Sandy Alderson Will Step Down as Mets Team President

Sandy Alderson, the longtime Mets executive, will step down from his position as team president when his successor is found, the club said on Thursday night. When the search is complete, Alderson, 74, will hand over the day-to-day oversight of the Mets and transition into a special adviser role for the team’s leadership group and owners Steve and Alex Cohen.

The announcement, while not unexpected, marked a clear end to the multipart Alderson era in Flushing. After serving as the team’s general manager from 2010 to 2018, Alderson returned to the Mets in 2020 at the behest of Steve Cohen when Cohen bought the franchise. As the president of baseball and business operations, Alderson helped oversee the team’s reconstruction on and off the field.

“When I asked Sandy to come back to the team, it was for a defined period of time and with a specific mandate — revive our culture and this iconic franchise for our fans, partners and employees,” Cohen said in a statement. “Sandy has done those very things and more, and we have begun a search for his successor.”

Alderson’s fingerprints are evident throughout the current Mets roster from his time as G.M., when he helped build a team that won the National League pennant in 2015 and earned a wild-card spot the following year. (They haven’t reached the playoffs since.) He stepped down in the summer of 2018, in the midst of a losing season, because of a recurrence of cancer. But a year later, Alderson announced that he was cancer free after joining the Oakland Athletics as a senior adviser.

As Mets team president, Alderson has presided over a bolstering of the club’s infrastructure and spending, both leaner under the previous owners.

He also waded through a series of misfire hires and scandals: G.M. Jared Porter, who was fired a month into his new job in 2021 after allegations that he had sexually harassed a female reporter in a previous position with another team; acting G.M. Zack Scott, who was arrested in 2021 and dismissed from his role but later found not guilty of driving while intoxicated in White Plains, N.Y.; and Manager Mickey Callaway, who was fired by the Mets in 2019 after two years with the team and later suspended by M.L.B. and fired by the Angels after a sexual harassment investigation.

When Cohen assumed control of the Mets, the team wanted to hire both a president of baseball operations to work under Alderson and a general manager. But after striking out, they hired Porter as G.M. and Scott as assistant G.M.

With both gone, the Mets tried again to hire a president of baseball operations last winter but struck out again, struggling to attract an accomplished leader. The Mets instead hired only a general manager — Billy Eppler, the former G.M. of the Angels — and Alderson said then that they might revisit hiring a president in a year.

The Mets’ reputation has improved this season, with Cohen spending not only on a franchise-record $288 million major league payroll (for luxury-tax purposes) but also on overhauling departments of the club and bolstering employees’ salaries. And on the field, the Mets have won, entering Thursday in first place in the N.L. East, a position they have held most of the season.

“For me personally and for the organization, it’s the right time for this transition,” Alderson, a former Athletics G.M. and Major League Baseball commissioner’s office executive, said in a statement. “We are having a successful season, we have made several key additions to our senior leadership team, and we have built a strong and forward-thinking culture. When the time comes, I am looking forward to continuing to support Steve, Alex and the organization in a new role.”