Jared Porter Brings Mets Credibility by Paying His Dues

The hiring of Jared Porter as the Mets general manager makes all of this refreshing.

Rather than hire from within the organization, the Mets hire an outsider to be the general manager.

Rather than hire a puppet who never paid his dues like Brodie Van Wagenen, they hired a general manager that put in the work to be in the position he is today.

Rather than hire a general manager that the president of baseball operations can control, they hired a general manager who can make moves on his own intuition.

This should signal progress for an organization that tends to operate as a mom-and-pop under the Wilpons. Under new Mets owner Steve Cohen, he will do whatever it takes to win if it means hiring an outsider rather than hire friends and family to run a team. Things changed for the better just like that.

Porter paid his dues by scouting for the Boston Red Sox under then-general manager Theo Epstein. He joined Epstein to the Cubs and helped play a role in leading the once-star-crossed franchise to end a 71-year National League pennant drought and a 108-year World Series championship drought in 2016 as a scouting director. He oversaw scouting in his role as the Arizona Diamondbacks senior vice president and assistant general manager.

All of this helped him move up the ladder to finally be the general manager of the Mets. His work as a scout makes this hire a good one.

In a league that judges players more on analytics, it’s refreshing that the Mets hire a general manager that has an appreciation for scouting. There’s a place for scouting even in today’s game. Scouting plays a paramount role in finding and developing talent. There’s something to be said about a player’s character that a general manager must trust in building a roster.

The Mets need to do much better in drafting players and improving the farm system. This is where Porter’s scouting background comes to play.

Porter’s scouting background helps him be ready to handle the grind of being the general manager and overlooking everything. He knows this is a year-long job.

Porter’s work as a scout brings credibility to this Mets organization. The Mets can expect him to be persistent in working on getting an unheralded player he wants and get. He will put in the time at his job. He fits Cohen’s objective of wanting to build a team organically as in scouting college players or high school players and draft and develop them. He likely will hire guys that share the same background as him.

It won’t mean he will forget analytics. He worked with bosses that emphasize analytics, so his knowledge of it and his ability to apply it will be a plus. Having a general manager that knows analytics and scouting should be a plus for an organization that lacks both.

Watching Porter’s introductory presser on Zoom, he came off as a guy that knows what he is talking about rather than just saying buzzwords that sound good. There was no snake-oil salesman talk. It was more of a substance than style. He expressed the importance of building a team on defense, especially up the middle and having a versatile roster. He appears to have a plan and conviction on what to do in building a team. This comes from the knowledge he applied from working with Epstein.

His experience of working in big-market cities should prepare him to handle New York. He knows patience, and he knows not to be reactive for the sake of being reactive. He will make moves when it makes sense, not because the media or the fanbase want him to do. Too many times, the Mets made moves on the influence of public thinking.

Porter’s hiring makes sense since he was hired to build a team with an eye on the future. His hard work experience of building a team for the long-term should come in handy.

No one knows if this hire produces results, but the hiring sounds encouraging in the sense the Mets hired a general manager that actually knows what he is doing. Porter is actually not learning on the job since he has done the legwork over the years as an assistant. They hired a guy that learned from the best in Epstein.