Mets manager search: Joe Espada, Buck Showalter among potential candidates, per report

NS New York Mets It’s been a busy couple of weeks: first time hiring Billy Eppler the club’s new general manager, then continue free sign agent Consists of Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Mark Canha, and Eduardo Escobar. The Mets will have to keep applying finishing touches to their roster once Lockdown caused by the owner of Major League Baseball end. In the interim, the Mets can focus their full attention on another important task: identifying and hiring their new manager.

The Mets are one of the two teams without a captain. (The other, the Oakland Athletics, has allowed incumbent manager Bob Melvin to step down from a similar role with San Diego Padres before this season.) While New York has yet to do any interviews, SNY’s Andy Martino provided an update on potential applicants Friday night.

According to Martino, the Mets have some degree of interest in the following individuals:

As is often the case today, those candidates can be streamlined into two buckets: senior coaches with organizations seen as progressive in nature (Espada, Quatraro, and Kelly), and teams Experienced growers are currently unemployed (Showalter and Ausmus).

It’s unclear which of the five are favorites – if any of the five can be labeled as such at this stage – but Espada is familiar with Eppler from their shared time in New York Yankees organization.

An individual who doesn’t appear to be in the Mets business is a longtime major league quarterback Curtis Granderson. Martino tweeted on Friday that Granderson’s name had popped up in internal chats, but he is not expected to interview for the position as the Mets are looking for someone with coaching experience.