Billy Eppler’s conversation with the recently DFA’ed Robinson Cano, who he has known since Cano’s minor league days when Eppler was a director of scouting with the Yankees, was one of the most difficult ones of his front office career.
“It was pretty difficult,” the Mets general manager said Monday, after Cano was designated for assignment to satisfy the league’s roster trimming. “With my history with Robbie and sharing a lot of experiences with him professionally, today was one of the more difficult ones.”
What made the decision easier was the discussion Eppler had with team owner Steve Cohen before announcing the final decision, as Cohen made it clear that the nearly $37 million the team still owed Cano through next season wasn’t an issue. Cohen wanted what was best for the team to be done.
“I walked through the transactions with Sandy [Alderson] and ultimately with Steve, and as we were talking through the weekend and Sunday before the game, I wanted to make sure everyone was understanding of what the impact was. I passed along to him what the recommendations of the baseball group and on-field staff,” Eppler said. “He said ‘Make the baseball decision.’
“Steve is very committed to winning…it’s do what’s best for the team and for the roster, and present them with facts and options. In a way, it makes the job pretty fulfilling to be able to just run everything in their direction that we can do. They want to know what’s best for the club.”
As for that baseball decision, Eppler echoed manager Buck Showalter’s sentiments, which was that the struggling Cano was the right call in order to get other bats more chances to perform.
“Given the construction of our roster, and this is a testament to how this roster has been shaped and developed…and how the playing time was gonna be allocated, it put us in a decision where we had to make some difficult decisions,” Eppler said. “Ultimately, we came to the point where it was Robbie, because we weren’t going to have the plate appearances that we wanted to allocate them around and utilize the whole bench. It was gonna be a little irregular.”
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