Mets should get on with it and fire Mickey Callaway after latest clubhouse embarrassment

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It’s hard to know where to even start with this.

Wait, that’s not right. You can start by chuckling at the notion of Mets pitcher Jason Vargas, a 36-year-old man, trying to fight a reporter in their shared workspace. Obviously there’s a lot about a Major League clubhouse that makes it an unusual place to do business, but since it is not a boxing ring or a UFC octagon, it is not really an appropriate venue for adults to throw hands. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, though, and these are the New York Mets.

Is this the first case in baseball history of a player lashing out at media? Hardly. Do incidents like this, whenever perpetrated by the Mets, get amplified by confirmation bias as more evidence of the club’s comprehensive organizational haplessness? Sure. Is this extremely on-brand? Oh, heck yeah. Should Mickey Callaway still be the Mets’ manager come Monday night’s game in Philadelphia? Probably not.

I defended Callaway in this space a month ago, noting that the big-talking team’s obvious lack of depth from the start of the season was not at all his fault — it’s on ownership and the front office, undoubtedly, and it seems unfair to sack a guy stewarding a flawed team to a .500 record.

And I’m always wary of going too hard at a manager over specific in-game pitching changes (or lack thereof) because a) fans of all 30 teams are always convinced their manager sucks at handling his bullpen and b) one time, early in my career, I ripped Willie Randolph for not using a reliever I later learned was going through some heavy personal stuff and probably better served not pitching that day. The bullpen decisions we lament often come with better justifications than the ones managers share publicly.

That’s good, because just last week Callaway provided arguably the worst reason ever offered for a bullpen decision after turning to heavily worked righty Robert Gsellman (rather than fresh-armed rookie Stephen Nogosek) in the ninth inning of a game they were winning by eight runs. Callaway claimed he was concerned starter Jacob deGrom would leave runners on base for whatever reliever replaced him, and he did not want those runners to come around and score and hurt deGrom’s statline. deGrom already has a Cy Young Award under his belt, he probably isn’t going to win one this year no matter what happened in that game, and he signed a nine-figure contract extension with the Mets this offseason. Why are you managing to save this guy’s ERA?

Callaway’s frustration over reporters questioning his bullpen decisions led to Vargas hold-me-backing a beat writer. In Sunday’s game, effective Mets closer Edwin Diaz — who has pitched only once since June 15 — watched from the bullpen as reliever Seth Lugo allowed a go-ahead, three-run homer to Javy Baez with one out in the eighth in the Cubs’ 5-3 win. Callaway said he had been willing to use Diaz for a four-out save but not, for whatever reason, a five-out save, which is obviously baffling on face.

Again, hindsight on all these things is 20/20. Since it’s the Mets, it’s not at all unreasonable to speculate that something is ailing Diaz and they’re nudging him to work through it, as they do, but that wouldn’t really explain why they should be willing to let him get four outs and not five, since there’s no certain way to predict how many batters a reliever will face in either instance.

Also since it’s the Mets, it’s not at all unreasonable to speculate that there’s an active Fight Club charter that meets behind their bullpen in the middle innings of games, encouraged by ownership to foster toughness, and that bigger, crappier relievers keep pounding Diaz into submission. The Fight Club possibility, honestly, probably best explains the Gsellman decision from last week: Since it was Nogosek’s first day in the big-league bullpen, per the eighth and final rule of Fight Club, he would’ve had to fight.

It’s really not Callaway’s fault that he only has, at most, three relievers in his bullpen he can trust to maintain any sort of lead whatsoever. And it seems worth noting that Callaway, in his prior job as Indians’ pitching coach, was in some way responsible for that team’s brilliantly negotiated relief corps in its 2016 World Series run.

But dropping a “mother(expletiver)” on a reporter for criticizing you suggests your time running a baseball team has run its course, and it seems like there’s practically no chance whatsoever Callaway is the Mets’ manager by opening day of 2020. And if that’s the case, really, then there’s no good reason Callaway should continue on being their manager for the rest of 2019. No sense leaving him and the players dangling in uncertainty for the next couple weeks, knowing that every pair of consecutive losses may bring the axe.

Bench coach Jim Riggleman, who has already been an interim manager four times in his career and whose tendency to join teams that will soon have managerial openings seems borderline suspicious, is the natural fit to be the interim manager. Maybe a shake-up invigorates the team — or is at least someday credited post hoc for invigorating the team — or maybe they continue playing lousy baseball. Either way, cursing out a beat writer for wondering why you didn’t turn to your closer to get five outs seems like a good way to ceremonially conclude your tenure as Mets manager in 2019, and letting Callaway continue on at this point would appear just another in the never-ending cavalcade of bone-headed Mets mistakes.

Sunday’s big winner: Zack Sucher

Technically Sucher was Sunday’s big second-placer, but that doesn’t fit with this newsletter’s subhead format. The 32-year-old golfer won over $600,000 for his runner-up finish at the Travelers’ Championship, a life-changing amount of money for a guy recently mired in credit-card debt after injuries threatened to derail his career.

Quick hits: Newton, LaVar, Holzhauer

– Someone got video of Cam Newton offering a fellow airline passenger $1500 to switch seats with him so the 6’5″ Newton could have more legroom. Feels like a weird thing to film, honestly, but I guess part of the trade-off you make when you become Cam Newton is that people are going to capture your earnest efforts to secure more legroom and tweet them out to the world. It seems weird that the person turned him down, but there are so many potential factors in play. What if that person is already rich, doesn’t need an extra $1500, and at this moment — the outset of a transatlantic flight — would rather have the leg room? What if that person is traveling alongside a nervous flyer, and can’t be sure that Cam Newton will provide the calm comfort his loved one needs?

– LaVar Ball defended the inappropriate comments that got him banned from ESPN. He’s full of it, but this is LaVar Ball; he’s always full of it, 100% of the time. Doesn’t seem like leaving him off ESPN is going to wipe him off the media radar. We’re probably still going to post LaVar Ball news, like, every single day, and people are going to click on it every single day. This man is making suckers of us all.

– HOLZHAUER ALERT: The game-changing Jeopardy! champ, who says he “played online poker semi-professionally in the early 2000s,” will enter two World Series of Poker events this summer after poker pro Mike Sexton offered to sponsor his buy-ins. He’ll donate half his winnings to charity. Holzhauer rules. The fact this guy hasn’t been milkshake-ducked yet suggests he’s probably a truly decent dude, and I hope he enjoys a long time in the limelight as a famous smart person.