If Mets fans had their way, star prospect Francisco Alvarez would be the starting catcher on Opening Day 2023.
However, GM Billy Eppler sees things a little differently.
Eppler spoke to media Wednesday at the GM Meetings in Las Vegas, and discussed the opportunity Alvarez will have heading into next season.
"He's got to earn his way on the roster," Eppler said. "We'll see and he'll get an opportunity to do that."
Tomas Nido and James McCann served as the Mets' catchers for the 2022 season, and baring any trades, both will be on the roster next year. The Mets called up Alvarez from Triple-A Syracuse on Sept. 30, as he played five games at the end of the regular season. Most of his time in the big leagues came as a DH, but the 20-year-old did log 13.0 innings over two games at catcher.
Eppler was then asked if the catcher position will be a competition in the spring, and said it's a possibility the team could carry all three catchers on the roster.
"As we're constituted right now, we have Tomas Nido entering arbitration, we have James McCann under contract. How our roster sits right now, and the flexibility that some of the players bring that are on that 26-man roster, we could carry three catchers. That's something that could happen.
"If you did, you'd want to kind of diversify their skillsets a little bit. So if one's particularly offensive and another one's particularly defensive, that's a compliment you could do. So we could carry that largely because of players like [Luis] Guillorme and players like [Jeff] McNeil that can serve multipurpose."
Eppler also spoke to SNY's Andy Martino in a one-on-one interview and touched on the idea of carrying three catchers, adding that "at this stage of the season it's really hard to forecast what this roster is going to look like as we get towards spring training."
"If we did that, that would mean one of them would take some at-bats as well," Eppler said. "So just kind of really want to preserve as much optionality as possible and we'll see what the next couple months has in store."