Mets assistant GM Ian Levin to leave club after 20 years

NEW YORK — The front office reorganization will continue for the New York Mets this fall with the departure of longtime executive Ian Levin. After 20 years in the organization, Mets’ vice president and assistant general manager of baseball operations will leave the club at the conclusion of the season.

Levin announced that he made the decision to leave the club Wednesday afternoon before the Mets hosted the Boston Red Sox in the finale of a three-game set at Citi Field. He plans to stay through the rest of the season, including the postseason if the Mets clinch.

Levin graduated from Seton Hall in 2006 and obtained an MBA from Binghamton University in 2011, taking classes on the weekends while working full-time in his amateur scouting role.

After starting with the Mets as a media relations intern in 2005, the Bayonne native worked in several different capacities in major league and minor league operations. Levin worked under five general managers (Omar Minaya, Sandy Alderson, Brodie Van Wagenen, Jared Porter, Billy Eppler), five different interim general managers (Minaya, Alderson, John Ricco twice, J.P. Ricciardi and Zack Scott), and the current president of baseball ops David Stearns.

After one season in media relations, Levin moved to baseball operations as an intern in 2006. He coordinated amateur scouting from 2007-2012, worked as the manager of analytics from 2013-2014 and then moved over to player development. Levin was the minor league director of operations in 2015 and 2016, before being promoted to the director of player development in 2017. While working on the farm, he oversaw the promotions of players like Brandon Nimmo, Michael Conforto, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz, Amed Rosario and Dominic Smith.

In 2018, Levin was promoted under Van Wagenen to the senior director of baseball operations, a position he held until 2021 when Scott promoted him to his current role as an assistant general manager.

Stearns has long planned to reorganize the baseball operations department after an evaluation period. The Mets and Liz Benn, their director of major league ops, recently cut ties and the club fired several pro scouts. Teams typically start letting high-ranking personnel go towards the end of the regular season and executives who decide to leave often do so around the same time period.

After arriving last fall, Stearns made several hires of his own but also inherited top baseball ops staffers, including Levin, Benn, senior VP of baseball ops Jonathan Strangio, VP of analytics Ben Zauzmer, director of pro scouting Nate Horowitz and VP of player evaluation Thomas Tanous. With the abrupt departure of Eppler, Stearns didn’t have the desire to make personnel changes immediately, citing the need to get to know the department and how it ran under previous regimes.

After nearly a year, Stearns has an understanding of the operations beneath him and is ready to put his stamp on the organization. He’s still operating without a general manager and is unsure of whether he will hire one.

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