The New York Mets have had a busy couple of weeks: first hiring Billy Eppler to serve as the club's new general manager, then going on a free-agent-signing spree that included Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Mark Canha, and Eduardo Escobar. The Mets will have to continue applying the finishing touches to their roster once Major League Baseball's owner-induced lockout ends. In the interim, the Mets are focusing their energies on a different task: identifying and hiring their new manager.
The Mets are one of two teams without a skipper. (The other, the Oakland Athletics, allowed incumbent manager Bob Melvin to leave for the same role with the San Diego Padres earlier this offseason.) While New York hasn't yet conducted any interviews, SNY's Andy Martino provided an update on potential candidates earlier this month. Per Martino, the Mets have some level of interest in the following individuals:
As is often the case these days, those candidates can mostly be sorted nicely into two bins: high-ranking coaches with organizations who are considered to be progressive in nature (Espada, Quatraro, and Kelly), and experienced skippers who are presently unemployed (Showalter and Ausmus).
Per Jon Heyman of MLB Network, the 65-year-old Showalter is currently viewed as the favorite and is interviewing for the job on Wednesday. Espada, meanwhile, is familiar with Eppler from their shared time together in the New York Yankees organization.
One individual who appears unlikely to be in the running for the Mets job is longtime big-league outfielder Curtis Granderson. Martino tweeted on Friday that Granderson's name had surfaced in internal conversations, but that he was not expected to interview for the position since the Mets desire someone with coaching experience.
