2 NY Mets coaches who won't be back next season, 2 who will barely keep their jobs

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Firing coaches is the easiest way to shake things up. After the year ends, expecting some heads to roll with the New York Mets coaching staff is realistic. The anticipated hiring of David Stearns to take over as the President of Baseball Operations has many speculating about how much turnover there could be. Do we get a complete massacre or does he arrive with only a slingshot?

We’re guaranteed to see some coaching changes as the case is in any year and under any circumstances. These four high-ranking coaches will have two very different outcomes. Two will be gone from their current positions. Two others will barely keep their jobs.

NY Mets hitting coach Jeremy Barnes didn’t do enough to keep his position

The Mets haven’t had much luck at finding a hitting coach. Where’s Donnie Stevenson when you need him? Please, no. That was fun for a week.

It seems like a tradition for the Mets to dismiss their hitting coach either in-season or after it’s over with. Jeremy Barnes took over the job for the 2023 season. He has left an unimpressive impression on the fans.

Firing the hitting coach is the easiest way to make up for a team’s poor offense. The Mets will be a slightly tougher read this year because of the injuries and for the fact that the final two months will have a lot of fringe major leaguers in the lineup. However, even before we got to this stage of the year, Barnes was working his way out of the 2024 picture.

It’s a given that if the Mets do hire Stearns we’ll see some changes to the coaching staff. Firing the hitting coach is the easiest decision of all for him to make. Regression from practically the entire lineup is inexcusable. He won’t be back. What about Buck Showalter?

NY Mets manager Buck Showalter will keep his job and play out his contract

Buck Showalter will be the Mets manager in 2024. He’ll manage out the final year of his contract and refuse to answer any questions about his status for the 2025 season. He’ll say he’s focused on the present and we’ll have a lot of awkward press conferences before and after games involving him. Stearns, or whoever else might be in charge, will have similar stock answers.

Showalter’s success in 2022 is enough to give him an opportunity in 2024. One caveat is that if the Mets truly aren’t going to build a complete winner for the 2024 campaign, does Buck simply walk away? Showalter isn’t going to quit on the Mets, but if they quit on him first, it’s sensible for the two sides to agree to part ways.

The Mets will give Showalter a chance to agree to stay in the dugout for another year with a less talented team on paper. Although he’d never admit it publicly, he’ll regret the decision because breathing down his neck will be a new bench coach vying for his spot.

Job statuses can sometimes lead to uncomfortable situations. The Mets will create one with Showalter when they replace Eric Chavez with the guy they intend to have replace Showalter in 2025.

NY Mets bench coach Eric Chavez will find a better opportunity somewhere else

Demoting Eric Chavez back to the hitting coach position would actually be what’s best for the Mets, but it’s not going to happen. People don’t accept those kinds of negative downturns in their careers. Not even William H. Macy’s character Little Bill would standby for this.

Chavez will find a better opportunity with another team. He moved from the New York Yankees to the Mets on short notice in 2022. He’ll find a chance to set himself up for a managerial role much quicker by choosing to leave the Mets with a mutual parting of ways.

The replacement the Mets end up going with will be Carlos Beltran. It’ll be the worst kept secret in baseball that the organization intends to let Showalter go after the year and elevate Beltran to another spot. The redemption arc of Beltran following his connection to the 2017 Houston Astros and subsequent firing by the Mets after he was hired to manage the club in 2020 has already begun. The Mets already employ him. The next step is to get him some more on-field experience in something as close to a manager role as possible.

Although Cohen has previously stated he doesn’t want to hire people who will be learning on the job, many of his original intentions have changed. This is a team that has taken a step backward. The storyline alone, for Cohen’s Mets to win with Beltran at the helm after the Wilpons fired him, is juicy enough. It needs to happen. The world was already stripped from seeing The Undertaker vs. John Cena at Wrestlemania. Give us this.

NY Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner will save his job on reputation, not outcome

The other big Jeremy on the coaching staff is Jeremy Hefner. He’s a survivor with this organization. His reputation has been positive. Since joining the Mets in 2019 as their pitching coach, he has managed to linger despite the team not really producing all that many great new young pitchers. It’s not all on him, but the lack of progress from guys like David Peterson, Tylor Megill, and nearly everyone in the bullpen does have to fall a little bit on him.

This year might be the offseason to fire Hefner. The problem is that if he is still well-liked by the players and is doing a fine enough job according to those who know best, what would a replacement even be able to accomplish?

Yes, it hasn’t been a good year for Hefner’s pitchers. There have been some positives, though. Kodai Senga has been superb. For at least a little while, the Mets were getting a lot from a guy like Jeff Brigham. Putting blame or handing credit to the pitching coach isn’t entirely fair. He’s a teacher. How many good ones have rotten students who let the information go in one year and out the other?

Another year like this season with a pitching staff failing as badly as this year’s and maybe Hefner is shown the door. Because there will be so many other changes and Hefner has proven he has some sort of magical power to stick around as long as he has, it’s hard to see him gone.

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