Major League Baseball

New Mets manager Buck Showalter bridging old, new schools

Published Dec. 21, 2021 8:20 p.m. ET

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

At the Zoom media conference held Tuesday to introduce him to the New York media, new Mets manager Buck Showalter named three men he consulted for advice about how to manage major-league teams in this baseball era: Dusty Baker, Joe Maddon and Tony LaRussa.

Their average age? Some 72 years old, seven years Showalter’s senior and more than twice the age of the first new manager hired this offseason, St. Louis’ Oliver Marmol.

The three Showalter named are his peers, yes, but they stick out when so much of the sport has moved to much younger men in managing and coaching roles. But age is only a proxy for presumed approach to the role, not a defining trait.

Showalter, Mets general manager Billy Eppler and Mets president Sandy Alderson each repeatedly stressed Tuesday that Showalter's age and experience will be an asset — not an issue — in this new role. In doing so, they cited his reputation among former players, their interest in hiring him at various stages of his career and his thirst for information.

In response to a question about analytics, Showalter noted that he and his wife have been recording data since his early days managing in the Florida State League. In response to a question about modern players, he noted that he will research his players’ interests to relate to them.

"They might be surprised," Showalter said, "at some of the songs I’ll be humming along to in the locker room."

For the most part, the men who will occupy Showalter’s clubhouse next year went unnamed during Tuesday’s session. He did briefly break with the league’s lockout protocol and mention two of the Mets’ November acquisitions, outfielder Starling Marte and infielder Eduardo Escobar, but soon caught himself and cut short his answer.

Showalter was the penultimate manager hired this offseason. The Oakland Athletics followed by hiring their former stalwart outfielder, Mark Kotsay, who is 46. The latter decision is more in line with recent trends. On average, major-league coaches are being hired at younger ages than they were even earlier this century.

Consider Michael Brdar, at 27 the new Padres hitting coach. He was drafted in 2017. When the Dodgers hired 32-year-old Robert Van Scoyoc to the same position three years ago, it was considered revelatory. That age is about the norm now.

Within the industry, Giants manager Gabe Kapler is credited with starting this trend. When the Dodgers hired him to run their player development seven years ago, he extended the search for coaching candidates further than his peers. Specifically, he looked to the college and private-coaching ranks. That worked wonders for the Dodgers and boosted Kapler’s reputation enough that he was a manager by 2018.

In his second managerial post, in 2020 with San Francisco, Kapler started making the kind of hires that he had in the lower levels of the Dodgers’ organization, including the first female major-league coach, 29-year-old Alyssa Nakken, 31-year-old Kai Correa as bench coach and 29-year-old Justin Viele as hitting coach.

All of that attracted more attention, especially when the Giants exceeded expectations that first season and even more so when they demolished expectations in 2021. Players described an environment in which coaches were creative and attentive to their concerns. Unsurprisingly, teams are now copying the Giants’ model and looking to new places for coaches.

In addition to bringing on Brdar, who worked for the Giants, the Padres just hired a new first-base coach, David Macias, 35, from East Carolina University. The Twins just hired a new first-base coach, Hank Conger, 33, from the KBO's Lotte Giants and a 31-year-old hitting coach, David Popkins, who was playing independent ball as recently as 2017.

It will be interesting to see what sort of staff Showalter unveils. Because most of the Mets’ peers have already filled out their staffs, he has the disadvantage of fewer available coaches. But he also has several weeks to knock out these tasks without any player-related responsibilities taking over.

Showalter seems aware of the challenges facing him. Unprompted Tuesday, he brought up the possibility that spring training could be delayed by the lockout and the threats that would pose to his pitching staff.

It’s worth noting that Showalter, too, was once an unseasonably young manager, when the Yankees hired him three decades ago. He has had a lot of success since. He has never won a World Series, but his employers have consistently done better during his tenure than they did before. And he is unconcerned about the game having changed so much since his last job, in 2018, that he will be unable to adapt.

"If somebody thinks that I’m gonna go back to the hotel or the house and think that maybe we got beat because somebody else had better or used information better than we did or used analytics, whatever you want to call it, you don’t know me very well," Showalter said. "I’ve always been very spongeful with information — to a fault."

Showalter convinced the Mets that that's true. Their other finalists were two well-regarded men roughly two decades Showalter’s junior, Astros bench coach Joe Espada and Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro. Neither has managed in the major leagues before, but both have worked within the sport’s most successful organizations more recently than Showalter.

Ultimately, though, the Mets decided that the more distant past was more important than the recent past. They opted for what has worked rather than what more and more teams suspect will work. And they bet that Showalter can bridge the gap between the two enough to thrive.

"Given what Buck has done in the past — relied on as much information as has been available to him — and as adaptable as he has been to the way the game has changed over time and still been curious and energetic and motivated by the task at hand here in New York," Alderson said, "he has come as close to 10 out of 10 as anybody possibly can."

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He most recently covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic. Previously, he spent five years covering the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and L.A. Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.