With the Mets falling short and missing the playoffs after such high expectations for the 2025 season, many would like to point the blame at Carlos Mendoza.
President of baseball operations David Stearns is not one of them and expressed his belief in Mendoza's ability to lead New York on Monday, confirming that he will return as manager of the club for the 2026 season.
"Yeah, Carlos is coming back next year," Stearns made clear.
Mendoza helped the Mets to an 89-73 record during the 2024 season, knocking off the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Wild Card Series and the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL Division Series, before falling to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in six games in the NL Championship Series.
Stearns acknowledged the 2025 season was a completely different story. The Mets had the best record in baseball on June 12 at 45-24, but due to poor pitching, lack of clutch hitting, defensive issues, and injuries, the team went 38-55 from June 13 on, the fifth-worst record in the bigs over that span and finished outside of the postseason with an 83-79 record. Mendoza is now 172-152 over two seasons.
Despite the second-half downfall, Stearns is still very much confident in Mendoza as manager and personally took the blame for a number of the 2025 team's issues, including pitching.
"I believe Carlos has all the same traits and assets that I believed in when we hired him two years ago," Stearns said. "I think over the course of his tenure here, he has demonstrated that.
"We had a tough year this year, there's no question. We are all disappointed, we are all frustrated. Mendy, as much or more than anyone else. But I still believe he's a very good manager and I think he's going to demonstrate that."
As for the rest of the coaching staff, Stearns said everyone under Mendoza will be evaluated. SNY MLB Insider Andy Martino reported Sunday night that it can be expected for there to be "notable and perhaps widespread changes to the coaching staff" this offseason.
"We're going to go through an evaluation of our entire coaching staff and we'll do that over the course of the coming days to a week, and then we'll make our decisions there," Stearns said.
He added: "We're going to certainly sit down and look at everything, including our coaching staff. It's normal after any season to do a coaching staff evaluation. When you come off a season like this, it's certainly going to be a little more intense."
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