And then there were two.
The Mets narrowed their search for a head of baseball operations to two candidates on Thursday, eliminating Brewers senior adviser Doug Melvin from consideration, an industry source confirmed. The two finalists are Rays senior vice president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom and agent Brodie Van Wagenen.
The 35-year-old Bloom had a second interview with the club on Wednesday — he met with team owner Fred Wilpon and COO Jeff Wilpon — and issued a statement a day later, preferring not to participate in a conference call with reporters, as he remains employed by the Rays.
“We had a productive meeting yesterday,” Bloom said in the statement. “There was a lot of baseball conversation and I enjoyed the time we spent together.”
The Mets are expected to reach a verdict by next week, ahead of the GM meetings that begin Nov. 6. Though teams are prohibited from announcing new managerial and general manager hires during the World Series, MLB allows an exception on travel days, leaving Monday as a possibility for the Mets to hold a press conference at Citi Field, if the Fall Classic still hasn’t concluded.
Bloom, a Yale graduate, has a deep background in analytics and is well-regarded within the industry for helping keep the Rays competitive on a tight payroll. He was previously a candidate for GM vacancies with the Phillies and Twins.
Van Wagenen, 44, is the co-head of CAA’s baseball’s division, whose clients include Jacob deGrom, Yoenis Cespedes, Noah Syndergaard, Brandon Nimmo and Tim Tebow.
“Brodie has really put himself out there,” a major league executive said, noting that Van Wagenen risks losing clients because it is known he seeks the Mets job. If Van Wagenen is hired by the Mets, the point will become moot because he will stop representing players.
But Van Wagenen also faces a potential conflict of interest in that his star client, deGrom, is only under club control through 2020 and his long-term future must be worked out. Among the Mets’ considerations are whether to buy out deGrom’s remaining arbitration years or trade him near peak value this offseason (a scenario that seems unlikely given deGrom’s popularity and the fact he is likely to win the NL Cy Young award).
The 66-year-old Melvin, a former GM with the Rangers and Brewers, has been in semi-retirement since 2015, when he stepped aside from leading Milwaukee’s front office. In a conference call with reporters earlier in the week, Melvin said he would have brought a blend of player development/scouting and analytics to the position.
As it stands, the Mets lag behind most of the major leagues in full-time analytics personnel (they have three full-time employees), which suggests they will look to bulk up that department if Bloom is hired. The fact Van Wagenen, a Stanford graduate, lacks experience in baseball operations suggests the triumvirate of John Ricco, Omar Minaya and J.P. Ricciardi will remain in place to guide the front office if he is hired. That group took over after general manager Sandy Alderson stepped aside in June to battle his recurrence of cancer.
In the past week, MLB executive Kim Ng, Cardinals director of player development Gary LaRocque and Tigers’ vice president of player development Dave Littlefield were all eliminated from consideration for the job. In addition, former Red Sox GM Ben Cherington, Indians GM Mike Chernoff and Twins GM Thad Levine were among those who declined to be interviewed.
