Mets beginning search for Sandy Alderson’s eventual replacement
His job deemed successful, Sandy Alderson is stepping aside.
The Mets team president is planning to step down once the club has found his heir, the team announced Thursday.
Alderson will shift to a new role as special adviser to owners Steve and Alex Cohen and the senior leadership team.
In September 2020, Steve Cohen announced he would hire Alderson if he was approved as Mets owner, which lent more credibility to Cohen’s bid to buy the team. In November of that year, the package deal took over control of the organization.
“When I asked Sandy to come back to the team, it was for a defined period of time and with a specific mandate – revive our culture and this iconic franchise for our fans, partners and employees,” Cohen said in the statement. “Sandy has done those very things and more and we have begun a search for his successor.”
The Mets did not offer a timetable for when they intend to find his replacement or a hint at how wide the hunt would be.
“For me personally and for the organization, it’s the right time for this transition,” Alderson said. “We are having a successful season, we have made several key additions to our senior leadership team and we have built a strong and forward-thinking culture. When the time comes, I am looking forward to continuing to support Steve, Alex and the organization in a new role.”
The transition will end Alderson’s second tenure in charge of the Mets, having replaced Omar Minaya as general manager in October 2010. He endured a tightening of the payroll during the Wilpon regime, constructed the club that reached the World Series in 2015 and then took a leave of absence in July 2018 citing a recurrence of cancer.
He did not return to the position but did eventually return to the organization, cancer-free, when Cohen called.
“I’ve committed to a couple of years, but it’s open-ended,” Alderson said at the time. “I don’t want to die with my boots on, but I think this is going to be a great couple of years. We’ll see where it goes.”
It did not go as planned for the 74-year-old. Alderson’s Mets hired Jared Porter as the GM in December 2020, only to fire him a month later after a scandal emerged in which Porter sent unsolicited lewd photos to a female reporter.
Alderson’s Mets then announced assistant GM Zack Scott would be the acting general manager. Scott was arrested for allegedly driving while intoxicated and was placed on administrative leave in September 2021. He later was acquitted, but only after he and the club had parted ways.
Alderson, who was hired to manage the business end of the operation, instead played a larger role in the baseball side during the 2021 campaign because of the front-office voids.
Last offseason, Alderson and Cohen interviewed a slew of candidates for the role of president of baseball operations and could not find a qualified taker. Eventually the search was abandoned, and the Mets hired Billy Eppler to come aboard as general manager.
Eppler has been lauded for his offseason work, including signing Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Mark Canha and Eduardo Escobar. It is unclear whether the Mets intend to hire a president of baseball operations above Eppler, and it is unclear whether Alderson’s more business-focused position will be filled or folded into one team president position.
The big-name candidates the Mets eyed last winter – including Theo Epstein, who built World Series winners with the Red Sox and Cubs, and Brewers president David Stearns – likely would not be natural fits for the business role Alderson is leaving.