On July 24, Luis Rojas will have the easiest job in baseball.
He will be at his beautiful home ballpark. He will send the best starting pitcher on earth, Jacob deGrom, to the mound. He has Pete Alonso, fresh off one of the best rookie seasons in MLB history, and Jeff McNeil, a .300-hitting machine, towards the top of his lineup. The formerly fantastic slugger, Yoenis Cespedes, is finally healthy, and might join Alonso and McNeil. And, as tough as this is to believe, the Mets have by far the best opening day record in the majors, as their 38-20 record on Day 1 is good for a .655 winning percentage.
After their first game, however, Rojas will have one of the roughest jobs in the game. This is his first gig as an MLB manager, and he must learn on the job, in New York City, as the second-best team in his own town, in the biblical shadow of the Bronx Bombers, with his maiden managerial season delayed by nearly four months. If that weren't enough, there are still shards of a pandemic floating around the Big Apple, and we've seen that people in pro sports are far from immune.
Also, Rojas wasn't even the Mets' first choice for the job, and only got it after Carlos Beltran was canned for his robust role in the Astros' sign-stealing scandal. Oh, and then, there are the incessant murmurs about the Mets being sold in the near future, and perhaps new ownership will want their own guy in the dugout.
So Rojas must somehow hurdle all these obstacles and make the Mets a contender, or face the prospect of a pink slip in his new office. It's hard to think of any Mets manager since Casey Stengel who had more problems lurking before his first game. To top it off, Rojas is on an opaque "multi-year deal" at an unknown salary.
Across the East River, Joe Girardi was handed his walking papers after 2017 and replaced by a neophyte in Aaron Boone, and the Bronx Bombers haven't missed a step. Alex Cora won a World Series in his maiden season with the Red Sox (even if he was fired for a different sign-stealing scandal). Dave Martinez just won the Fall Classic in his second year as skipper of the Nationals. While age and experience used to be the hallmarks of big-time managers, those trends are being reversed. It's that kind of climate that got Rojas the job, but it also makes him more expendable if he doesn't get instant results.
More than ever, managers are marginalized, dismissed as marionettes who simply pull the levers as ordered by the front office. Managers used to be monoliths. From Earl Weaver to Sparky Anderson to Tony LaRussa, it felt like baseball was run by baseball lifers, and we could name each manager in the majors without pounding a computer keyboard.
Still, the manager must be more than a jersey number. Why else were seven skippers let go last year? If it's just a matter of getting the proper puppet, then it's hard to explain why Joe Girardi and Joe Maddon just got new jobs. Maybe the days are over for the chaw-chewing, pot-bellied manager who used his gut as a compass. But there still has to be room for relationships, for trust and motivation, for looking a pitcher in the eye after six innings to see if you can squeeze a seventh out of him.
Luis Rojas is tiptoeing through a 60-game minefield, with public support from his bosses. But he also knows that the Mets under Brodie Van Wagenen have epic expectations, even if the GM has written checks that the players can't cover. Closer Edwin Diaz was a disaster last year. Robinson Cano was injured and inconsistent, and his contract doubles as a financial anvil around the team's neck. Jed Lowrie is entering his second year with the club and still hasn't played a meaningful game. Noah Syndergaard is gone for the season, leaving deGrom as the only indisputable pitching force on the entire team.
Rojas does bring pedigree. As the son of Felipe Alou and half-brother of Moisés Alou, Rojas comes from a fertile baseball family. He's also spent 13 years inside the Mets organization.
As with most new managers, Rojas will be asked to do the impossible, and then hopefully he can pull off the improbable. The Mets finished ten games over .500 last year over a 162-game schedule, and that got Mickey Callaway canned. If the Mets finish this surreal season 35-25 over 60 games, Luis Rojas should get consideration for Manager of the Year. If he finishes 25-35 he could - or he should - get a mulligan. It takes more than 60 games to prove your managerial chops, especially in the Big Apple.
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
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