Jauss In, Alomar Out

Stop the presses! The Mets have hired Dave Jauss as their bench coach for 2010!

I can envision people dancing in the streets upon hearing this extraordinary news.

Seriously, though, it’s an interesting choice. Clearly, Jauss is Jerry Manuel’s choice — Manuel hired Jauss as a minor league manager while serving as Field Coordinator for the Expos about a hundred years ago. The two go way back, and remain good friends.

And as Ken Rosenthal notes, Jauss is hardly a threat to Manuel in terms of taking over as manager. His managing experience consists of two successful years in the minors — one in A and another in AA — and he hasn’t held such a position in 15 years. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be considered as an interim manager, but he wouldn’t be looked at as a replacement in the same way someone like Bob Melvin or Eric Wedge would.

More signifcantly, the fact the Mets went with Manuel’s choice and not Melvin or Wedge shows that pressure is on Manuel to win. In other words, they have eliminated at least one excuse for failure by giving Manuel the responsibility to hire his own staff. If the team is a disappointment, Manuel can’t go back and say he wasn’t surrounded by the right coaches, because he picked them.

In related news, Sandy Alomar, Jr. has left the team to become the Indians’ first base coach. Good for Sandy, we wish him well. I can’t say that it’s a great loss for the Mets, because I didn’t see his work with the Mets’ catchers result in significant improvement over the course of the past two years. That’s not to say he’s not a good coach — I’m sure he is — but rather I’m saying that his contribution wasn’t so impactful that the Mets will miss him. It’s not like he turned Omir Santos into Johnny Bench, and in turn Santos’ defensive play and game-calling helped the Mets win an extra 10 games.