MILWAUKEE - The Mets’ decision to turn to Andy Green after Carlos Mendoza was dismissed in late June may have looked like a fallback at first. Carlos Beltran was the obvious headline name, a Hall of Famer with ties to the current roster and a special assistant to president of baseball operations David Stearns. But Beltran said no, and what followed may have been the smarter move all along.
Beltran, who told reporters Monday that he one day wants to manage, was never an ideal fit for this moment. He is close to being inducted into Cooperstown and will have his number retired in September.
This was also not the kind of setting that tends to help a first-time manager succeed, especially one being considered for the long term. Beltran had already tried to restart his managerial path once, taking over the Mets from November 2019 to January 2020 before the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal forced him to step down.
He was wise enough to understand that jumping back into another storm was a bad bet. There will be another offseason for the real managerial search.
That does not make Green a consolation prize.
The interim manager’s value goes beyond the standings, beyond whether the Mets finish as the worst team in baseball or merely the third worst. Green’s biggest impact may be the one he’s already had in the organization’s player development pipeline, where he helped shape the progress of Carson Benge, A.J.
Ewing, Nolan McLean, Christian Scott and Zac Thornton. Now he gets a rare chance to keep working with those players from the major-league dugout.
Scott said Green had stayed in touch with him while he recovered from Tommy John surgery.
“It’s nice having some familiarity with the guy that’s coming in,” Scott told Newsday, adding Green would consistently check in on him when he was recovering from Tommy John surgery. “It’s a guy that I can count on and lean on for advice.
I love the way he goes about it. He doesn’t like to beat around the bush.
If something is going on, he tells me what’s going on and how I can get better and the ways I can improve. I love that about him.”
That familiarity matters because Green knows how to push the right buttons. Earlier this month, he told reporters Scott had not pitched to his potential even after throwing five scoreless innings.
Some players might bristle at that kind of comment, but Green knew Scott well enough to understand it would land the right way. Scott’s next outing was even better.
“That’s the familiarity part of it,” Scott said. “You know what makes a guy tick and what they need at certain times - especially on the player development [side of it].
Him being able to do that and having the confidence that that’s what I needed at the time was great. I loved it.”
Benge had a similar reaction.
“Being able to have [Green] over the past year [and] since I’ve gotten drafted and gotten to know him a little bit, he’s the right man for the fill-in job,” Benge told Newsday. “He would always show up and see how I’m doing - nothing too much baseball related.
It would more be like, how are you doing? How are you holding up?
But he’s been there for my whole journey through the minor leagues, so being able to see him as my manager in the big leagues is cool.”
Benge also said Green is not shy about demanding more.
“He always wants more of you,” Benge said. “He knows what everybody is capable of and he just wants to bring it out of them.”
Green, for his part, kept the focus on the players and downplayed his own influence.
“I think these guys that we sent up here, prior to them coming here we believed were more than ready to be here,” said the guy who had a direct stake in getting them prepared.
He also said, “it’s great to have history. It’s great to have seen guy go through struggles.
It’s great to be able to refer back to moments when you connected with them along the way and believed in them. It’s an asset.
It’s not necessary. These guys are man enough to stand on their own two feet and go excel on the field, and they’ve done that prior to me arriving here.”
Still, the connection between Green and those young players was built long before he took over in the dugout. While they were learning the game, he was learning them.
When the season ends, Green is expected to return to his previous role, and the Mets’ farm system will need the attention. A new manager will be hired then, with Beltran a possibility and not a certainty. For now, though, the arrangement fits.
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