Now that Steve Cohen has officially taken over as the Mets’ new owner, we know that Sandy Alderson has already been lined up to return to the Mets as the team president. According to Mike Puma of the New York Post, the Mets plan to have both a president of baseball operations and a general manager reporting to Alderson in what seems to be a fairly substantial front office power structure.
It was widely expected that a GM would handle day-to-day front office duties under Alderson, though since Alderson’s responsibilities also include overseeing the Mets’ business operations, having a president of baseball ops also on hand implies that Alderson may not quite be as directly hands-on with personnel moves as originally believed. That said, Alderson will obviously still have the final word on any major transactions, and naturally will be looking to hire executives who share similar philosophies on roster construction.
The responsibilities of a “president of baseball operations” and “general manager” can vary from team to team, though the specific job titles factor into hiring possibilities. Clubs generally don’t stand in the way of staffers being interviewed when another team offers a promotion, so in this case, the Mets could potentially try to lure a current GM to Citi Field if they have a president of baseball ops position available. Adding two major front office hires beyond just Alderson would also be a way of adding even more baseball brainpower and fresh ideas into an organization that Cohen is planning to modernize from an analytics perspective.
Such names as Rays special assistant Bobby Heck or Athletics assistant GM Billy Owens have already been mentioned as potential candidates to join the Mets, and Puma wondered if J.P. Ricciardi could also be a candidate to return to New York given Ricciardi’s longstanding ties to Alderson. Of course, the Mets have a current general manager in Brodie Van Wagenen, though it isn’t expected that he will retain his job under Cohen’s ownership.