Remember when the Mets hired Brodie Van Wagenen instead of Chaim Bloom and it probably didn't matter after all?

A tweet from October 25, 2018, has resurfaced on whatever they’re calling it these days. In the post-Sandy Alderson era when the New York Mets front office was patched together with multiple heads calling the shots, there came a time to make a decision about who the new general manager would be.

The Wilpons went with Brodie Van Wagenen. They could have gone after Chaim Bloom.

It’s relevant today because Bloom was fired this week by the Boston Red Sox. Viewed as a rising star in the baseball executive world at the time, the Mets chose to instead go with a player’s agent. The results weren’t very satisfying. Mets fans can only wonder if Bloom would’ve had more success in Queens or if the same thing that happened in Boston would’ve happened here.

What if the NY Mets hired Chaim Bloom instead of Brodie Van Wagenen?

We wouldn’t have Jed Lowrie as a punch line. Todd Frazier never would have come back at the 2020 trade deadline. Robinson Cano would have been someone else’s problem on the payroll.

Van Wagenen made a lot of errors during his time with the Mets. He also introduced us to Edwin Diaz. He managed to lock up Jacob deGrom for multiple years. It’s easy when the guy is a former client of yours.

Around the same time Van Wagenen was making some of those moves, Bloom was trading away Mookie Betts. If he was the one doing the Wilpon's dirty work, would deGrom have been traded away instead of extended? It's a bit moot considering how much time deGrom missed. It still could have turned out as a disastrous Mets trade we'd remember Bloom for most.

As it turns out, Van Wagenen and Bloom didn't operate all that differently. BVW went with bargain options in 2020 for the pitching staff much like Bloom did by signing James Paxton. Van Wagenen pushed Zack Wheeler out the door after acquiring Marcus Stroman to "replace" him. Bloom did something similar by replacing Xander Bogaerts a year early with Trevor Story.

Van Wagenen at least made constant attempts to improve the current roster. It hurt the farm system, but he stuck with it. Bloom, on the other hand, came across indecisive. He didn’t commit to a sale in 2022. In 2023, he committed to nothing at all.

Mets fans will get their taste of what a young hotshot baseball mind can do with the arrival of David Stearns whose reputation is impossible to avoid comparing to Bloom before he went to the Red Sox.

Choosing Van Wagenen definitely didn’t serve the Mets well, but it looks like the other direction wouldn’t have been all that much better.