Circumstances have given the NY Mets no choice but to move on from these coaches (eventually)

With a league-worst .642 OPS, the New York Mets don’t really have much of a choice when it comes to the hitting coaches, do they? Jeff Albert and Troy Snitker haven’t gotten many positive results this year. Scapegoating the coaches, especially the hitting or pitching coaches, is a common occurrence whenever a team underachieves.

Both new to their roles this year as the replacements for Eric Chavez and Jeremy Barnes, they were hired with a deep enough resume in comparison to some others. Albert’s days with the St. Louis Cardinals and Snitker’s with the Houston Astros made this a worthy duo to have coaching up the players. Youngsters could benefit and so could the players who are a little less green still trying to find their footing in the majors such as Brett Baty, Mark Vientos, and Francisco Alvarez.

They, along with everyone else on the team other than Juan Soto, haven’t done a whole lot. The responsibility falls on the players, especially when we’re discussing recent MVP candidates and All-Stars. Unfortunately, this pitiful hitting performance should put Albert and Snitker on the hot seat even if they get the full 162 games.

Would the Mets actually fire their hitting coaches less than a year into the job?

You don’t want to alienate any future coaches for the position by pulling the plug too quickly. People want some sense of job security. Late May is an unusual time to fire someone new to the job even when the results are as dismal as they’ve been for the Mets hitters.

In 2023, the New York Yankees did something completely out of character. Hitting coach Dillon Lawson was fired in July. Brian Cashman never fired a coach midseason before. Lawson was sent packing. Sean Casey was pulled out of the MLB Network booth and onto the Yankees coaching staff. He didn’t stick around for another year.

Carlos Mendoza was one of a small number of coaches who survived from the 2025 meltdown. At the moment, the Mets are already in a superfund site, the key letter in that word being the “n.” Nothing about this year has been superfun.

Continuous votes of confidence in Mendoza by David Stearns should have us turning our attention toward other coaching changes the Mets could potentially make. Firing the hitting coaches would be unusual. The organization already blamed virtually its entire coaching staff for last year’s failures. There’s only so much fingerpointing they can do this time around.

Albert and Snitker are in year one of their jobs and regardless of the direction the Mets head in, should stick around not because it’s the right thing to do but because that’s the business side of operating. Cleaning house after the year is more practical and in line with what Stearns might do. Would firing the hitting coaches really change the outcome of the rest of this year? The Mets operate more like a system than a group of individuals with their own beliefs. Far from the only franchise to do things this way, philosophies like this are what will probably keep Albert and Snitker around for at least the haul of the current season. 

Albert came to the Mets after the 2022 season and was hired as the Director of Hitting. Snitker is brand new to the organization. Albert stepping away or going back to his previous position is one possible conclusion. Snitker’s conclusion is a little more up in the air.

If Barnes could last through the 2023 season and into 2025, neither hitting coach is probably going anywhere just yet. The Mets have been adamant about keeping Mendoza as their lame duck skipper. This only further suggests we won’t get a change at the hitting coach spot in-season despite the lackluster results.

At the end, they won’t have a choice but to make some sort of a change. A large part of the 2025-2026 offseason was about change. It would be hypocritical to stick with what is trending toward becoming the team’s biggest failure.

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