PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Buck Showalter is trying to use his time wisely.
With the owners’ lockout about to hit Day 80, Showalter’s days are less hectic and much slower. He gets ample time to sleep. He has time to meet and get to know his coaching staff in person, rather than Zoom calls. He has time to study his new players and prepare for their arrivals at spring camp. He even has time to notice large paw prints on one of the backfields, paw prints that he believes belong to a panther.
And though minor leaguers have arrived at the Mets facility, beginning to stretch and warm up and greet one another after the long offseason, it is quiet at the Clover Park grounds without major leaguers. The absence of 40-man roster players is stark.
“It’s going to be a moving target,” Showalter said Friday of the lockout eventually ending. “We’re going to get a phone call, hopefully, and the players are going to be here and we gotta be ready to go the day they walk through the door. The teams that are ready to go when they walk through the door will be ahead of the game. It’s not if, it’s when. And you need to be ready.”
The new Mets manager hopes the latest round of negotiations between MLB and the players union will lead to good news soon. Though talks between the two sides have moved slowly since Commissioner Rob Manfred authorized a lockout on Dec. 2, meetings are expected to pick up next week. The sport has already blown past its usual spring training report date, and MLB wants four weeks of camp before the regular season can start. That means the two sides must reach an agreement by or around Feb. 28 for a March 31 opening day to avoid being delayed.
When asked if Showalter believes one month — instead of the customary six weeks — of spring training is enough to get the players ready for the regular season, he said: “Yes. The answer can’t be no.” The 65-year-old skipper is prepared with a set of dates that players could enter camp once the lockout is over. Showalter and other Mets officials are busy completing their physicals and other routine annual exams to ensure they’re done and out of the way before major leaguers go through the same process. The word “thorough” is insufficient to describe Showalter’s readiness for player arrivals.
Still, as much as he and other team officials can prepare, the usual sights and sounds of spring training are missing from Port St. Lucie. There is no Jacob deGrom throwing triple-digit heaters during one of his many pre-season bullpens. There is no Pete Alonso sending baseballs to the moon during batting practice. There are no fans running around the complex hoping to get a quick picture or an autograph of one of the newest Mets, Max Scherzer. There are no instructions or drills from coaches. There is no big leaguer claiming he is in the best shape of his life.
“I know the [players] physically, statistically and all those things — but you still want to walk through the stretch line and talk to them,” Showalter said. “You want to have them in your office with the door shut and get to know their families. You have an idea about things, but I don’t want to have any prejudices about them when they come in. I want to have a clean slate about it.”
During this odd time, Showalter is leaning on his experience from 27 years ago, when spring training was delayed due to a work stoppage in 1995. Then, he was in his fourth and final year managing the Yankees. His wife, Angela Showalter, has kept all of his notebooks and schedules from that delayed spring training. So the waiting and wishing for baseball to return is a familiar feeling for the veteran skipper.
Showalter mused: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
