3 NY Mets who can help save Billy Eppler's GM job

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Firing Billy Eppler has been a talk amongst New York Mets fans for weeks now. The underachieving ball club is not only out of the playoff race but fighting to get back to just .500.

This season has all of the markings of a potential “blow it all up, start anew” with the club dealing away several of their impending free agents and making a front office splash by bringing in David Stearns in the offseason. Eppler’s job should be in jeopardy right now. Maybe one of these three Mets can help save it.

1) NY Mets manager Buck Showalter can help save Billy Eppler’s job this season

Nobody may be able to single-handedly do more to save Eppler’s job than the manager, Buck Showalter. He’s fighting for his own job although it’s probably far less likely the Mets fire him than Eppler. Unless Showalter and the Mets mutually agree to part ways or they finish with the worst record in the National League, Showalter staying for next season seems very likely. Baseball is, unfortunately, not as much a results-driven business as much as it is about the process.

How’s that working, Philadelphia 76ers?

It’s Showalter who will have to eat the Mets’ team record most. Even though he doesn’t grab a glove or bat or throw a ball in the game, he’s the one who gets a tally mark for every win and loss. A massive turnaround by the Mets is in the hands of the players most. However, if Showalter can somehow summon more life out of this crew, he may inadvertently help keep Eppler around a little longer while doing himself a lot of favors to stick around, too.

Many fans have already turned on Eppler completely and a strong finish won’t change their minds about his future. What if certain players step up and help pad Eppler’s resume?

2) NY Mets DH Daniel Vogelbach can help save Billy Eppler’s job this season

Daniel Vogelbach knows a thing or two about Mets fans calling for his job. The struggling DH was always an imperfect fit for the Mets roster. Limited to DH duties with no glove to be seen from him yet since joining the ball club, a resurgence from him can have us wondering if maybe Eppler did make the right move in bringing him back for the 2023 season and then providing him with a long leash.

A pair of 3 RBI games against the Houston Astros plus some other hits versus the St. Louis Cardinals has raised Vogelbach’s stock since coming back from his mental health break. He’s suddenly hitting .230/.354/.363 on the year. For a lifetime .219/.344/.407 hitter, it’s more than what we could’ve hoped to get out of him.

It’s far too soon to award Vogelbach with any Most Improved Player Award. A good week is too little for him to have helped make any impact on what Steve Cohen will do about Eppler after the year. But what if this continues?

Let’s say Vogelbach does get back to being the .255/.393/.436 hitter he was with the Mets last year? The sudden surge in power would provide the Mets with a much more dangerous starting lineup, at least against right-handed pitchers.

This is exactly what Mets fans have been waiting to see from Vogey all year. As much as he gets criticized and his style of play perplexes, fans are willing to embrace him.

The team record will have a lot more to do with whether or not Eppler’s job is secure, however, a vastly improved Vogelbach can be one of those strikes in his favor.

3) NY Mets pitcher Jose Quintana can help save Billy Eppler’s job this season

Hopefully not the Jed Lowrie of Eppler’s tenure, we have yet to see Jose Quintana actually appear in a game. He’s still in the recovery process from a preseason injury. Fears of a repeat of what happened with Carlos Carrasco in 2021 are all too real, especially when we’ve seen just about every starting pitcher on this staff underperform. Maybe only Kodai Senga has met expectations depending on what you thought of him.

Yes, it’s ultimately Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander whose job it is to uplift this team and carry them to the playoffs. Anybody could have paid them. They were moves made more by Cohen than Eppler.

Quintana was more of a straight-up general manager signing. Hoping to capitalize on his 2.93 ERA effort in 32 starts last season, Eppler inked the veteran lefty to a two-year deal worth $26 million. So far, so nothing.

A monstrous finish out of Quintana might be the perfect excuse, even if the Mets do miss the postseason, for Cohen to wonder how things could’ve been if Quintana didn’t get hurt. It’s farfetched to put so much faith and reliance in one pitcher who has spent most of his career being pretty average.

After the St. Louis Cardinals acquired Quintana from the Pittsburgh Pirates last year, he made 12 starts and went 3-2 with a 2.01 ERA. If this is what the Mets get out of him, Eppler’s going to have another argument on his side.

There will be a ton of factors in deciding whether or not Eppler is the man for the job. Notably, is he the key to signing Shohei Ohtani or will a giant stack of Benjamin Franklin do the trick? Cohen hasn’t shown himself to be overly reactionary with the organization. We’re still getting to know him. The Eppler decision will be one of the bigger choices to make.

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