Mets ‘will stick with manager Buck Showalter and general manager Billy Eppler’ despite playoffs exit

The New York Mets will stick with general manager Billy Eppler and manager Buck Showalter going into the 2023 season despite the team’s failure to get past the wild-card series on Sunday.

The duo will stay in their roles until at least the end of next season, according to the New York Post, while the club looks for a President of Baseball Operations, though the vacancy does not need to be urgently filled in the offseason.

Showalter’s three year-deal with the Mets runs until 2024 and is worth a total of $11.25 million. He will be paid $3.5 million in 2022, $3.75 million in 2023 and a $4 million in the last year of his contract.

Mets’ Buck Showalter will reportedly stay on as the franchise’s manager going into next season

The Mets also placed its faith in GM Billy Eppler, who’ll be rebuilding the roster this offseason

The 66-year-old is also the highest paid manager in franchise history, overtaking Art Howe’s four-year, $9.4 million contract signed at the start of the 2003 season. 

Running his fifth team in his 21st season as a major league manager, Showalter has never reached the World Series. He would etch his name alongside Gil Hodges and Davey Johnson in Mets lore if he pushes this team to the top. 

‘Billy and I were talking and Steve — we’re trying to do things that fans can trust. Don’t talk about it. Do it. There’s been enough lip service. Not here necessarily, just in general,’ Showalter said. ‘Fans don’t want — you know, show me. Play better.’ 

Under Eppler and Showalter’s management, the club won 101 games this season — the second-highest record in the franchise’s 60 years of existence — but failed to finish as the first seed of the NL East, trailing the Atlanta Braves in the last few days of the regular season. 

If the team had remained in pole position before the playoffs, then it wouldn’t have needed to play in the wild-card round against the Padres, to whom they lost to 6-0 on Sunday night at home.

The New York Mets’ postseason whimpered to an end as they suffered defeat to the Padres

The San Diego Padres beat the Mets 6-0 in the third game of the wild card series Sunday

‘To be honest, it hurts. It really hurts,’ Pete Alonso said after Sunday night’s 6-0 loss to San Diego ended the Mets’ postseason return just three games after it began.

‘It’s not just the losing. It’s kind of the disbanding of the group because every single guy in this clubhouse is really awesome. And it just sucks that it’s not going to be the same group next year because you have free agency, trade possibilities,’ he said.

And now the Mets are on the firing line, entering a winter of constant questions of fight, fortitude and free agency — the group that can go free includes deGrom, Edwin Díaz, Brandon Nimmo, Seth Lugo, Adam Ottavino and Trevor May, and perhaps Chris Bassitt and Taijuan Walker.

In his second season since buying the long-underfunded team, owner Steve Cohen joined with Eppler to boost payroll to $274 million, the Mets’ first time as baseball’s biggest spender since 1989. They hired Showalter as manager to change a clubhouse culture long tolerant of immaturity and unaccountability. 

Players responded by opening a 10 1/2-game NL East lead by June 1, sparking dreams of a championship to join the 1969 Miracle Mets of Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman, and the 1986 swaggerers led by Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter.

Owner Steve Cohen boosted the team’s payroll to $274 million after buying the Mets in 2020

At a giddy visitors’ clubhouse in Milwaukee on September 19, after Scherzer pitched six perfect innings to clinch a postseason berth, Cohen called ensuring the first playoff trip since 2016 ‘just the first step.’

‘This is a lot of fun, right? I mean, it’s a lot better than losing,’ Cohen said then. ‘I have high expectations. … I think this is a team that can go really far.’

But after getting swept in Atlanta, they lost the NL East to the Braves on a tiebreaker — consigning the 101-win Mets to a new playoff round. Cohen was nowhere to be seen in the clubhouse after the season-ending defeat.

Scherzer allowed four home runs to the Padres as the Mets lost Friday’s postseason opener 7-1, and deGrom’s 7-3 victory Saturday wasn’t enough to spark a recovery.

They were shut out for just the fourth time since the All-Star break and hit .185 with six extra-base hits in the series, going 0 for 10 with two outs and runners in scoring position.