The minute he was appointed as the New York Mets‘ manager after the Carlos Beltran fiasco, a myriad of players, coaches, managers and baseball personalities praised the team decision and said Luis Rojas was the right man for the job.
Now, given the unique circumstances of the 2020 MLB season, and Rojas’ experience managing in the Winter Leagues – among other things – we can probably say that he is the perfect man for the job of leading the Mets to the postseason – and maybe more – in the COVID-19 shortened calendar.
Rojas is young at 38, yet he has loads of experience managing groups and practically grew up in a baseball field, being the son of Felipe Alou.
At 38 years old, he has already managed the Savannah Sand Gnats, Class A ball in the Mets’ system; Binghamton Rumble Ponies in Double-A; and the Leones del Escogido in the Dominican Winter League.
As it turns out, the 2020 MLB season is a lot like a regular Winter League season. There, each game is crucial, as the calendars are short. At Escogido, he played a 50-game season. He knows what it’s like.
“There will be challenges on a daily basis,” he said to MLB.com about playing in this environment, filled with coronavirus, uncertainty, and fear, not to mention empty stadiums and little rest.
“Every time you sit down,” Rojas said on Thursday, “you think about the shortness of the season.”
The Mets’ skipper has what it takes
The Mets’ skipper says he speaks a lot with his father, especially since MLB action was halted in mid-March. Alou also knows a thing or two about strikes and bad blood between owners and players, as his Montreal Expos were cruising along in the 1994 short season.
There is a feeling around the Mets that Rojas is ready for anything that this year may throw at his team. Oddly enough, the team he managed in Winter League is known, in English, as the “Chosen One Lions.”
Rojas has already acknowledged how “similar [the 2020 season] is to the winter league … in terms of the length of the season”.
In addition to the already mentioned challenges for the New York Mets and Rojas, they will have to play games in a tough NL East division and also against difficult foes in the AL East, such as the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays. Yet, he projects the calmness and the confidence that lets Mets fans know that they will have what it takes to compete.