The New York Mets have employed Carlos Mendoza to be their subsequent supervisor, CBS Sports activities HQ’s Jim Bowden confirmed Monday. Mendoza, 43, has served because the bench coach for the crosstown New York Yankees for the final 4 seasons.
With the Mets, he inherits a roster that sustained a disappointing 87 losses in 2023 regardless of the best payroll in MLB historical past. Whereas the Mets did win 101 video games in 2022, the struggles of 2023 led to the dismissal of supervisor Buck Showalter. That, in flip, created the dugout emptiness that Mendoza now fills because the twenty fourth supervisor in Mets franchise historical past.
Mendoza’s shock hiring by the Mets comes regardless of heavy hypothesis that they’d strike an settlement with outgoing Brewers supervisor Craig Counsell. As an alternative, it is Mendoza who will change Buck Showalter within the Mets’ dugout. Counsell, in the meantime, made a stunning transfer of his personal, opting to signal with the Cubs and change David Ross in Chicago’s dugout. Counsell was additionally initially employed in Milwaukee by David Stearns, who just lately took over because the Mets’ president of baseball operations. That after all led to the expectation that Counsell would land with the Mets.
As an alternative, the Mets have employed Mendoza, who’s by no means managed on the big-league degree aside from when he is crammed in after Boone’s many ejections. The 43-year-old Mendoza is a Yankees’ lifer, having performed of their minor-league system from 2006-09 earlier than starting his teaching profession within the lowest runs of their farm system. He retired as a participant in the course of the 2009 season and jumped proper into teaching that summer season.
From 2009-12, Mendoza coached and managed at a number of ranges in New York’s farm system, then moved right into a roving teacher position so he may work with extra gamers fairly than be assigned to at least one degree. His teaching background is usually with infielders and on the defensive aspect of the ball. The Yankees promoted Mendoza to their main league workers after the 2017 season. He was their infield coach from 2018-19 earlier than being promoted to Boone’s bench coach in Nov. 2019.
“His day is coming indubitably,” Yankees GM Brian Cashman instructed reporters about Mendoza in March 2021 (per NJ.com). “He’s going to handle a serious league workforce and I believe he is gonna be actually good at it.”
Along with the Mets, Mendoza reportedly additionally interviewed for managerial jobs with the San Francisco Giants, Cleveland Guardians, and San Diego Padres this offseason. He interviewed with the Boston Crimson Sox, Detroit Tigers, and Chicago White Sox about their managerial openings in earlier offseasons. Mendoza is the second Venezuelan-born supervisor in MLB historical past, becoming a member of Ozzie Guillen.
Mendoza’s hiring in tandem with the latest addition of Stearns marks in some methods a real begin to the Steve Cohen period in Queens, because the free-spending proprietor now has in place the management workforce he is sought since not lengthy after shopping for the membership in September of 2020.
