I think there is one obvious manager candidate that no one seems to mention, Super Joe McEwing. McEwing was a Met fan favorite while with the team…. Baseball America named him one of their managers of the year the past two years (High A in the White Sox organization). And unlike Backman he does not come with the baggage and potential public relations nightmare….

But the real key is his relationship with LaRussa and Dave Duncan. Joe came to the majors with the Cards and was a favorite of LaRussa, who respected him so much he requested a pair of the Joe’s spikes when he was traded to the Mets (for Jesse Orosco). Why is this important, because Dave Duncan can have more of an immediate impact than any manager or GM the Mets can hire. The timing is perfect, he would have never left the Cards in years past, but now he is upset with the way the Cardinal organization, the local media, and fans handled the situation with his son.

– Reader Dan, via e-mail.

On the surface, Dan’s case is an interesting one. After all, if the Mets are serious about considering Wally Backman — currently a short-season A-ball manager — to helm their big-league club, why wouldn’t they be willing to hire a current High-A ball manager in Flushing? And Super Joe, like Backman, led his team to a lot of success in 2010, taking the Winston-Salem Dash to the Carolina League championship series, where they (it? Are we pluralizing Dash?) lost to the Potomac Nationals.

But I have a pretty strong feeling Joe McEwing, at 38 and with no managerial experience above A-ball, will not be the Mets’ next skipper. And if we’re going to campaign for such unlikely solutions, I might as well lobby for an WPA generator like some folks at Amazin’ Avenue keep advocating.

And maybe there’s a role for Super Joe on the Mets’ bench. Brooke from SNY’s Original Programming department just suggested they could hire him to be a roving bench coach, first-base coach, hitting coach and third-base coach all in one. I remember reading that he was a popular guy in his time with the team, and that David Wright especially was sad to see him go. But though we know the Mets love hiring ex-Mets, it does seem a bit random. Plus they keep saying all hires will be up to the new GM.

I will say that I was no fan of Super Joe during his time with the Mets. I recognize now that there’s some value in a guy willing and at least vaguely able to play absolutely anywhere on the field, but the combination of his inability to hit with the media’s tendency to fawn over him turned me off. But then that really has no bearing on his ability to manage or coach a team.

Several interesting names have been floated by the Mets as potential saviors. Some are absurd: Former Diamondbacks GM Joe Garagiola Jr. has no business running a big-market franchise. Neither does White Sox assistant GM Rick Hahn. But if the Mets are serious about, say, Sandy Alderson, then their fans have reason to believe change is coming.

The former A’s general manager – pre-Billy Beane – is exactly the man the Mets need. Alderson guided the A’s to four division titles, three pennants and a world championship in 1989, which means he has a winning pedigree.

– Bob Klapisch, Bergen Record.

Look: If you’re seeking sweeping, declarative statements about who should or shouldn’t be the Mets’ next GM, you might want to avoid TedQuarters for the next couple of weeks. I mean, click over to check out stuff about Taco Bell and astrophysics and whatever else might come up, but I do not plan on endorsing any particular man or woman as definitively the right person for the job. Not my style.

Klapisch has been writing about baseball a lot longer than I have, and maybe knows something about Rick Hahn that I don’t. But everything I’ve read suggests that Hahn has plenty business helming a big-market franchise. In fact, Bill Madden, who has been writing about baseball a lot longer than Klapisch, suggested Hahn would be a great fit for the Mets today.

Of course, I’m an arrogant bastard who doesn’t put a whole lot of stock in other people’s opinions, so I’m not willing to trust that either Klapisch or Madden knows what’s best for the Mets.

What I know for certain is that the next couple weeks will feature a whole lot of writers pointing squarely at this guy, this guy or that guy, and I will do my best to assess the arguments based on the evidence presented and resist the temptation to bury my head in the sand until it’s all over then start lambasting the new GM for whatever he or she does wrong.

So as for Alderson: Klapisch pleads his case because he engineered the successful A’s teams in the late 80s and early 90s, went to an Ivy League college and is a Marine-trained tough guy. His Wikipedia page says he mentored Billy Beane. Madden dismisses Alderson because he’s over 60 and “firmly ensconced” in his current role with Major League Baseball.

As for Hahn: Madden includes him in his list of candidates, citing people “throughout the game” who believe Hahn to be “bright, organized and a workaholic.” Madden points out that the areas of his expertise — contracts, etc. — might overlap a bit with John Ricco’s, but that the White Sox have taken to sending Hahn out on scouting trips as well.

Though Alderson was the CEO of the Padres from 2005-2009 and I have no idea exactly what that role entailed, it sounds like Hahn has been a lot closer to baseball operations a lot more recently, and comes from the business background now en vogue for general managers.

So of these two, Hahn seems like the more reasonable choice to me, but then, still, I really have no clue. In the coming weeks we’re going to try to get in touch with some people with better, closer perspectives on these and all the other most-discussed candidates for episodes of The Baseball Show to get a little more informed.

But I don’t expect to come away from those shows any more confident that I know the right choice for the Mets’ next GM. Truth is, we won’t know if the right choice has been made until a year or two after the choice has been made.

The Mets need to be fumigated, stripped bare and built from the ground up. There is no patch job here.

Let’s face it. Your team is filled with losers.

That’s not harsh. Sadly, it’s reality.

Professional sports has a short menu — wins and losses. None of the other stuff really matters…

– Rob Parker, ESPNNewYork.com.

I read this article and planned to just let it go because I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for Parker’s writing since he wrote a Newsday column about the dedication of the 4,000-some die-hard fans at Shea at a rainy August game I attended with my brother.

But I got three e-mails pointing me to this “disaster” piece, so I figured I should at least mention it. Here’s what I’d say: Not even worth our time. It’s so heavy on brazenly worded platitudes and so thoroughly devoid of substance that it reads like the very worst of Bleacher Report.

I have almost no doubt some editor said, “Mets fired Minaya, we need someone to stir some s*** up for pageviews… What? Wally Matthews is already on his way to Minnesota? OK, Parker, you’re on it.”

And Rob Parker was like, “Here’s the scoop: The Mets are losers and should trade everyone.”

And the editor was all, “That sells. Think you can squeeze 800 words out of that?”

And Parker said, “Meh, barely, but I’ll really stretch it out.”

And so we have this column. The Mets are all losers. Because Omar Minaya tried to make a World Series winner and didn’t, you shouldn’t keep any of the players from the team he assembled. Logic!

Oh, and the only substantive solution: Cliff Lee. Cliff Lee will win the NL East on his own next year, even though he’s a 32-year-old pitcher who will likely require a contract that will ultimately become an albatross.

Wait, what am I doing? I thought I said I wasn’t going to bother. Carry on.

The front-page poll on SNY.tv asks the right choice for the next Mets’ manager. Early returns have Bobby Valentine in the lead, followed by Wally Backman.

Those are the men most frequently rumored to replace Jerry Manuel and so their position in the poll should come as no surprise. But it’s at least mildly interesting that Valentine and Backman have reputations as managers who would rather put themselves under fire put any heat on their players, since Manuel, at various times during his tenure, appeared to do the opposite.

The Mets’ manager leaves to the trumpets of reporters heralding his kindness, but I have heard multiple former players note the way Manuel always seemed to divorce himself from the things that went wrong in games and wonder how the guys on the team would react. And there were all those times Manuel laughed with the press at the expense of his players.

Of course, to Manuel’s credit, a lot of times he wasn’t responsible for the things that went wrong in games. Many times he was charged with managing a roster that George Patton couldn’t have led to victory. And perhaps some of those former players were biased by the team’s lackluster performance and record.

Truth is, no one but the men involved knows the nature of Manuel’s relationship with his players. We know that Manuel presented himself as a nice guy. In my lone one-on-one interaction with him — an off-camera interview in the SNY studios after the 2008 studio — he definitely seemed like a nice guy.

But all I can say for certain is that there’s a grayscale of human decency and Jerry Manuel — like all of us — falls somewhere on there.

We know he really liked bunting — sometimes with his No. 3 hitter — and appeared to love using the same reliever over and over again until he proved ineffective. Neither quality makes for a great manager. Ideally, the Mets’ next manager won’t do those things.

But he’ll inevitably do some other things we’ll complain about, and then if the team’s not winning, we’ll call for his firing. It’s kind of how it goes.

As a Mets fan, I’m happy Omar Minaya was relieved of his duties today. I’ve been banging this drum for over a year, maybe longer: The guy did not come close to maximizing the resources available to him to make the Mets a championship team.

Still, watching him address the media today after his meeting with the Wilpons made me feel sorry for Minaya, even though I know he’s still making seven figures for the next couple years and even though, as a Mets fan, I’m near certain it’s what’s best for the team.

So though some nasty part of me, anticipating this, felt tempted to put together a comprehensive list of all Minaya’s questionable-to-bad moves in his tenure with the Mets, all the baffling contracts and bizarre roster decisions, I now feel no desire to do so. Everybody knows why Omar Minaya got canned. It’s better to look forward.

Problem is I really have no idea what happens now. About a billion names — and combinations of names — have been thrown around as potential replacements, and all of them, of course, have both decorations and blemishes on their resumes. Some seem promising — Terry Ryan, Rick Hahn, Josh Byrnes, to name a few — and none seems downright awful.

But I’d be kidding myself and all of you if I pretended to know the GM market well enough to be able to point to one candidate and say for certain that he or she is the right fit to build a sustainable contender in Flushing.

I know the Mets have the resources to create that contender, in the hands of the right person. They play in a brand-new stadium in a huge market and regularly field teams with payrolls upwards of $120 million. Plus for the first time in a while, they actually have a decent — if unspectacular — crop of young players nearly ready to contribute at the Major League level.

So I suspect it might not take as long as we fear for the next GM to point the ship in the right direction. But first, of course, we must find out who’s at the helm.