NY Mets POBO: Apply within for the best yet least desirable job in MLB

When will the agony end? When will the New York Mets finally hire a President of Baseball Operations?

Apparently, it’s a job nobody wants. I won’t even list all of the names that have already turned down the gig. Many have even deflected the chance to interview for the job.

How can this be? Steve Cohen was supposed to change everything. Instead, after a 2021 campaign with its own craziness on and off the field, the top executives in the game Cohen and Sandy Alderson have considered are shunning the idea of doing their Scarface from Half Baked impression and quitting in style to join up with the big cats in Flushing.

What’s so undesirable about the Mets front office right now?

We can only speculate. For all we know, this is getting way too blown out of proportion. Frankly, who is even familiar with half of the candidates aside from the original big three of Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, and David Stearns?

Is working for Cohen that horrific? Does the stink from the previous regime and failings from 2021 make people want to reconsider the offer? In our new culture of Zoom press conferences, is New York a little too intimidating?

The answer is probably a little bit of all of these things.

Everyone knows the Big Apple is the place to be but there is a security in being the big fish in a small pond. Fail in New York and everyone sees it. Build a .500 baseball club out in the sticks and you might get a statue built in your honor.

Surely, some of these people who have turned down the chance to interview do have a sense of interest but would prefer to stay where they are. Upward mobility will still come calling for many of them. Other jobs will open up with different ball clubs. Who wants to move to New York and pay those city taxes anyway?

When the Mets first had prominent people turning down the job, it was to be expected. Reach for the stars and you’ll come up short but still come away with something spectacular.

Weeks later, still with no answers and a coaching staff in need of an overhaul as well, the Mets could have a major problem on their hands. The longer this takes and the more people who turn down the offer will make it tougher to find the right fit.

This makes me think of the Asch Conformity Experiment. You can look it up on your own time, THIS IS MY TIME!, but basically, it’s about how people are sheep who will conform to what others say or do even when they think something else. And that’s the danger this can become. If such well-respected people don’t want the Mets job offer, others may think to themselves “maybe I don’t want it either.”

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I understand this way of thinking, too. You don’t apply for a job on Glassdoor with terrible reviews. This just happens to be a much larger vocation than the fry cook one you had a couple of summers ago.