Billy Owens should be the team’s next GM

Billy Owens is the straightforward decision to substitute Brodie Van Wagenen. His resume speaks for alone, and his link to Sandy Alderson is a key as well as. 

Kyle Newman

Brodie Van Wagenen‘s times as typical manager are numbered. With Sandy Alderson returning to the New York Mets as president of baseball functions, he’s heading to want to provide in his own typical manager. Billy Owens need to be that guy.

Owens checks all the bins that any workforce could want in a typical manager. He’s a baseball lifer, a phenomenal scout, has worked less than some of the greatest executives in the activity, is analytically inclined, and has a past doing the job partnership with the president of baseball functions. He’s the perfect suit to just take more than the reins for the Mets in approximately each side.

Scouting qualifications

Owens’ playing times were being limited-lived. A previous 3rd-spherical decide on of the Baltimore Orioles, he spent 7 many years in the insignificant leagues, under no circumstances reaching the majors.

He retired at the age of 27 immediately after the 1998 period, but it did not just take prolonged for him to uncover function. Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s snatched up Owens and named him the hitting mentor of the Southern Oregon Timberjacks. He then spent five many years bouncing all-around the corporation as a insignificant league hitting mentor.

Alongside his coaching obligations, Owens was an region scout and was named the East Coastline scouting coordinator in 2003. From then on, he was a entrance place of work guy.

Just two many years afterwards, he was named the A’s director of player staff. Beneath Owens, the A’s turned into a expertise manufacturing unit. Dallas Braden, Kurt Suzuki, Carlos Gonzalez, Gio Gonzalez, Brett Anderson, Trevor Cahill, Andrew Bailey, Josh Reddick, Josh Donaldson, Sonny Grey, Marcus Semien, Sean Manaea, Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Ramon Laureano, and Jesus Luzardo all arrived up via Owens’ insignificant league system.

The bulk of them had been drafted or obtained by the A’s for the duration of Owens’ stint as director of player staff, a task he’s held for the past 12 many years. In 2019, he also included “assistant typical manager” to his title.

Owens is deemed to be a person of, if not the greatest scout, in MLB. That alone qualifies him for an interview, but it does not stop there. His link to some of the greatest executives in MLB and the Mets’ before long-to-be president of baseball functions provides him another edge.

Relationship to Alderson

Owens and Alderson worked carefully jointly in 2019 and 2020, with Alderson doing the job as a particular assistant to Billy Beane and Owens keeping a prominent function in the entrance place of work.

Acquiring worked in the very same entrance place of work for the final two many years shows they are able of doing the job effectively jointly. If the Mets are heading to move ahead, they are heading to have to have a typical manager who can not only collaborate with Alderson, but is on the very same page. Owens is a person of the extremely couple of typical manager candidates to have proof of that doing the job partnership with Alderson.

So what need to Mets lovers be expecting from a likely Alderson-Owens pair? Effectively, they need to definitely be expecting a workforce targeted on scouting, analytics, and the design of a sustainable winner.

In the course of Alderson’s initially run with the Mets, he proved he wasn’t fearful to commit cash when the right chance arrived up, but that he’d also somewhat establish via the farm system. Alderson drafted Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo, Seth Lugo, Dom Smith, Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil, and David Peterson. He traded for and designed Noah Syndergaard, Travis d’Arnaud, and Zack Wheeler. He furthermore signed Amed Rosario, Andres Gimenez, Ronny Mauricio, and Francisco Alvarez.

The bulk of the Mets’ core and top rated prospective buyers were being all included by Alderson via development. Introducing a person of the game’s greatest scouts and developmental minds in Owens is only heading to fortify that technique.

And the greatest portion about this? Alderson and Owens would have approximately limitless means. If they uncovered a player they desired in free of charge agency, Steve Cohen would have the cash to make it materialize. Finally, the Mets would have genuine baseball men and women with phenomenal scouting backgrounds that are backed by analytics with the means to establish whatever workforce they imagine.

The capacity to scout, produce, and commit cash to establish a sustainable winner need to remind Mets lovers of a person workforce: the Los Angeles Dodgers. That need to be the model the Mets observe immediately after, and with Sandy Alderson and Billy Owens, it is extremely significantly achievable.