Buck Showalter at Mets' camp, even though there are no players
Mets manager Buck Showalter talks to the press during practice at the Clover Park baseball fields in Port St. Lucie, Fla., on Friday. Credit: Octavio Jones
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — All Buck Showalter needs now is some Mets to manage.
As the club’s new skipper, Showalter has reported to spring training, even though spring training hasn’t started yet because of the lockout enacted by commissioner Rob Manfred and team owners. So he is biding his time by getting together with his coaching staff and front office — including meeting some folks in real life, instead of on Zoom, for the first time — and thoroughly discussing everything from player debriefs to plans for a shorter-than-normal camp to what transactions might come once business resumes.
"We’re just trying to use our time wisely," Showalter said Friday. "It’s going to be a moving target. Going to get a phone call hopefully and the players are going to be here and we got to be ready to go the day they walk through the door. The teams that are ready to go when they walk through the door are ahead of the game. It’s not if, it’s when. You need to be ready."
MLB expects spring training, when he does start, to last about a month.
Is that long enough?
"Yes," Showalter said. "The answer can’t be ‘no,’ right? We’re all operating on the same."
Showalter does have experience in this arena. Along with the White Sox’s Tony La Russa and Astros’ Dusty Baker, he is one of three active managers who also had that job during spring training 1995, which lasted about three weeks in April when the players returned after their strike. That was his last year with the Yankees.
More than a quarter-century later, Showalter said he still has his notes and daily schedules from back then and has referenced them in deciding how best to prepare a team with a camp that will be significantly shorter than the usual 6-7 weeks.
The greatest challenge, Showalter said, will be getting pitchers ready. Most years, a little arm soreness or fatigue or pain wouldn’t be a big issue as far as being ready for the regular season. This year, it might be.
"The biggest problem is you don’t have that buffer," Showalter said. "That dead arm period can’t happen on Opening Day . . . [Pitching coach] Jeremy Hefner and I were talking about some of the challenges you have and the temptation to go too fast. You pay that piper."
Two months after being hired, Showalter still hasn’t spoken to any of his major-leaguers, but he has done plenty of studying.
"I feel like I know them now," he said. "But you still want to walk through a stretch line and talk to them. You want to have them in your office with the door shut and get to know their families and things. You got an idea about things, but I don’t want to have any prejudices about something when they come in. I want to have a clean slate about it."
That touched on another theme of his 20-minute media session: He wants to be ready for players’ arrivals, but he doesn’t want to know too much. A benefit of having a coaching staff largely new to the organization, including hitting coach Eric Chavez, third-base coach Joey Cora and first-base coach Wayne Kirby, is that they aren’t deeply familiar with the roster.
"There’s some conversation about players where I just go, ‘Hold on, I want to make up my own mind,’" Showalter said. "And I want the players to know they’re getting a fresh look, with a memory of the good things you’ve done already. That plays into it, too."
