In previous years, planning a typical preseason game, the Mets manager Buck Showalter would have been laser-focused on decisions like who to try that day as leadoff batter or which pitchers he would have available coming out of the bullpen.
But this year, late in spring training, he was pondering which player would be mic’d up for part of a game to provide audio commentary, sometimes even from the field, for the Mets.
“Why don’t you ask Max if he’ll get mic’d up?” Showalter suggested at one point, clearly a joke, since the reference was to Mets’ pitcher Max Scherzer, a.