As of right now, immediately, it really doesn’t matter what promises Sandy Alderson made to Terry Collins. Because as of right now, immediately, Alderson has it within his grasp to make a move that would be the first legitimate game-changer on his watch as general manager of the Mets.
As of right now — actually, as of about noon Friday — Joe Maddon is no longer in the employ of the Rays. Which means one of the two or three best managers in baseball is now a free agent.
Which means Alderson already should have made an inquiry.
Look, we can argue for hours about the true impact managers have in a sport dictated by the whims of line drives that are caught and bloopers that fall safe. Ned Yost entering Friday three games from winning a world championship is only the latest affirmation you needn’t be Phi Beta Kappa to make it to the finish line.
Still, the great managers give you the best chance to survive the 162-game grind, put you in position as often as possible, give you the greater chance to maximize the talents on your roster. That much is indisputable. Maddon already has one of the more improbable baseball turnarounds ever on his dossier, turning the Rays from hopeless drifters in the sport’s hinterlands to perennial contenders.
If he is available, you go after him.
You run after him.
And if the cost of getting it done is changing your mind about Terry Collins? Then you knock on Collins’ door, you ring him on the telephone, and you say: We love you, we appreciate what you’ve done for us in times of trouble, we hope you will stay with us. Just in a different job.
Hey, it happens. A college coach might be happy with his quarterback or his point guard, but if there’s a better quarterback or a better point guard available in next year’s freshman class, then he’ll recruit over his incumbents in an eyeblink. If Dick Young were available tomorrow, I suspect The Post would be more than eager to recruit over me. That’s how it works.
The Mets have spent far too long trying to convince us the future is imminent, just a little bit further beyond the bend, just wait, you’ll see, and they’ve far too often allowed their ultimate decision-makers to sabotage these sentiments by locking up the corporate checkbook and failing to have the heart — among other anatomical necessities — to make the team better. Reports that Jeff Wilpon emphatically denied the Mets will change managers only prove that Cabinet of Stupid is still in session.
But it needn’t be permanent. The Mets actually showed they might be changing their organizational thinking when they did the right thing the other day and hired Kevin Long as hitting coach. That’s a good start.
This is a better one. The Mets going after Maddon — and at full speed, no half-hearted, half-measure pursuit intended to place or to show, as they have done so often — sends an immediate message, even a month before the hot-stove league truly starts to percolate. And it is the best message possible, from a team whose credibility gap grows exponentially every year:
This time, we’re serious.
This time, we’re all in.
Look, it may well be Maddon wants no part of New York, sees some other openings across baseball — starting with the Cubs, perpetually in search of a hero to end a 106-year drought, blessed with the youngest everyday talent in the game — and politely declines the overture. But Maddon always has seemed charmed by the give-and-take of New York when he has visited with the Rays, and certainly owns the gravitas to immediately dig in around here.
Either way, the Mets have to find out. They have to recruit Maddon, even at the cost of recruiting over Collins — for whom Maddon worked as a coach in Anaheim and whom he replaced on an interim basis in 1999. Collins is a good man, a good baseball man, a worthwhile employee to retain, to reassign elsewhere in the organization.
But he isn’t Maddon as a manager. As of right now, immediately, Maddon is available, and he is free to work anywhere in baseball he chooses. Maybe that’s New York, maybe it’s not. Maybe he’d rather wait to see if Don Mattingly winds up ousted in Los Angeles, so he can be reunited with his former boss, Andrew Friedman.
Either way, the Mets have to find out. They have to ask. They need to be ready to dust off that corporate checkbook. Right now.
Immediately.