At his end-of-year press conference, Philadelphia Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski announced that the team hired former Mets manager Carlos Mendoza as its new infield and third base coach for the 2027 season under manager Don Mattingly.
The Mets dismissed Mendoza from their managerial position during the 2026 season, ending a two-and-a-half-year tenure that was highlighted by the team’s 2024 NLCS run, but ended with the lows of a 34-47 record to begin the 2026 campaign. He was replaced by interim-turned-full-time manager Andy Green, who was able to run a 40-41 record with the team, even after being baseball’s most aggressive seller at the trade deadline.
The Mets initially hired Mendoza in the autumn of 2023, pairing him with then-recently hired president of baseball operations David Stearns and team owner David Stearns as the new brain trust for a new era of Mets baseball. After winning 172 games over his first two seasons, Mendoza’s team greatly disappointed in 2026, and the season could not have gotten off to a worse start.
While rumors around the relationship between his two future Hall of Famers, Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto, ran rampant throughout the spring, the Mets lost an abysmal 12 consecutive games from mid-to-late April, effectively ending their season before it was ever able to get off the ground. Their awful stretch came after their legendary playoff collapse to end the 2025 season: New York had the best record in baseball at 45-24 on June 12, before ending the season on a 38-55 run, leading the team missing the playoffs all together. After seeming to be one of the best managers in the game at roughly the halfway point of the 2025 season, the following 12 months would ultimately cost him his job.
The Phillies, like the Mets, fired their manager during the season, but were able to make a playoff run nonetheless. Rob Thomson was dismissed by the organization on April 28th and was subsequently replaced by bench coach Don Mattingly. After being spurned multiple times by former Red Sox World Series champion manager Alex Cora, the Phillies removed the interim tag from Mattingly’s managerial title, with Mendoza being his first notable staff change.
Mendoza became the second former Mets manager within the last decade to land with a notable rival, joining New York Yankees third-base coach Luis Rojas. Mendoza and Rojas aren’t the only coaches to jump from the Mets to a division rival, though; hitting coach Kevin Long left the Mets for the Nationals after the 2016 season, and both pitching coach Jeremy Hefner and first base coach Antoan Richardson joined the Braves’ coaching staff in 2026.
