A complicated situation with the NY Mets and manager Carlos Mendoza

Following the coaching turnover for the New York Mets, an anonymous ex-staffer commented how they don’t see Carlos Mendoza getting much leeway in 2026.

This was back in October and the suggested level of awfulness would have the Mets at the bottom of the league. The suggested 10-20 record by the dismissed Mets employee at the end of April would have the Mets way behind schedule at making the postseason. 10-game winning streaks are hard to find.

The suggestion wasn’t so outlandish because any team with the expectations the Mets have shouldn’t fall 10 games under at any point. Doing so early has its benefit of roadway to pull yourself up. It doesn’t change the fact that the Mets and their manager are in a weird spot this year. Mendoza’s 3-year contract is in its final year. Lame duck coaches are complicated.

Carlos Mendoza’s contract wasn’t well-suited to have the history it does

Winning like they did in 2024 meant taking one step further in 2025 or at least doing something comparable. The Mets failed there. They fell short of the risen expectations. At minimum, the playoffs were necessary for David Stearns to ever consider an extension with Mendoza.

He also couldn’t have gotten fired. That would have been an extreme cord pull. So, what did the Mets do? They fired or let practically everyone else on the coaching staff leave.

This is an entirely new coaching staff working with Mendoza this year. We don’t know who he picked and which ones were choices made by Stearns. We’d like to think it was a collective decision like putting together a jury.

Things get complicated when you keep one high-positioned person and replace those around them. The problem is solved if Mendoza leads the Mets to victory and earns a contract extension. Does he actually get an extension before the regular season is over, though? Would a collapse in the postseason be enough or cause for moving on?

A whole new coaching staff gets strange when a new manager is brought in. They won’t be “his guys,” adding to the complication of moving on from others. We could always see several of the coaches cling on for another year and the 2027 campaign become a tryout of sorts. It wouldn’t benefit the Mets or their players to continually fire coaches from year-to-year. This would also limit how many different people they could actually hire to replace Mendoza if he lost his job.

The natural transition that could work is to replace him with bench coach Kai Correa or do something even more headline-grabbing like move Carlos Beltran from the front office back to the dugout. The ex-Mets manager who never managed a game but has since been forgiven with his Hall of Fame selection would be a fit to accept whatever situation is handed to him for at least a year. What’s more, he might’ve had some input into several of the coaching hires.

One extreme or the other will help the Mets make a decision on Mendoza’s future. It’s that in-between that makes things a lot more difficult. Squeaking into the postseason in game 162 with a barely over .500 record but a deep run in the playoffs is probably what’s going to happen because you can swing your decision in either direction.