Mets conducting interviews for next team president; Sandy Alderson expected to remain with organization

When Sandy Alderson returned to the Mets in 2020, he laid out a vision for how the franchise could transform in the Steve Cohen era.

“The Mets are a storied franchise, if you will,” he said at his first news conference as team president. “Some of the stories have been good. Some of them have been bad. If we want to be an iconic franchise, which I think we are capable of doing, we have to write more good stories than bad, and occasionally we have to write a really epic story.”

Those were lofty ambitions, but in the first two years under Cohen and Alderson, the Mets have traveled a significant distance toward their goals. That is a credit to many people, not least the two at the top of the organization.

Now, with Alderson’s contract set to expire at the end of December — he never planned to remain as president for more than a few years — the next phase of that long-planned transition has arrived. With Cohen and Alderson’s mutual agreement, interviews are already underway for the next team president, according to sources with direct knowledge of the situation.

The names of the interviewees are unknown and no hire is imminent. In fact, the process could easily stretch into next year. Alderson is said to be willing to remain in his role as president until Cohen finds the right candidate, even if that stretches beyond when his contract expires. After that, he will likely stay with the Mets in an advisory position after that. Cohen values Alderson highly and wants him to remain in the fold.

This is not to be confused with a search for a president of baseball operations. A team president — like Alderson, the Yankees’ Randy Levine and the Boston Red Sox’ Sam Kennedy — oversees all aspects of an organization, from business to marketing to communications and more.

While the exact nature of this job could change shape depending on the individual chosen, the Mets are so far speaking mostly to candidates with backgrounds in business — in other words, names not necessarily familiar to baseball fans.

When Alderson steps out of his current role, he will have left the franchise in strong shape, even after a bumpy first year for him and Cohen. Their initial choice for general manager, Jared Porter, was fired after evidence of prior workplace harassment came to light. His successor, interim GM Zack Scott, was growing into the job but lost it after a DWI arrest (Scott was later found not guilty).

After an exhaustive and at times highly frustrating search for a top baseball executive last fall, the Mets hired Billy Eppler as GM last November. Cohen is said to be pleased with Eppler’s work, and the 10 months since have been far smoother, both on the field and off.

In addition to leading the National League East for most of the season, the Mets have pleased fans with events honoring their history, from Keith Hernandez’s number retirement ceremony to Old Timers’ Day. A general sense of optimism about the present and future permeates the organization.

Alderson, 74, began his career as a pioneer of analytics in baseball as GM of the Oakland A’s in the 1980s. He later worked as an executive vice president in the commissioner’s office and was CEO of the San Diego Padres.

He first served the Mets as GM in 2010, and stepped down in 2018 because of a recurrence of cancer. His health is currently fine, said a Mets source, and is not a factor in this transition, which is merely an execution of the plan that he and Cohen sketched out two years ago.

In 2020, Alderson returned to the organization to help shepherd Cohen into the baseball business.

The new group may not yet have turned the Mets into an “iconic” franchise, to use Alderson’s term, but the organization is now brimming with confidence and believes that it is on its way.