The job of manager of a New York baseball team is one that comes with its benefits, such as the increased attention placed on every game, especially when postseason time comes. After two seasons, Buck Showalter was fired as the Mets’ manager as a new front office regime entered at the end of the regular season. The Mets were the fifth team that Showalter has managed in a long career that started with the crosstown Yankees in 1992. Coincidentally, his successor will also be a former Yankee employee, as the Mets are expected to announce Carlos Mendoza as the 24th manager in franchise history.
A forty-three-year-old from Barquisimeto, Venezuela, Mendoza has been a member of the Yankee organization since 2009, when he started as a coach in the bottom of the organization. He has since worked his way up, all the way to bench coach behind Aaron Boone from 2019 to the present day. Since Boone has been ejected 28 times in that time period, Mendoza has a good amount of experience managing a big market squad.
From the outside looking in, Mendoza might be being set up to fail from the start. Mets baseball is naturally a pressure cooker, and if the team starts to slide, the fans will attack. The Mets have been cycling through managers since Terry Collins left after the 2017 season – Mendoza will be their fourth in this time period, and that does not include Carlos Beltran, who was fired before he ever managed a game thanks to his role in the 2017 Astros sign stealing scandal. Even Showalter, who had as much managerial experience as possible, could not overcome this barrier. A rookie manager whose only experience is with a rival? Mendoza has an extremely hard job to do.
Ignoring his resume, the Mets have not made things easy on their incoming manager before they will even announce him as such. After a massive sale at the 2023 trade deadline, the Mets are not set to be contenders in 2024, competing behind the National League East powerhouses that are the Braves and Phillies right now. For the most part, a manager hired for a retooling team ends with them being the “guy before the guy”, in which their successor will go on to have success. Additionally, the Mets were heavily rumored to be offering a major contract to former Brewers manager Craig Counsell. When it was announced that Counsell chose the Cubs instead, the Mets chose Mendoza within the hour. Naturally, this makes Mendoza feel like a fallback option.
However the Mets try to spin Mendoza as their plan for manager all along, or if the Mets decide to have a big offseason, the fact is that we do not know how the Mendoza era will truly go in Flushing. For Mendoza, the wolves will be attacking quickly. We will see how he counters it. Winning is always the best cure for this.
