This thing the Mets are doing with the general manager's job, it's a fascinating decision, potentially a brilliant one. Give it a chance, Mets fans. Sure, the hiring of agent Brodie Van Wagenen reflects a willingness to think outside the box, but that's baseball's new normal these days.
Here's the thing to know about top agents, of which Van Wagenen was one. First, there's an overall understanding of how all 30 teams operate, and which ones do it right and which ones don't. He knows who the smartest people are and how they go about their business.
This is the most interesting part of this whole deal. Had the Mets gone the traditional route, they would have hired someone from one team, someone familiar with the inner workings of maybe a handful of clubs. There would be important structural and philosophical things he or she could not know about, say, 28 other teams.
Van Wagenen will bring some understanding of all 30 front offices to the job. That's because owners confide in agents, bounce things off them, seek their input. They become sounding boards for team executives frustrated with their manager, star player, medical staff, you name it. Their database of institutional knowledge is deep.
In fact, the Mets' path to hiring Van Wagenen began when their chief operating officer, Jeff Wilpon, reached out to Van Wagenen, who co-founded the baseball division of Creative Arts Agency in 2006, to ask for recommendations. Wilpon knew Van Wagenen had insight into the best teams and best people.
Here's the other thing to know about agents. The best ones have great people skills, and that's especially important as baseball lunges into the information age and tries to figure out how best to utilize the mountains of data being produced. To balance the delicate collaboration between analysts, coaches and players can be tricky. Walls separating front offices and clubhouses in decision-making never made sense anyway, but the best teams have torn them down. People skills are essential in this quest.
People skills are also how agents recruit players, how they keep those players happy and how they convince a club that signing this player or that one is the smart move.
And this: Agents are master networkers. They spend hours around the scouts, personnel people and college and high school coaches on the ground floor of player development.
In short, they know stuff, and that's why Van Wagenen's hiring is uncomfortable for some, especially some of his fellow agents and competitors, with whom he may not have a great relationship. Suddenly, they must all work together as Van Wagenen takes over the baseball operations of one of the game's marquee franchises.
Van Wagenen has represented some of baseball's biggest stars, including Jacob deGrom, Yoenis Cespedes, Ryan Zimmerman and Robinson Cano. Astros manager AJ Hinch is another of his biggest names, as well as one of his closest friends.
"The path to high-ranking jobs [has] never been more creative," Hinch said.
That's the bottom line. The Mets have hired someone who is smart and curious, someone who loves the sport and knows the game's best people, franchises and structures.
If the Mets give Van Wagenen the freedom and resources to utilize all that he has learned over the past two decades, he may just build the model for the 21st century front office.
He'll have a learning curve, too. This will be a journey of discovery, just as it would be for any new executive hire. But he begins with a unique skill set. He may just do great things.