While touting Brodie Van Wagenen's "positivity" and ability to be a "team builder," COO Jeff Wilpon said on Tuesday at Citi Field that the Mets got their first choice after considering over 40 people for the GM job.
"We hired our first choice and somebody that we think is gonna be great," Wilpon said. "He's a leader, he's organized, he's gonna be collaborative with our entire staff."
One keyword for Wilpon was "sustainability," which he believes Van Wagenen will help the team achieve while using his "deep" analytic and scouting background.
Wilpon said collaboration will be another key trait Van Wagenen will bring to the table.
"What stood out were some of the bright ideas he had," Wilpon noted, specifically when it came to what he wanted to do collaboratively with the front office. "He's got full support of ownership behind him. ... we're really energized by this."
And Van Wagenen said the collaboration will involve ownership.
"If they're not involved, that's bad ownership," he said.
After explaining all the reasons behind why the team hired Van Wagenen, Wilpon was asked again why the Mets went with such an outside-the-box choice.
"Brodie was the frontrunner for us because of what he talked about in terms of collaboration, excitement," Wilpon said. "I realize that it's out of the box and I said we were gonna be out of the box to start."
For his part, Van Wagenen wanted to "assure all Mets fans that every person in this organization will be fearless and relentless in the pursuit of greatness."
"We will be creative, we'll be collaborative, and we will be proactive," Van Wagenen said, while touching on a number of other topics including Jacob deGrom's future and bolstering the team's analytics department, which you can read more about here.
The Mets chose the 44-year-old Van Wagenen -- formerly an agent for CAA -- after a final round of interviews that included Van Wagenen, 35-year-old Rays SVP Chaim Bloom, and 66-year-old former Rangers and Brewers GM Doug Melvin.