Sandy Alderson’s plan upon returning to the Mets was to oversee the entire organization, with a president of baseball operations and general manager beneath him.
Then it became Alderson and just a GM.
On Tuesday, it became entirely the Sandy Alderson show.
Following GM Jared Porter’s dismissal — he was fired after ESPN reported he sent lewd text messages to a female journalist in 2016 — Alderson indicated he has no immediate plans to fill the position. It will leave Alderson running the front office, with a GM-by-committee of sorts.
The key players are assistant GM Zack Scott, senior strategy officer John Ricco, vice president of amateur and international scouting Tommy Tanous, head of pro scouting Bryn Alderson and senior director of baseball operations Ian Levin. In addition, Ben Zauzmer was recently hired from the Dodgers to oversee research and development. Joe Lefkowitz, a research and development manager, also participates in the daily Zoom meetings.
Scott, a former Red Sox executive, was runner up to Porter for the GM job. His strength lies in analytics.
“One of the things we will be lacking is sort of the same breadth of contacts and information that we were able to get through Jared,” Alderson said. “Jared has lots of contacts in the game — not just at the GM level, but at the assistant GM level and below. That’s a rich source of information and can lead to smaller deals that fill out our roster. That is an area we going to have to pick it up.”
Alderson’s involvement to this point has come in the larger transactions, highlighted by the trade that netted Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco from Cleveland.
“My attention to the baseball side will increase somewhat and we’ll see how things develop,” Alderson said. “One of the things I was happy about was how the front office team was developing as a group, led by Jared.
“Jared was energetic, he was knowledgeable and I was really happy with the direction it was taking. That is of secondary consequence in this situation, but I will be a little more involved, but I have great faith in our group and I am sure they will be able to step up.”