A civil war of sorts of could be unfolding at the Mets’ highest level, with team owner Fred Wilpon and COO Jeff Wilpon disagreeing on a path to follow in hiring Sandy Alderson’s replacement to lead the front office.
As The Post reported last month, the elder Wilpon favors an experienced baseball person with roots in scouting and player development over the industry trend of hiring younger executives with a slant toward analytics. The younger Wilpon would prefer a more analytics-savvy general manager, according to sources.
It’s this disconnect that has led to the Mets compiling separate lists of candidates based on baseball ideology.
An organizational source indicated the final call will almost certainly belong to Fred Wilpon alone, which suggests the Mets are fishing from a pool that might include names such as Cardinals director of player development Gary LaRocque, Blue Jays assistant GM Tony LaCava, Rays special assistant Bobby Heck and former Marlins GM Dan Jennings, among others.
Another team source has suggested Terry Collins will likely assume a larger role in the organization, though the former Mets manager is not a candidate for the GM seat. Collins has spent this season in a relatively low-profile role as a special assistant to the GM, evaluating the organization’s minor league players.
It’s unclear if the 69-year-old Collins would be open to the responsibility of overseeing the entire Mets’ farm system — he was the Dodgers’ director of player development in the early 2000s — or if he might become a top adviser for the elder Wilpon, in the same manner as Omar Minaya, who returned to the organization last offseason to help with amateur scouting. Minaya, is among the team executives spearheading the GM hunt.
Fred Wilpon’s leaning toward an “old school” approach in the front office is a source of exasperation to many within the organization.
“Fred is obsessed with the Yankees,” said an industry source with knowledge of the situation. “And yet he doesn’t understand a thing they are doing.”
The Yankees in recent years have become an analytics-heavy organization that considers scouting and player development as central to their mission.
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