Mets Strong Arm Eric Chavez from Yanks

Highly regarded former Gold Glover joins Mets as hitting coach...

On Wednesday, Deesha Thosar of the New York Daily News reported that the New York Mets had their sights set on an “exciting, headline-grabbing hire” for their vacant bench coach position with a “tricky negotiation process” standing in the way of that addition.

Thosar noted in her story that former Mets All-Star and short-lived manager Carlos Beltrán was not a candidate, so, naturally, social media took the report and ran wild with speculatory suggestions.

Curtis Granderson, David Wright, Terry Collins, you name it. Fun times. Hey, finding any sort of excitement during this lockout has been a tough task. We will assuredly enjoy what we can.

As it turns out — per Mark Feinsand of MLB.com, who had it first — the mystery candidate was former Oakland Athletics star third baseman and Billy Eppler protege Eric Chávez.

And despite New York’s interest in Chávez as the team’s bench coach, he will reportedly join Buck Showalter’s staff as the Mets’ hitting coach and fill their bench coach position with a “younger, analytics-driven individual” (Thosar, NYDN).

Shame on us. The links were there. Only thing is, no one would have ever guessed Chávez was available.

Chávez was reported to have been hired as the Yankees’ new hitting coach earlier this offseason. Off the board, for all intents and purposes. And the Metsies stepped in and bullied their man out of the Evil Empire’s grips.

Not since Johan Santana spurned The Bronx for Queens the same week the New York Football Giants handed the New England Patriots a participation trophy etched 18-1 have we seen this type of power shift. Once again, fun times.

And it appears the Metsies got a good one.

Chávez, 44, was hired as a special assistant to Eppler with the Yankees in 2015 (while simultaneously serving as an analyst for A’s television broadcasts) and rejoined Eppler in the same position with Anaheim from 2016 through 2018, taking over as Triple-A Salt Lake’s interim manager for the final stretch of the Bees’ schedule in 2018.

As a player, Chávez was an on-base darling (.268/.342/.475, 115 OPS+ career line; .276/.397/.501, 134 OPS+ in his peak 2004 campaign) with a fair amount of pop (averaged 28 home runs per season from 2000 through 2006) and was a six-time Gold Glove Award winner at third base in Oakland (2001 through 2006).

With Showalter’s staff nearly assembled (pending “very thorough” background checks, per Mike Puma of the New York Post), all we need now is some traction on the labor stalemate and we’ll be cooking with gas.

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