As Mets introduce manager Carlos Mendoza, 'nothing is going to surprise him'
Moments before the biggest break of his professional life, Carlos Mendoza was doing what he so often does: coaching.
He was in the backyard of his Tampa-area home with his younger son, 9-year-old Andres, who apparently is a pretty good infielder and had been begging to get some work in before the sun went down. Mendoza was tired after what he called a “stressful” month of crisscrossing the country for a series of interviews for manager openings but obliged anyway, because that's what dads do. Catch, glovework, picks — the whole routine.
Then the phone rang. It was David Stearns, the Mets’ president of baseball operations and one of a bunch of people Mendoza had recently met who could become his boss. He had good news.
“All right, we’ve got action here,” Mendoza, who also had talked to the Giants and Guardians and just the night before got back from meetings with the Padres, told his family. “I came back in and I sat down in front of my wife and I received the news. I hear my wife crying and my boys jumping already and you know, yeah, it was pretty exciting.”
When the Mets introduced Mendoza, 43, as their new manager — and fifth in sixth seasons — in a news conference Tuesday afternoon at Citi Field, his family was among his greatest points of pride.
Sitting in the first row was his wife, Francis, who gave up her career as a dentist in Venezuela in support of her husband’s stateside baseball career; their sons, 12-year-old Adrian and Andres the adamant infielder, both of whom donned smiles and neatly coiffed brown hair; and Mendoza’s parents, Frank and Leyda, who traveled from their native Venezuela for the occasion. Frank was recording the goings-on on his phone.
And seated beside Mendoza on the dais was the man who turned their lives upside down in the best way: Stearns, who cited Mendoza’s “really unique skill set,” ability to manage different kinds of people, communication tendencies and willingness to collaborate with the front office as reasons the Mets chose him.
Stearns also liked Mendoza’s extensive background in baseball, including 10 seasons in the minors and coaching in varying capacities — from lower-minors manager to major-league infield coach to, for the past four seasons, the Yankees’ bench coach.
That last element, experience in New York, the sport’s biggest and most intense market, mattered.
“It was certainly a factor,” Stearns said. “He could articulate what he'd seen. He could talk about experiences that he personally had had in this city, in the environment with the pressure, with the fans, with the media that other candidates who haven't been here just haven't lived yet. And they would adjust, but Carlos has that firsthand knowledge and so nothing is going to surprise him.”
The potential hangup, which seemed not to be for Stearns: This will be Mendoza’s first time managing in the majors. That dynamic has not worked out for the Mets in the recent past, but they hope and expect this time to be different.
“There are a lot of first-time managers out there who have proven that you can do this job in big markets, you can do it successfully,” Stearns said. “It’s not only his experience in the game, it’s who he is as a person — his ability to connect with people of a variety of different backgrounds, at different levels of the organization and you combine that with his robust experience within the game, his knowledge of the game and the time he’s spent in this town, I certainly have confidence that he’s the right person.”
Mendoza said of his rookie status: “I’ve been preparing for this since I started coaching. Every step along the way, especially my last six years here in New York, I know it’s real. I know the expectations from the fan base. It’s one of those where I can’t wait to get started. I know I’m ready. I’m prepared.”
His work has begun already. He announced that Jeremy Hefner, the pitching coach for his two immediate predecessors, will return in that role, with the rest of the coaching staff to be determined.
He has spoken to about half of the players on the roster, including Pete Alonso, who kept him on the phone for 45 minutes and struck Mendoza as “very smart.” And he plans to visit with some of his players before spring training; clubhouse leaders Alonso, Brandon Nimmo and Francisco Lindor also live in Florida in the offseason, so that should be eminently doable.
In the view of Mendoza and Stearns, relationships like those will be the foundation of a successful stint as manager. Stearns described Mendoza’s relationships skills as “by all accounts, as good as there is.”
“They gotta get to know me. I gotta earn their respect,” Mendoza said. “I’ve learned through my experience that the connections, the trust, the respect, the relationships in the locker room and the clubhouse, when you care about people, when you connect, it creates that culture that we’re talking about that eventually will show up on the baseball field. Guys are going to be prepared. Just know that we understand the expectations here in New York.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
