The Mets surely believe Carlos Mendoza is a hidden gem plucked from right under their crosstown rival’s nose.
Hidden gems, though, are hidden for a reason. They are often unknown and rarely arrive with fanfare.
Maybe the Mets will be proven right, and maybe Mendoza is the next great manager of a team with World Series expectations. What is clear right now, though, is this hopeful hidden gem will begin his tenure in a hole.
When the music stopped and a particularly fascinating round of manager musical chairs halted Monday, the Mets had missed out on Craig Counsell and instead wound up with Mendoza, who previously served as the Yankees’ bench coach.
The 43-year-old is an under-the-radar hire for an organization that, under Steve Cohen, generally has aimed higher and aimed louder.
Cohen was not going to settle in his search for president of baseball operations and patiently awaited David Stearns becoming free — and then showered him with money to lure the former Brewers executive to Queens. Before Stearns came aboard, Cohen did not want to entrust his dugout to a first-year manager and installed the respected Buck Showalter, a name that was both popular and well-regarded.
After Stearns fired Showalter, Cohen’s Mets opted (or settled?) for Mendoza, who will run into popularity problems more because of who he is not rather than who he is.
• He is not Counsell, who was the most coveted free-agent manager to hit free agency in recent memory and who appeared to use every bit of his leverage. Long linked to Stearns’ Mets, Counsell interviewed with his pal and flirted with the team with the deepest pockets in baseball. He wanted the money that the Mets could offer and the proximity to his family that the Brewers could offer.
In the end, he got both: The Cubs stunningly swooped in and stole Counsell, firing David Ross along the way, so Counsell could stick by his family and receive real money ($40 million over five years) from a bigger-market team.
Counsell, largely considered one of the best managers in the game, would have offered a known and proven quantity who would have entered Day 1 as a Mets advantage. Instead, the Mets landed on Mendoza.
• He is not an experienced manager. Showalter entered with immediate gravitas and respect. If the Mets were going to be outmanaged, it was not going to be a result of a fledgling skipper. When Cohen bought the team, he stated he is “not crazy about people learning on my dime,” which is essentially what Mendoza will do.
Granted, it is not as if Mendoza is new to coaching. A lifetime minor leaguer, Mendoza transitioned to coaching in the Yankees’ system in 2009 and joined the major league staff in 2018. He spent the past four seasons as Aaron Boone’s right-hand man and bench coach.
And thus brings up another obstacle for Mendoza:
• He is not a beloved (or even be-liked) Mets figure. The folksy, down-home Showalter — even at the end of his reign at Citi Field — had approval from large swaths of the Mets fan base who appreciated a throwback at manager. A name such as Carlos Beltran could have revved up a fan base that remembers his years of dominance in the Mets outfield.
It is helpful to have at least a foundation in place for a relationship with the home crowd. Mendoza will have to build that bond from scratch.
Speaking of scratch…
• He is not another example of Cohen using his largesse to ensure the Mets have the league’s best everything. It is not just that the Mets ended up with someone who is presumed to be their second choice; it is that the Cubs were the ones who acted as the big-market bullies.
There is no salary cap or luxury tax associated with managers, so owners can pay them whatever they deem they are worth. The Cubs decided Counsell was worth record-breaking money and worth casually throwing Ross aside, resetting the manager market in the process.
Mendoza’s contract is not nearly in the Counsell neighborhood (Counsell’s offer from the Mets was significantly lower than he received from the Cubs, a source told The Post’s Mike Puma). The actual neighborhood Mendoza is coming from could present another issue, though:
• Mendoza is a Yankee. He had been in pinstripes for more than a decade. The experience will be helpful for his new gig, but it will not be helpful for Mets fans who are hesitant to embrace figures from across town. Now the two most recent Mets managers will have been Yankees castoffs.
Speaking of the Yankees, it is not just that Mendoza arrives from The Bronx.
• He is an Aaron Boone disciple. There are not many Yankees fans who will defend their manager — particularly after a dispiriting 80-loss season — and thus his No. 2 will not be the most adored man in the city. If the Mets were merely looking for public support, they would not have looked for an olive branch off the Boone tree.
Now that we have established what Mendoza is not, here is what he is:
• A baseball lifer with extensive experience, even if it has not come as an MLB manager;
• A bilingual teacher who was well-liked with the Yankees and who managed in the Venezuelan Winter Leagues during his offseason, essentially teaching baseball in his downtime from teaching baseball;
• A coach who was trusted especially by young Venezuelans on the Yankees roster and who is known for his work in player development, which has to matter to a Mets club that is focusing more than ever on turning a bright farm system into a major league powerhouse.
Maybe Mendoza will be the Mets manager for the next decade and take them to multiple World Series. Maybe he will be fired next offseason. Success as a manager is hard to predict, especially in New York.
But whatever success Mendoza finds will be earned. He will have to win over Mets fans who expected a big name or a familiar face and got neither.
Today’s back page
The scoreboard: The ‘inexcusable’ edition
Chargers 27, Jets 6: The Jets came back to Earth with a pronounced thud on “Monday Night Football.” They allowed a punt-return TD in the first two minutes — and somehow it didn’t get any better from there. Zach Wilson simply wasn’t good enough; Nathaniel Hackett can’t get the offense moving. Garrett Wilson summed it up: “It’s inexcusable. It’s getting to the point where it’s disappointing. I hate coming off the field, looking our defense in the eyes, knowing we have to send them back out there after a three-and-out. … We’ve got to figure it out.” That Jets defense limited Justin Herbert to 136 passing yards. The team fell to 4-4, and The Post’s Mike Vaccaro writes it’s time to end the playoff delusion.
Knicks 111, Clippers 97: Julius Randle led the way, showing signs of emerging from an early-season slump by tallying a season-high 27 points on 9-for-20 shooting plus 10 rebounds. RJ Barrett returned to the lineup to score 26. Mitchell Robinson was dominant in grabbing 15 rebounds (nine offensive). The Knicks (3-4) spoiled James Harden’s Clippers debut.
Bucks 129, Nets 125: Cam Thomas had 45 points (on 33 shots!), Mikal Bridges had 31 and Ben Simmons snared 15 rebounds to go with two points (on three shots!). But the Nets (3-4) had no answer for Giannis Antetokounmpo, especially in crunch time.
— Jonathan Lehman
Do the Yankees have an answer?
Thirty-seven days after the Yankees’ season ended, it is time to ask: What happened?
After a truly awful year that finished short on hope and short of the playoffs, the Yankees finally will reckon publicly with the undoing of a club that had the second-highest payroll in baseball.
On Tuesday, owner Hal Steinbrenner will take questions over Zoom before general manager Brian Cashman answers queries from reporters in Arizona (including our Greg Joyce) at the GM Meetings.
For the first time since the season reached an unceremonious end Oct. 1, the Yankees will address what went wrong and why it won’t happen again after they whiffed on the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
They will have to answer many more than five questions, but let’s boil it down to a handful of topics that Yankees brass must address:
1️⃣ After more than a month of reflection, why were the 2023 Yankees a “disaster,” in Cashman’s words?
The Yankees finished 19 games back of the Orioles, who had about one-quarter of the Yankees’ payroll. The Yankees accepted defeat before September even arrived, calling up and devoting playing time to unproven prospects — regardless of their results — in mid-August. The problems went a whole lot deeper than Aaron Judge’s injured toe, and the Yankees kept suffering even when Judge returned to the lineup.
Do Steinbrenner and Cashman blame injuries (to Judge; to Anthony Rizzo; to Giancarlo Stanton, who never looked the same after an early-season hamstring strain)? Do they blame depth, with better options needed than Jake Bauers, Franchy Cordero and Billy McKinney? Was it a systematic failure of an offense they tried to rewire midseason with the firing of hitting coach Dillon Lawson?
2️⃣ What has the audit uncovered?
Steinbrenner promised a deep dive into how the Yankees do business, which has come through hiring Zelus Analytics, an outside firm that has been evaluating the club’s processes.
A presumed target of the audit has been the Yankees’ analytics department, especially after Judge — on the record — stated the organization “might be looking at the wrong [numbers]” in teaching its hitters.
It is possible large changes — if imperceptible to fans because they come behind the scenes — are on the way.
3️⃣ Does the roster need a tweak or an overhaul?
We’re looking at you, Giancarlo Stanton. The Yankees have a lot of money tied up in a soon-to-be 34-year-old DH who hit .191 this season and cannot run. Can they justify bringing back Stanton, or do they have to find a way to offload a massive contract?
How about DJ LeMahieu? Do they trust Rizzo’s head injury is healed and the first baseman will bounce back? If the Yankees want to make major moves to improve their offense, they probably would have to find new homes for at least some of their returning bats.
4️⃣ After a terrible season, will the budget be expanded?
The Yankees declined to match the Mets’ payroll last year, which is still an odd sentence to formulate. The Mets blew past the $293 million “Cohen tax” threshold and spent the most money in baseball history while the Yankees hovered around that $293M mark.
“A decade-plus ago, I always used to say that you shouldn’t have to have a $200 million payroll to win a championship, right? Because nobody had it,” Steinbrenner said in March. “Times have changed, I will acknowledge that.
“So I will say that you shouldn’t have to have a $300 million payroll to win a world championship because nobody has.”
After a mess of a season, will Steinbrenner try to plug roster holes with money from the richest team in baseball? Or will Cashman be operating with a strict budget?
5️⃣ Are the Yankees confident the right leadership is in place?
By all signals, Cashman will return for his 27th season as general manager not having engineered a World Series appearance since 2009. Boone will return for his seventh season as manager, title-less in that stretch.
Will there be World Series-or-else mandates? Has Steinbrenner’s confidence in the duo been challenged? Does Steinbrenner want to see a more aggressive Cashman, a more fiery Boone?
Beginning today, we’ll begin to find out.
Down and out?
The rest of the Giants’ season is officially a waste.
In what could be the sad end to his Giants tenure, Daniel Jones will require surgery on a torn ACL. The 2-7 Giants will not be reaching the postseason and will not have any more of an opportunity to evaluate Jones, who remains an uncertain part of their future in his fifth NFL season.
The Giants are heading toward a top draft pick and heading toward a decision on Jones, who is in his first season of four-year, $160 million extension. There is an out after two seasons in which Jones would count for $22 million in dead cap money in 2025, when the Giants could have Caleb Williams or Drake Maye under center.
Jones has not done enough with a poor set of weapons and offensive line around him, and his body — with a pair of neck injuries and now an ACL — unfortunately has not held up.
This season is just about out. There is wonder whether a short era is finished, too.
What we’re reading 👀
🏀 Yes, Joel Embiid has heard the Knicks chatter, too.
🏀 The Post’s Mike Vaccaro taps into the buzz surrounding Tuesday night’s season opener for Rick Pitino and St. John’s men’s basketball (7 p.m. ET, FS1).
🏈 The Big Ten cops are coming for Jim Harbaugh.
🎾 Iga Swiatek brought Jessica Pegula to the bakery and will close the year as the No. 1 in women’s tennis after winning the WTA Finals.
🏒 Read this one through tears: Adam Johnson was remembered at a funeral Monday in his Minnesota hometown.
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