From one New York team to another, Luis Rojas will have a very different view of a very different organization when the 2022 season begins.
Rojas, who was told that he wouldn’t be offered a new contract as Mets manager after the 2021 campaign, is leaving an organization that just completed a tumultuous first season under new ownership, including firing general manager Jared Porter after it was revealed that he sent sexually explicit messages to a female reporter, and placing interim GM Zack Scott on a leave of absence after he was arrested for a DUI during the season.
Now, as third base coach of the Yankees, Rojas enters a situation where Brian Cashman is the longest tenured GM in baseball, manager Aaron Boone was just offered a new contract, and the team has reached the playoffs in each of the last five seasons.
“The team is very talented,” Rojas said when speaking to reporters on Tuesday. “There were so many things that were really attractive to me.”
Rojas was offered a chance to remain with the Mets in another role, but after talking with Boone when the Yankee manager gave him a call about joining the staff, there “wasn’t much second thought” to what Rojas wanted to do with the next chapter of his baseball career.
“I had the freedom to talk to other teams even though an offer to remain in the organization was talked about,” Rojas said. “I talked to a few teams, and I think talking to Aaron over the phone…there was just a lot of things from a personal level that were really interesting to me, and the organization itself, the tradition, the New York Yankees.”
Rojas and Boone developed a relationship since Rojas took the Mets manager job in January of 2020, and now, that relationship will evolve as colleagues rather than rivals.
“We’ve had several conversations over the phone and in person…we’ve talked different topics,” Rojas said. “Aaron was the first manager that called me when I got the manager position with the New York Mets…he was welcoming me to the city as the manager of one of the two teams. I thought that was pretty neat. Immediately, I think we established a good connection.”
While Rojas’ view from third base will differ from his view from the dugout, and while the state of the organization he is joining is much different from the one he is leaving, one thing will remain the same: the expectation of success, and even in a lower-profile role, Rojas’ decisions will be put under the microscope, just as they were with his last gig.
“Every day there’s a lesson there. It’s a big stage,” Rojas said of the New York market. “The passionate fanbase, the demands, all of those things. I think you only learn…I think I’ve grown a lot not just as a baseball person, but a man as well…I’m looking forward to bringing what I’ve learned to this organization.”
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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