SAN DIEGO — Before you conclude that Mickey Callaway is the disease that ails the Mets, consider this data point:
After Pete Alonso backed up his bold words Monday night with a monster performance Tuesday night, smashing a tiebreaking, ninth-inning homer and driving home four runs to lead the Mets to a come-from-behind, 7-6 victory over the Padres at Petco Park, the Mets in their topsy-turvy 2019 had scored 163 runs and allowed 189, tying them with the Pirates for the third-worst run differential in the National League after the Marlins (-75) and Giants (-28). The Mets’ Pythagorean record — a prediction based on their -27 run differential — stands at 15-21, two games worse than their actual mark of 17-19.
In other words, the Mets actually were overperforming by a game under Callaway — at least based on baseball’s Pythagorean Theorem.
Now look, if that’s the strongest case you can make to retain Callaway should he and the Mets prove unable to stop their recent plummet, then that most certainly stands as a hill on which you shouldn’t die. I’m here to make a tangential, more important point:
Changing managers won’t dramatically alter this team’s fortunes. Its concerns, this franchise’s concerns, run far deeper than the manager’s office.
Less than two weeks ago, I spoke with Callaway about his increased comfort level on the job, as an opposing executive offered that anonymous observation after watching the second-year skipper work during a game. The 43-year-old also appeared more at ease during his news conferences, no small attribute working in New York.
What hasn’t killed Callaway since then, however, hasn’t made him stronger, either. Simply enough, he has looked less comfortable as the Mets lost nine of 12. His postgame news conferences, during which he calmly discusses dispiriting defeats, evoke images of the meme with the smiling dog proclaiming, “This is fine,” as fire engulfs his immediate surroundings.
It has been a rough go for the first-time skipper, who, if you want to get cute with accounting, has worked under five general managers (Sandy Alderson, Brodie Van Wagenen and, in between, the interim trio of Omar Minaya, J.P. Ricciardi and John Ricco) in a season-plus on the job. His tenure here just might be unsalvageable, and he’s making far less than Travis d’Arnaud, so paying him to go away shouldn’t be an issue. And even if you wonder whether the novice GM Van Wagenen can solve this, he has earned the right to put his own person in place.
Jim Riggleman, hired as Callaway’s bench coach over the winter, exists as the natural option to take over if Callaway gets dismissed, and the 66-year-old would score points in the clubhouse and the press-conference room — and, consequently, among the rabid fans who watch those pre- and post-game sessions on TV — with his easygoing, self-assured manner.
Would that lead to a turnaround, though? It’s not like the three-time interim manager Riggleman has a Billy Martin-esque way of transforming losers into winners. He steadies the ship. Would his arrival magically give the Mets pitching depth, or serve as a Fountain of Youth for struggling graybeards like Robinson Cano, Todd Frazier and Wilson Ramos? The same goes for the remote possibility of bringing in a veteran skipper midseason, a notion that wouldn’t seem appealing on the surface, anyway, to accomplished guys like Dusty Baker, Joe Girardi or Mike Scioscia.
Furthermore, this situation can’t be compared to the last time the Mets fired a manager during the schedule. Back in 2008, enough players had rebelled against Willie Randolph — aided and abetted by Mets front-office bigwig Tony Bernazard — to the extent that they embraced the change to Jerry Manuel. If such a rebellion is occurring under Callaway, it’s being run quite discreetly.
This just doesn’t look like a championship roster, no matter who operates it in competition. Shoot, Callaway and Dave Eiland, the pitching coach he hired, seemed to have solved the prodigal starting rotation of Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz, Noah Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler, and they still can’t cobble together a winning club.
Last September, in discussing his job security, Callaway acknowledged, “There’s going to be doubt if we get off to a bad start next year.” And here we are. Even if the doubt about Callaway ceases sooner than later in the form of a dismissal, the doubts about the Mets — short term and long term — aren’t going anywhere.