Mets hope for better luck with another first-time manager

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — With Monday’s decision to go with Carlos Mendoza, formerly the Yankees’ bench coach, his hiring ups the Mets’ count to a stunning five managers now in six years.

Of that group, Mendoza is the fourth first-timer to take the job.

Jars of peanut butter have longer life spans.

Moving into the manager’s office at Citi Field has been a "rent, not-buy" occupation. In the case of Carlos Beltran, who was fired after only 77 days on the job due to the Astros’ cheating scandal, he didn’t even get the chance to unpack.

Mickey Callaway’s two-year tenure actually got much worse in his wake when claims of serial harassment boomeranged back to demonize the Mets. Luis Rojas was thrust into an unenviable situation as Beltran’s replacement made more impossible by a once-in-a-century pandemic.

This is a horrible track record. The good news? None of the people who made any of those calls are still employed in Flushing.

Though the temptation is to lump Mendoza in with this recent crop of failed first-timers, that’s not a fair characterization. We’re talking about a franchise that also changed owners and burned through four general managers during that same six-year span, so what chance did a manager possibly have?

Look what happened to Buck Showalter. He won 101 games his first season, picked up a fourth Manager of the Year trophy, then promptly was axed the following October by the incoming president of baseball operations David Stearns.

Showalter, the Mets’ most experienced hire since Terry Collins in 2010, was a victim of bad timing more than anything else. It’s totally understandable that Stearns wanted a fresh start with his own guy — and we figured that guy would be his former Brewers manager Craig Counsell.

Turns out, Counsell had other ideas. Remember how Counsell wanted to push managerial salaries to new heights with his free agency, but also was concerned about his family ties to Milwaukee? Well, Counsell wound up getting both Monday with his shocking mystery-team defection to the Chicago Cubs, who gave him a five-year contract worth $40 million and a Wrigley Field office only a 90-minute drive from his Whitefish Bay homestead.

Counsell’s haul from the Cubs reportedly was double the Brewers’ offer to stay. It’s unclear what the Mets had on the table, but evidently Counsell wasn’t fully committed to reuniting with Stearns in New York, not when the Mets could be used as leverage instead. Otherwise, importing him to Flushing seemed like it would have been wrapped up in relatively short order.

At that price, however, it’s no big loss. The Mets may have baseball’s richest owner, but if Steve Cohen is going to be paying someone Joe Torre money, he’d better be getting Joe Torre in the dugout. Stearns and Counsell had big success together in small-market Milwaukee, but that doesn’t mean the Mets can’t win with a different hand-picked manager, and Mendoza coming from across town is an advantage of sorts.

“He will be aligned with the organizational philosophy and have a great relationship with Stearns,” is how one executive familiar with Mendoza rated the hire. “Very solid, good feel for the game, good teacher. Will be great with the players.”

As for that E word, it’s not like Mendoza, 43, is taking the elevator down from the broadcast booth. He managed at multiple levels in the minors before being promoted to the Yankees in 2018 and recently had surfaced as a serious candidate for a number of MLB openings. A Bronx education doesn’t hurt, either, and Mendoza even collected a bunch of innings at the top job, filling in after Aaron Boone’s 24 ejections or subbing for him on his two one-game suspensions.

Based on the Yankees’ near-obsession with analytics, Mendoza is definitely well-schooled in that department, so he’ll be a quick study for Stearns’ program. One drawback: there’s no skipping steps on the learning curve for rookie managers. Life is different in the big chair, and the one in Flushing tends to get very uncomfortable at times. We won’t know about Mendoza’s ability to handle the spotlight until he’s thrust into it full-time, and that’s a crash course he never got in the Bronx.

There’s no sure thing when it comes to hiring managers. Stearns probably thought he knew Counsell best, yet he wound up shocking the baseball world by suddenly jumping to the Cubs. Showalter was the perfect fit for the Mets after the Rojas experiment — a sage, battle-tested, baseball lifer — until the roster collapsed around him and the front office went through more upheaval. Then he wasn’t anymore.

Mendoza isn’t Showalter. And as we sit here now, that’s tough to sell as a good swap for the Mets, based on managerial chops. But Stearns wanted his clean slate, so now he’s getting it with Mendoza, another first-timer with a supposed high ceiling.

In the past, that roof has come crashing down on the Mets, forcing them to dig out repeatedly from the wreckage. Maybe it’s different this time, as Mendoza will have Stearns’ full support with the franchise presumably on more stable footing. That’s the best-case scenario, anyway. And one of these times, the Mets are bound to get this right.      

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.