HOUSTON — Kim Ng should be on the Mets’ radar.
Because Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns suddenly has a general manager role to fill after the abrupt resignation of Billy Eppler. And Ng has become available just as abruptly with the announcement Monday that she was not picking up her end of a mutual option to remain as the Marlins general manager.
Stearns has not been prioritizing finding a replacement for Eppler, who resigned upon revelation that he was being investigated by MLB for alleged improper use of the injured list. In part because Stearns’ intention was to have Eppler as his GM. And, in part, because he knew upon taking the job that he had a lot of issues already to address, headlined by finding a manager.
Stearns is still at a preliminary point in finding a successor to Buck Showalter and is planning a comprehensive search despite wide-ranging industry belief that he will ultimately reunite with his Brewers manager Craig Counsell, whose contract expires at the end of this month. The search is expected to intensify in the next two weeks.
But suddenly Stearns has to at least contemplate whether Ng would be a fit and an upgrade for the Mets — it is the capable candidate suddenly becoming available and forcing re-evaluation, whether it is a third baseman or the GM.
Ng did not return a text from The Post, but told The Athletic that she was leaving because she was “not completely aligned” with Marlins owner Bruce Sherman on how to shape baseball operations. It comes roughly 20 months after Derek Jeter, who hired Ng as the first-ever female general manager in MLB, stepped down because of what he said was a philosophical difference between the vision of what he was promised by Sherman and reality.
There was stuff between the lines then about whether Jeter jumped before he was pushed. A source told The Post that Ng wanted to expand her baseball operations staff, remove a few executives who remained from Jeter’s reign with whom she did not reach a good working relationship and not have a president of baseball operations installed above her. She left meetings with Sherman believing she would be rejected on all of it.
She saw that as untenable. Plus, all that was currently on paper contractually was that option year and Ng certainly had the right to ask for an extension after helping guide the Marlins to their first postseason appearance in a 162-game season since they beat the Yankees in the 2003 World Series.
There also are high-profile executive openings that Ng could be in line for that are more attractive than the tight-budgeted Marlins.
The Red Sox have had difficulty recruiting top candidates to replace Chaim Bloom as the leader of their baseball operations department. There is a sense within the game that ownership has become more absentee as it pursues other business avenues and also that manager Alex Cora has growing influence on personnel decisions. That has potentially chilled the market, though Cubs assistant GM Craig Breslow, who was raised in Connecticut and played four years for the Red Sox, is viewed as a potentially strong candidate.
But if a relationship with Cora matters, then during Ng’s first four seasons as the Dodgers assistant GM from 2001-04, Cora was a middle infielder, playing regularly. So the two have history.
But Ng also has history in New York. She grew up in Queens, falling in love with the sport first by playing stickball in the streets of Fresh Meadows. She — like Eppler — served as an assistant GM to Brian Cashman with the Yankees.
And she also would come with a lot of institutional knowledge about the NL East and one rival (Miami) in particular.
Having run a baseball operations department, Ng might not want to have a title (GM), but not the lead authority, which is vested in Stearns. But Steve Cohen has made it clear he would like to fill his front office with as much brain power as possible and he has demonstrated he will pay what is necessary to get what he craves — we can assume being No. 2 for these Mets would pay more than being the lead person for the Marlins.
Two rival executives who have history with Stearns said they thought it was very possible that Stearns would follow the path of Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris, who served his first year on the job in 2023 and got a feel for his front office and needs and then after the season hired Jeff Greenberg as the general manager.
But Ng was not on the radar before Monday. She is now. The Mets have to — at minimum — investigate whether she is interested and if the fit would work.
