We are bringing back Josh Byrnes and Sandy Alderson for a second round of interviews with Fred, Saul and me. Josh is scheduled for Monday and Sandy for Tuesday as we continue our search for the next General Manager of the Mets.
John Ricco and I spoke personally with Allard Baird, Rick Hahn, Logan White and Dana Brown earlier today to thank them for their interest and taking the time to interview with us.
– Jeff Wilpon, Mets press release.
First of all: Cool. Byrnes’ record in Arizona isn’t perfect, but he seems like a better choice than, well, Allard Baird. This article from 2008 provides some background.
Second: Is it weird that we keep hearing every detail of the Mets’ GM search directly from the Mets? Do other teams do stuff like this?
From strictly the blogging perspective, it’s a hell of a lot better this way than sorting out endless anonymously sourced rumors and speculation, I suppose.
Tedquarters 
I dont know if other teams do it but your right, I like it. This way I know what is what, and will wait for official word from the Mets if I know it will be comming in a reasonable timeframe, instead of wasting my time with rumors.
I mean we constantly hear fan complain about the Wilpons and the Mets not being straight forward with the fans. I’ve heard I think literally thousands of callers on WFAN scream that they just want to hear from ownership to lay out a “the plan”. Well they asked and they are now receiving, via email and Facefook, and update to “the plan” every other day.
Ted “Mr.BigTime” Berg. I’m back. When do you interview for the GM Position? After you get the job, you should talk with Theo Epstein, and the other dude from Bayside,Queens who now is the GM for the Texas Rangers. Start a whole new youth movement and get some interest back into the Mets world. Go SanFran Giants one more win.
This is definitely good news.
I still would have preferred an Alderson-White combo or something to an Alderson-Ricco combo, but either way there will be a huge upgrade in the front office.
It gives me hope that they really are somewhat chastened.
If I put myself in their shoes over the past number of years, they thought that they’d got a dynamic new leader in Omar, and were on a new, positive course.
2006 – Yes!
2007 – Well, these things happen. That’s why you play the games.
2008 – also horrible, but hey, we didn’t have a closer, and still took it to the final game of the season. And we’ll have a new stadium next year!
2009 – injuries.
2010 – holy sh**e, we have a problem.
So, hopefully, they’ve decided to revamp every aspect of the way they do things. I still feel in my soul that Jeff approaches the problem of how people are thinking about the team in a “how can I manipulate the way people are thinking about the team” kind of way, but at least he (presumably) realizes that his previous attempts at manipulating everyone’s thinking have been dismal failures.
To me, this seems like the Mets front office are taking a stab at being open, honest and accountable for a change.
Agreed, 100%. I think this is an intentional attempt at transparency (to a degree, at least), and I welcome it.
As a Dodger fan, I can say I’m ecstatic that Logan White will not be the choice. As a Dodger fan, I can also say that no, every team does not operate with such transparency. I’m not sure either organization would be considered a model to follow these days, but it is nicer to hear from your team, rather than speculate based on rumors.
Did you read the comments to the Byrnes article? Every last one of them was apoplectic and had nary a nice thing to say about him. Sure the fanbase can be finicky especially when the team is losing, but thats surely a bit of a red flag.
Really? The commenters on SBN’s diamondbacks blog seemed to have nice things to say.
This is entirely too good to be true, something horrible and unexpected has to be coming.