Mets GM not happy with how players handled bizarre tunnel situation

The New York Mets were in the headlines for a pretty bizarre tunnel incident this week, and the acting general manager is not particularly thrilled about it.

During Friday’s game, TV cameras caught most of the dugout rushing toward the tunnel over what appeared to be some sort of confrontation between Francisco Lindor and Jeff McNeil. After the game, both players claimed that the cause of the heated debate was an argument over whether they’d seen a rat or raccoon in the tunnel.

Nobody really bought the excuse, including Zack Scott. The acting GM was critical of the players for the story, which he blamed for bringing more attention to the conflict than necessary.

“They can choose to handle things the way they want,” Scott said, via Deesha Thosar of the New York Daily News. “Probably not ideal. … These things, when something is not that big, why make something into more of a story than it needs to be? They’re obviously having fun with it a little bit. But to me, the interpretation of what they were saying was essentially they didn’t really want to comment on it. They wanted to keep it in-house, which I respect.”

The rat-raccoon angle of the story has certainly attracted a lot of attention and jokes. Scott is right that if they’d just said it was a clubhouse matter and moved on, few would remember it by this point. At the very least, it has provided some great fodder for jokes, even if Scott is probably correct to be frustrated by it.