Sal Licata just couldn’t stop obsessing over the Mets’ hire of Carlos Mendoza Monday, and not all in a good way for the new Amazins skipper.
And that’s why he asked BT this: does hiring a manager in baseball mean as much today as it did years ago? Brandon answered no, but then Sal asked why, then, you wouldn’t factor PR into the equation?
“Because managers don’t sell tickets,” BT replied, “unless you were Billy Martin back in the day a little bit.”
“But it has nothing to do with selling tickets,” Sal replied. “You don’t have to hire an inexperienced Yankees bench coach; like, all the checkmarks from a PR standpoint are against him. Now, does that mean that it's the worst hire? No, but you literally could have found a bunch of other guys that would have at least been similar to Mendoza as far as their coaching experience, that would have checked the PR boxes as well. It just doesn't make any sense to me.”
And that’s when BT went back to the tickets, saying that “they could bring back Casey Stengel for the day,” and Citi Field would still be sold out on Opening Day, at least.
“I do know what you mean, but I'm also not a believer; if you told me that there was a stark difference, like you can prove Zeile or Beltran would absolutely better than Mendoza, that’s one thing – and, you’re not hiring the Yankees’ bench coach, which I am sensitive to,” Brandon said. “But if you believe that he is that much better, and this is Stearns's opinion because he hired him, if Stearns thinks that Mendoza is that much better than everybody except Counsell, who probably didn't want to come here, I don't think that PR stuff is as important because eventually, if he's proven right, that goes away.
But it’s disappointing, and I get it, it’s deflating, is what it is.”
“Deflating, embarrassing, you name it,” Sal replied. “They had an all-time great manager under contract, and they fired him to hire a first-time Yankee bench coach!”
BT replied that the Mets needed new blood and new juice, because “Buck was like a corpse, asleep all season” – but Sal wonders why, if Mendoza is so good, it took him 15 years in what is looked at as a first-class organization to get this chance?
“You can’t go from that to this,” Sal said, even as BT noted ‘we don’t know what THIS is.’ “Why didn’t the Yankees hire him? He's been in the organization for 15 years, which means he pre-dates Aaron Boone, so if he was so great and they knew about him in the organization and he's great with players and he's smart, he’s a great teacher, why didn’t the Yankees hire him when they fired Joe Girardi?”
All BT could say was “the honest answer is because the Yankees don't know what they're doing, and they very well may have messed that up” – and perhaps we’ll see, sooner than later, whether the Mets did or didn’t?