Buck Showalter an ageless baseball wonder yet an old fashion mind, both fighting against each other but not plausible to work together. A man who has been in the game since before the Yankees magical Dynasty struck, before Barry Bonds became the face of baseball and before Johnson and Schilling led the snakes to their inevitable triumph. Two of his former teams going on to win the World Series yet without him at the head of the throne.

Showalter is a man ingested in the world of baseball and because of his long and distinguished résumé he is in the top ten of active managers with the most wins. He is by all means the essence of old fashion baseball and empowers the bridge between the youth and the old. No matter where the Buck goes he brings a level of responsibility and dedication to the team. But why is Buck one of the more difficult managers to have?

Buck Showalter was first hired by the Yankees in 1992 working his way up from an interim manager all the way up the rankings yet he never stuck when it mattered most. Buck has provided essential leadership values for these struggling teams, from NY to Arizona to Texas to Baltimore back to NY, any and all love Buck for his selfless mastermind at putting a winning team on the field.

He is a 3 time manger of the year and has won one in each decade since the 2000s. Yet with baseball rapidly evolving, Buck hasn’t evolved his mangerial style.

Buck is a one of the more relaxed managers in the game, he has only been ejected less than 15 times in his 30 year tenure, so his methods of managing aren’t as aggressive and in your face as other managers might use. No matter what the results are Buck always has a positive attitude to the situation.

He knows even if his players aren’t playing as they should be he gives them the benefit of the doubt and knows they can play better but doesn’t burden them as a manager instead fills them up with positive reaffirmations as they battle through though slumps. He views all his players as equals to fight the same battle no matter what. He values heart over logic and at times it feels like Buck makes head scratching decisions that don’t always turn out the way he wants. But that doesn’t matter to Buck, he knows baseball is about shlumping but getting back up and always keeping your head up even in the most dire times.

A negative of Buck that has always seemed to diminish his through résumé, and that’s not establishing adequate playing time for rookies. Rookies need to struggle and know it’s okay. They don’t need to always perform at the highest pedigree of success to be on a major league roster. Buck values veteran talent over rookies even if the Rookies prove to be more valuable than the veterans.

With any other manager they would immediately remove the veteran player if they aren’t playing to standards and play the rookie. Yet Buck is different, he doesn’t like to point fingers at peoples struggles and knows this game is hard and with that gives endless chances for redemption for the veterans. Until no longer an option Buck will start his aging vets as much as he possibly can.

An example of this is with his current team he looks over; The New York Mets who after a year going 101-61 is struggling to make due with an $800million roster in year two of Buck. 2023 is the year of many Mets rookies blossoming into major league players. With the new generation of 21 year old catcher Francisco Alvarez, young 3B Brett Baty, Japanese pitcher Kodai Senga and now DH Mark Vientos who is having his playing time cut short due to the Mets struggling veteran DH Daniel Vogelbach.

He has valued the big beefy Vogelbach over the rookie sensation Vents for far too long. Vientos who had over 40 homers and slugged .500 during the stretch of 2022-2023 in the minors. Yet every day he sits rotting on the bench, it is outright outrageous what this man is doing to the confidence of the young star and to the entire team. He is not putting pressure in the team or frankly sticking up for what is right as a manger. Just yesterday during the Subway Series, RHP Drew Smith was ejected from the game for apparently having ‘sticky stuff’ on his hands, this was before he even threw out a single pitch. What did Buck do? He simply was treating the situation way too relaxed and didn’t try and argue with the umpires who clearly made a stupid mistake. Again, Max Scherzer who pitched against the Dodgers in LA during the Mets April west-coast trip was ejected for sticking stuff, though that seemed more visible he had something illegal on his hands, and yet Buck wasn’t defending his player as he should be.

The Mets have dealt with their fair share of problems and bad luck, all blaming ownership and past managers not stepping up to the problems. When Steve Cohen hired Showalter before the 2022 season this was suppose to be a problem the Mets didn’t have to worry about. Having a tough sophisticated baseball mind at the realm of the team was what he was hired for, yet he didn’t show an ounce of care to challenge the call or defend his player. Terry collins would have ran right onto the scene demanding a second look at the player not going with the flow and respecting the insights of the umpires. Like when Noah Syndergaard threw a pitch inside that hit Chase Utley back in 2016 which led to Syndergaard being thrown out of the game. Utley was the player who ran into second baseman ‘Ruben Tejada’ as he was stealing second the year prior during the NLCS series the Mets had against the Dodgers in 2015. Collins was furious and demanded that Syndergaard stays in the game, he knew what was on the line with his arguing with the umpires. But he still chose to defend his player and separate ego over emotion. The call stood and both Syndergaard and Collins were ejected from the game but the boldness and shear fight Collins put up is exactly what the Mets are needing now in their manager.

It is time to bring some accountability into this situation! Stop prancing around on your high horse with excuse after excuse! Why did you pinch hit Guillorme for Vientos, that move made utterly zero sense. You clearly not showing a sense of leadership has the whole clubhouse acting very casual about their jobs. But the second you show proper initiation and demand change then change will come. When you had a private closed door meeting the team immediately knew what was at hand with their 6 game loosing streak and started playing their butts off, yet it was derailed by a vicious loss to the Pirates.

Im sick and tired of this utter destruction of a 101 win team to a disaster team that looks to be 77 win team. Im sick and tired of the complaints twitter brings about this team and Im sick and tired of Frank Fleming ‘Frank the Tank’ always trashing this team to the extreme during our losses. Buck isn’t new to this type of stuff. The most notorious of it all was back in 2016 when he was the manager of the Orioles. During the Wildcard game he plummeted the entire game by putting in Ubaldo Jimenez in a tight game instead of his star closer Zach Britton who was having an elite season. Briton had one of the best closer seasons of all time, having an ERA of 0.54 in 63 innings and 47 saves, he gave the ball to Jimenez who had a 8-12 5.54 record and messed the whole game up.

He does things based on his inevitable stupid thinking and thinks too hard with each play that a lot of what he does is not based on common sense judgement but just what he thinks would be best in this particular situation. Get yourself together Buck! This is why you haven’t held a managerial job in the 4 year span from 2018-2022! You are an old fart who simply judges games too harshly and isn’t there as an adequate manager as you were hired to do so. The Mets won’t be a good team without a fire headed manger on their side. Before the Mets get better you need to be a better commander and leader, work on being smarter and stop filling the void of continual losses with excuses.

Own up to your mistakes and do it quickly. It is the middle of June, it is time to turn the clocks around and start putting wins on the field. You have a lot of pressure to turn this $800 million payroll into an actual winning organization and it starts today! The Oakland Athletics have a better winning streak than the Mets currently (W7) and that is utterly embarrassing. Time to shake off the past and look forward, it is time to act smart and act now!