A Recipe for Success: Pitching, Depth and Service

Billy Eppler briefly tried out life as a player agent but he is back to running a team. And this one has a seemingly unlimited budget.Credit...Saul Martinez for The New York TimesPORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — If you didn’t know better, you might have thought Billy Eppler changed sides. Last September — just two months before joining the Mets for his second chance as a general manager — Eppler went to work for the William Morris Endeavor agency, his first outside job after two decades in major league front offices. In Eppler’s mind, though, the task was not much different than running a baseball operations department.

“Where I’ve found that I get the highest return on my efforts is when people…