapped hands with Edwin Diaz, Robinson Cano hugged Amed Rosario and Jacob deGrom smiled wide as he soaked up the club’s inaugural FanFest at Citi Field. The Mets were in exceptionally good spirits on Saturday afternoon, delighted to be reunited with their teammates and hyped for the new skipper — Luis Rojas — who will lead them.
“Looking forward to spring and getting things going,” deGrom said. “Just being around the guys, coming up here for one day, it was like we never left. Just the vibe you get from them, everybody is excited.”
Mets players have moved on from the sign-stealing saga that drove Carlos Beltran out of Flushing. With spring training beginning in two weeks, they’re concentrating now on the season ahead and thrilled to have a manager in Rojas they’ve grown to admire.
“I wouldn’t call it a rocky offseason,” Pete Alonso said. “I think the stuff that happened with Carlos is very unfortunate. He’s very knowledgeable about the game but I think Luis is going to do an absolute excellent job.”
Homegrown All-Stars McNeil, Alonso, deGrom and a handful of other players on the current 25-man roster have all played under Rojas in the minor leagues. They echoed one another in support of Rojas, a young but serious first-year manager ready to embark on a journey he called “a dream come true.”
“I have great memories of him as our manager,” said Steven Matz, who played under Rojas in 2013 on Low-A Savannah. “He’s very approachable. He’ll give you his honest opinion which is what we need. I really enjoy playing for him.”
Rojas, 38, has spent 14 years in the Mets organization. From an entry-level coaching job, to managing minor-league teams into the playoffs, to joining the big-league staff in a newly-appointed position to finally getting the call to follow in his father’s footsteps as a major league manager. He also has a strong reputation in his native Dominican Republic where he managed Leones del Escogido to a Dominican Winter League championship in 2016. Throughout it all, he displayed the same calm persona that people have come to expect from him.
Except for that one time in 2018. One of Alonso’s favorite memories of Rojas is the only time he’d seen his manager break from his usual demeanor — on a tape-measure home run by infielder Nick Sergakis in Double-A Binghamton.
“He absolutely destroyed this baseball and Luis is jumping up and down with his hands in the air just super elated for a little kid,” Alonso vividly recalled. “He is so calm, cool and collected and just to see him so excited for Nick, who was kind of struggling, it just shows he’s got a big heart. He’s rooting for all his players and that was a big moment for Nick and he realized that.”
Somewhere in the hiring process, Alonso mentioned to Brodie Van Wagenen his concerns about hiring an external manager. The slugger wanted the coaching staff and team culture to remain intact and hiring a person from outside of the organization may have threatened those values. Alonso vouched for Rojas’ ability to work well with other people. Collaboration being one of Van Wagenen’s buzzwords, this seal of approval from Alonso could only have helped the GM to pick Rojas as Beltran’s replacement.
“That was a great choice by Brodie,” Cano said on promoting Rojas. “Knowing Rojas and seeing him manage in the Dominican. Being able to talk to him during games last year. The knowledge he has in the game, I think he can do a great job for us.”
“I think that’s what we need right now,” said Rosario, who played under Rojas in Low-A Savannah. “In tough times, you need somebody who is going to support you. And that’s what he is for us.”