When it was announced the new GM of the New York Mets would be Brodie Van Wagenen, agent Robert current Mets players Jacob deGrom and Yoenis Cespedes, some legitimate questions arose. And I think, with how the Mets brought Cespedes to the table to restructure his contract, we ought to re-examine those questions that could lead to major trouble for the team should Brodie go unchecked.
Conflicts of Interest
As reported by Sheryl Ring, Esq., Van Wagenen was Cespedes’s agent when he signed his $110 million contracts in 2016. Van Wagenen’s approach to convincing the Wilpon’s “This is the right move,†was to bring in headlines from the papers. The tact was to show Cespedes “puts butts in seatsâ€. So Van Wagenen was there to work out every minute detail of the wording in the contract. Fast forward a few years, Van Wagenen is GM, Cespedes is hurt in an encounter with a wild boar, and Van Wagenen stops paying Cespedes to get him to come in and rework his contract. Or if Van Wagenen used the language he saw put into the contract as the basis for the grievance he filed with MLB, which he said he wouldn’t do because of conflict of interest, it seems Van Wagenen needs to have reigned in a bit for the sake of the Mets.
Collusion
Van Wagenen is a former agent with many former clients still playing. What happens if it’s revealed that he used his relationships with these players to lure them over to the Mets? The Clippers got in trouble for this with Kawhi Leonard and Paul George over this, what would stop Rob Manfred from following Adam Silver’s lead?
ESPN analyst, Jessica Mendoza, still broadcasts for ESPN but is a front-office employee under Van Wagenen. Mendoza is tasked with evaluating player talent, while also needing to provide color commentary ON THE TEAM SHE WORKS FOR! Van Wagenen could very easily use Houstonian tricks to pry insider info from Mendoza, who travels the country for her job, to try and get an early edge on the other GM’s in baseball, creating problems not only for the Mets but Mendoza and ESPN.
The Mets need to think long and hard about what Van Wagenen is doing, and if it’ll be worth getting punished by baseball for at a later date.