Mets introduce Carlos Mendoza as new manager: Former Yankees bench coach ready to ‘compete in 2024’

The New York Mets on Tuesday officially presented their new supervisor Carlos Mendoza. Mendoza, 43, had served as the bench coach for the crosstown Yankees for the final 4 seasons, and he replaces the ousted Buck Showalter in the Mets’ dugout. While Mendoza hasn’t ever controlled on the major-league stage, he did skipper at more than one ranges of the Yankees’ farm device greater than a decade in the past. 

The Mets are a large-market franchise with a free-spending proprietor in Steve Cohen, and that implies force and expectancies. Those expectancies weren’t met in 2023, as the Mets beneath Showalter sustained an 87-loss season in spite of working the very best workforce payroll in MLB historical past. In a vacuum, such pricey disasters would possibly lead to a rebuild or a minimum of near-term pivot or reset. In his introductory presser, then again, Mendoza put the ones notions to relaxation: “We expect to compete in 2024.”

Along the ones strains, Mendoza seen, “There’s some talented players coming back to a team that won 100 games.” He’s proper about that. The Mets in 2022 certainly clocked 101 wins and misplaced the department identify by means of tiebreaker to the Braves. While they had been bounced in the Wild Card Series via the Padres, the common season used to be very a lot a luck. Still round from that 2022 workforce are core participants like Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, and Jeff McNeil. As smartly, lockdown nearer Edwin Díaz can be getting back from the knee damage suffered right through final spring’s World Baseball Classic that value him all of the 2023 season. On most sensible of all that, Cohen and new president of baseball operations David Stearns are anticipated to be lively on the most sensible of the 2023-24 free-agent marketplace. 

“I’ve experienced playoff games here in October on the other side of town, and I can’t wait to have that experience in Citi Field,” Mendoza mentioned.

A new and confirmed lead decision-maker in Stearns, a deeply dedicated proprietor in Cohen, and a contemporary presence in the dugout? In the new supervisor’s phrases, that quantities to, “a great opportunity not just for Carlos Mendoza but for the New York Mets.”

On extra concrete issues, Mendoza right through his Tuesday remarks showed that pitching coach Jeremy Hefner will go back for 2024 in that very same function. Mendoza additionally cited the desire for anyone in his function to mix analytics and conventional strategies of scouting and participant analysis, which is a baseline requirement for big-league managers at the present time. In the top, Mendoza summed up his alternative, his method, and his targets via pronouncing, “It’s about connecting, it’s about building relationships, it’s about winning championships.” 

All of the ones qualities and aspects of Mendoza are in the provider of that final purpose, and his tenure can be judged via that ordinary. His first public feedback as Mets supervisor display he very a lot is aware of and accepts that accountability.