Style does not suit our lives well in 2020. Our work clothes no longer require collars or belts, our hair can party in the back so long as it’s hidden by headphones, and everyone knows those books behind us have always been just for show.
Which is why Jared Porter and the Mets brought more substance than usual to his introductory news conference as New York’s general manager.
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Instead of standing behind a Citi Field podium in a suit, Porter was on Zoom in a polo and zip-up. That’s probably the way he prefers it, given his track record as a go-anywhere, do-anything cog in winning front offices in Boston, Chicago and Arizona. Together with team president Sandy Alderson, Porter outlined his vision for what the Mets could be under this new regime — a vision that extended beyond the foul lines at Citi Field and to the entirety of the organization.
So what did we learn about what Steve Cohen’s Mets might be under Alderson and Porter Monday?
Depth and flexibility don’t have to be bad words.
There are organizations that use words like depth and flexibility as palatable stand-ins for austerity, and there are organizations for which those two qualities are linchpins to their success. In the recent past, the Mets were in the first group; the keyword last year was “creative.” Alderson and Porter outlined a blueprint Monday for bringing them into the second.
Depth and flexibility were two of Porter’s “pillars” Monday, but they were more than basic talking points. Few executives in the league can back up an assertion of depth’s importance with a roll call of independent-league signings they’ve inspired like Porter did. (That list included Daniel Nava, Rich Hill and Chris Martin, among others.)
Depth starts not on the field but in the front office, and Porter’s otherwise matter-of-fact demeanor — there’s only so much emotion one can show via Zoom — betrayed a bit more passion when he talked about building the Mets from the ground up.
“The ability to invest in people, invest in new technologies, invest in infrastructure is incredibly appealing,” he said. “There’s obviously a chance to really expand on the resources, to hire really good people, whether that’s in the office, in the field as coaches. I think there’s a chance to really diversify and deepen the team, the talent pool.”
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Porter knows what it’s like to be in those organizations: He was one of those people the Red Sox invested in when he was an intern. He helped bring that attitude to Chicago, and he was trying to instill it in a tougher market in Arizona.
Under their prior ownership, the Mets rarely invested beneath the surface. The resources are available now in Queens in a way they hadn’t been before for an executive to expand the basic bones of the organization.
And then, of course, there’s what depth and flexibility mean to the roster. For the last several years, even going back to the end of Alderson’s tenure as general manager, the Mets were shallower in Triple A than a kiddie pool. When call-ups were needed, New York trotted out outfielders like Travis Taijeron, Matt den Dekker, Austin Jackson and Kevin Kaczmarski. They played José Bautista and Jack Reinheimer on the infield. They started Adam Wilk and Tyler Pill, Wilmer Font and Ariel Jurado. In 2020’s 60-game season, they converted two relievers to the rotation on the fly.
This doesn’t mention the mismanagement of the 40-man roster that allowed decent players to go elsewhere for little in return.
Contrast this with the absurd levels of depth built by the two teams that won pennants last year.
“It’s really important to create a situation where you’re a really hard team to play against. You’re hard to game plan against in all areas,” said Porter. “Over the course of 162 games, a lot comes up. There’s ups, there’s downs — players go into slumps, pitchers get hurt. Having a setup where it’s really hard for teams to prepare against you because you have a good layout and players coming behind them is critical. That’s something we can attack right away.”
The Mets had already started attacking it before Porter was brought aboard with some aggressive minor-league signings and the major-league contract they handed out to Sam McWilliams. Porter emphasized the “really important distinction … between depth and quality depth,” then said those players can come from everywhere.
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“I think great players can come from anywhere — all parts of the world, all ethnic backgrounds, all levels,” he said. “There’s so much latent upside in baseball. There’s buy-low opportunities, there’s minor-league free agency, major-league free agency, first-round picks, 20th-round picks, $10,000 signings from Latin America, $1 million signings from Latin America.
“Ultimately to put a great team on the field, you need players flowing from all those areas.”
The aim is to be prepared for whatever 2021 throws at the Mets.
Bill James, who worked with Porter in Boston, just wrote about how Porter’s preparation at the trade deadline in 2014 helped the Red Sox land Eduardo Rodriguez in exchange for Andrew Miller.
“We couldn’t see (an offer from the Orioles) coming, and we had no time to prepare for it — but Jared was ready for it, 100 percent ready for it, just the same as if he had had a week to prepare,” James wrote.
That’s a quality that’s stood out for Porter going back to his days as a Cape League intern. It’s what first struck Ben Cherington in Porter’s first big-league job interview.
Asked about the uncertainty of 2021’s rules, Porter repeated they’d be no excuse to building a quality team. Nothing would be.
“We have to always prepare for multiple outcomes. None of this can ever be an excuse,” he said. “If two pitchers get injured, it can’t be an excuse. You have to have more pitchers behind them. If two hitters aren’t performing, not an excuse. Have two hitters behind them. If there is a DH next year, if there isn’t a DH next year, we need to prepare for that. If there’s expanded playoffs or there isn’t expanded playoffs, we have to prepare for that. For me, always making sure we’re ready for all those scenarios is important and something I’ll always be pushing.”
The Mets, for a long time, have been the team that banks on the best-case scenario. Porter suggested they’d be a team ready for the worst.
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Although Alderson and Porter didn’t know one another prior to the interview process, their personalities and visions for the organization should align.
When Alderson outlined his criteria for a GM candidate in late November, he focused on interpersonal skills: How was the person as a leader, a communicator, a teammate? When asked how he’d be able to assess those things when no interviews were in person, Alderson said it wouldn’t be a big deal — because he personally knew most of the people they were interviewing.
Porter was an outlier.
“I didn’t really know Jared that well,” Alderson said Monday. “I was taken immediately by his personality. His history in the game stands on its own. But from my standpoint, it was important to find somebody I felt that we could all work with — not because all of his thoughts and vision are perfectly consistent with ours, but (because) I think he would drive the organization to a higher level and would bring new ideas as well as a compatibility.”
Porter is known around the league as someone who’s easy to work with. He can relate to most everyone in the game because he’s worked in different departments and different organizations, and he’s used to collaborating across them. He asks good questions and gives thoughtful answers.
“Speaking different baseball languages just comes from opportunities to be involved in a lot of different areas,” Porter said. “The more you involve people, the more you let people make an impact, not only might you hear some good ideas, but it’s also a great way for them to develop.”
Others have called Porter “aggressive.” He takes that to mean he’s convicted in his ideas.
“If you believe in something, make sure you speak up. Give your opinion,” he said. “There’s a lot of tough decisions that lead to a good, quality baseball team, so make sure you’re always giving your opinion and speaking up and speaking your mind. That’s something, culturally, I want to make sure we create here, where we have strong information flow — almost like a think tank, stuff coming from everywhere. That’ll ultimately lead to the best decisions for the Mets.”
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The free-agent market is a function of timing as well as choices.
“Right now, things are a little slower in the gourmet section than they are in the meat department,” Alderson said Monday, returning once again to supermarket metaphors for the Mets’ offseason plans. That distinction in timing is part of why James McCann is set to officially be a Met by week’s end and J.T. Realmuto is not.
Alderson said the Mets and Realmuto had “great conversations” but suggested Realmuto wasn’t ready to move yet the way McCann was.
“More than anything else, this was a timing issue for us,” said Alderson. “We have a number of needs, and we can afford to wait to fill some of them. We can’t afford to wait to fill all of them.”
In that regard, the Mets have some extra leverage this winter: Realmuto wasn’t the only gourmet item that fit New York’s shopping list. With George Springer and Trevor Bauer also available, the Mets could move on to a different catcher they liked this early in the offseason.
But don’t worry, Alderson said, the Mets are going to spend.
When thinking about a major addition for the Mets this winter, it’s less if than when.
“If we have X money to spend, we’ll probably spend it,” Alderson said. “But we have to make decisions about how we do that. I think we’re trying to be judicious, but we’re definitely talking and we’re definitely in the market and we definitely have the capacity. So what we really have to do then is to make good judgements about what we do, and not be compelled to win the offseason, but rather have our eye on the regular season.”
Related coverage
• Why Jared Porter ‘checks all the boxes’ as the next Mets GM
• What James McCann brings to the Mets lineup and behind the plate
(Photo of Amed Rosario, Michael Conforto, Jake Marisnick and Jeff McNeil: Gregory Fisher / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)