The best-case scenario for the 2020 New York Mets and new manager Carlos Beltran is that everything goes according to the master plan of general manager Brodie Van Wagenen. They need each pitcher in their rotation -- maybe that'll include Noah Syndergaard, maybe not -- to be healthy and productive. Beltran and the Mets need Edwin Diaz and the bullpen to bounce back. They need the 37-year-old Robinson Cano to punch back against time. They need Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil to be as good the second time around as they were this past summer.
But there is a distinct possibility that the Mets dissolve early next year, again, given the top-heavy nature of the roster, the lack of farm-system depth, the difficulty of the NL East and the extraordinary pressure that will be on this team right from the start of spring training. Everybody knows 2020 will be a win-now year. Beltran undoubtedly understands there is really no time for him to go through serious growing pains in a job he's never done.
There are three important areas of focus for Beltran as he takes over.
1. Because Beltran has no experience as a staffer in a dugout, he needs a bench coach and a pitching coach who've spent a lot of time working through pitch-to-pitch and batter-to-batter strategy. This hole in Beltran's résumé is hardly a disqualifier these days; the Yankees' Aaron Boone is among those who never coached before becoming a manager of a playoff team. But Boone's transition was aided by the presence of Larry Rothschild, who had been the Yankees' pitching coach since 2011, and Josh Bard, his bench coach.
Beltran needs someone like Rothschild -- heck, maybe even Rothschild himself, given that the Yankees let him go last week -- alongside him to run the pitching staff, and a bench coach like the highly respected Joey Cora, who has had a second baseball life as a coach after a long playing career.
2. To have the best chance to be successful, Beltran needs to build a healthy distance from the Mets' leadership while somehow maintaining a productive working relationship with owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon, and Van Wagenen.
This will be an incredible challenge -- maybe impossible, in the end -- because saying no to the people you answer to is problematic.
But part of the Mets' history of dysfunction is built upon the need of the team's owners to be involved constantly. There will be many times that Fred Wilpon will want to sit with Beltran after a game to chat about the state of the team, and there will be decisions that Jeff Wilpon will want a hand in -- either directly, or through Van Wagenen. This is how it came to pass that former manager Mickey Callaway was getting directives in the dugout about in-game moves, which undercut Callaway's credibility with others in his own clubhouse.
This is not an issue exclusive to the Mets, by the way. In AJ Hinch's first tenure as a big league manager, with the Arizona Diamondbacks, the perception of him among players in his clubhouse was that he was a puppet for the front office, and whether that was true or not really didn't matter. That belief damaged Hinch's ability to lead the players. When Hinch took over the Astros, he carved out a space separate from GM Jeff Luhnow and built relationships with the Houston players, and Beltran, who played for Hinch, knows firsthand that this has served Hinch well. Hinch is now regarded as one of the game's best managers.
3. In Beltran's handling of the media, he needs to grow beyond the reflex he sometimes displayed as a player to become inaccessible. Beltran was 21 years old when he played his first game in the big leagues, and he was deferential to older players, honoring the code of the time that newcomers should be seen and not heard, and when he was traded to the Astros, other veterans led the team, from Jeff Bagwell to Craig Biggio to Roger Clemens to Brad Ausmus.
In Beltran's time with the Mets, however, he frustrated the front office and some teammates by not making himself available at times when the highest-paid player on a team typically speaks. It was in the Beltran vacuum that David Wright became more prominent, out of necessity.
In the last years of Beltran's playing career, his presence became more prominent in the media. During the 2017 American League Championship Series, for example, Beltran often spoke on behalf of his younger teammates in difficult times.
Beltran takes the Mets' job knowing this: As manager of a team in New York, there is no hiding. He will be the most prominent spokesman for a billion-dollar company twice a day, every day, from the middle of February until the end of September, at least.
And the Mets' dream is that Beltran will be holding daily news conferences all the way through October.