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 can focus their energies on another important 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 on Friday. Per Martino, the Mets have some level of interest in the following individuals:
Monday morning, ESPN's Buster Olney reported that the Mets formally requested permission to interview Quatraro. Expect more news on interviews in the coming days.
As is often the case these days, those candidates can 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).
It's unclear which of the five is the favorite -- if any of the five can be labeled such at this stage -- but Espada 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.
