Paul Articulates - Field Leadership

The New York Mets went through a pretty thorough slate-cleaning in the off-season following the 2025 campaign.  Besides the much discussed decimation of the Mets’ core, there was huge turnover in the non-player ranks.  Almost all of the coaches below Carlos Mendoza were either fired, opted to leave, or were just not renewed.  What is left is Mendoza and a brand new staff of coaches.

Last year’s staff came in as a well-respected bunch, but after the team’s failure to hold a large divisional lead there was an urgency to completely eliminate the environment that let it happen.  With a majority of the demolition work completed, the Mets now set out to rebuild, and there is very significant importance to the roles of the coaching staff in delivering a better product.

First and foremost, between David Stearns, Carlos Mendoza, and Justin Friedman (SVP of strategy & analytics), a sound strategy must be in place long before the grass greens up.  That strategy must be unambiguously communicated to the entire staff along with their roles and responsibilities for delivering the tactical elements of the strategy.  Let’s examine the new coaches and their roles.

Bench Coach: Kai Correa replaces John Gibbons.  John Gibbons was hired to be the bench coach for Mendoza to provide dugout experience and decision making assistance to support the new manager.  Now with two full years under Mendoza’s managerial belt, the Mets have brought in Correa to enhance the focus on infield defense and strategy.  Correa has a great deal of experience in this area and emphasizes David Stearns’ commitment to improving the team’s run prevention capabilities.  Correa will be tasked with coordinating the defensive approach and providing real-time adjustments to alignment.  In addition, he will fulfill the traditional bench coach role of maintaining situational awareness for Mendoza.  Mendoza must be fully focused on the execution on the field, so his bench coach is expected to be an information conduit for everything else, including player input, medical staff input, analytics information, and all other external sources.

Hitting Coach: Troy Snitker replaces the duo of Jeremy Barnes and Eric Chavez.  Snitker spent the last seven years as hitting coach for the Houston Astros.  The Astors were one of the first MLB teams to have a fully integrated analytics and technology operation for their player development, so he will fit cleanly into the Mets’ system with a smaller learning curve than many other possible candidates.  He will bring important insights on how another organization develops their hitters effectively.  He also has one extremely important role: helping the players adjust to the opponents’ pitching approach. This is a year-long cat and mouse game where teams use a plethora of analytics data to determine the opponent’s tendencies and prepare counter-attacks.  Albert will have to excel in this role to avoid the RISP hitting droughts that his predecessors could not stop.

Pitching Coach: Justin Willard replaces Jeremy Hefner.  Hefner was the well-regarded veteran of six seasons in the role who was shown the door following a few years of pitching under-achievement.  Hefner now heads to Atlanta while Willard assumes the job in New York.  The role of the pitching coach is to maintain awareness of the pitching staff’s health, development needs, utilization rates, and tactical approach in games.  The pitching coach has a very significant role of in-game advisor to the manager.  Who is tired, who is ready, and who is not becomes essential data for decisions on whether to replace the current arm during game action.  I feel like this communication broke down in the last two seasons, as Mendoza overused his bullpen and coddled the starters.  My hope is that Willard will relax Mendoza's itchy trigger finger.  Also, with his reputation for turning pitchers around while with the Red Sox organization, can fix Sean Manaea, David Peterson, and Kodai Senga who all lost their way in the end of the season.

First Base/Outfield Coach: Gilbert Gomez takes on this role, replacing Antoan Richardson.  Richardson made his mark with the Mets, revitalizing their running game and coaching Juan Soto to an unexpected career-high 38 stolen bases.  There is no expectation for Gomez to match this success, but if he can keep the runners moving aggressively on the base paths it will put pressure on opposing defenses.  Gilbert’s key contribution will be managing the outfield defense which will not be the strongest in the league to start the season.  Soto has shown defensive limitations in right, and without Brandon Nimmo or Jeff McNeil, the left field position will be a question mark until the roster is completed and the spring training competition for that position is resolved.

Third Base/Infield Coach: Mike Sarbaugh is replaced by Tim Leiper in one of the most interesting assignments.  Leiper has a very long history of base coaching all the way back to the 2014 season and has also managed in the minor leagues.  What makes this assignment interesting is the infield coach role.  He has far less experience than bench coach Kai Correa in both strategy and instruction in the infield and also has no major league playing experience in the infield.  How Tim and Kai communicate/collaborate will be very important.  They will inherit a very dynamic middle-infield duo in Francisco Lindor and Marcus Semien who likely will need little guidance, but unless the Mets acquire a seasoned first baseman, Jose Polanco will demand considerable attention at first.

These are the primary coaching roles and current assigned coaches.  There are several other assistant coaches that are also new in their roles that are not discussed here.

How well these coaches deliver the strategy and tactics to the players will determine the effectiveness of the team as they enter the 2026 season with so many new faces.  The players will be the center of attention in the media, but these coaches will be very instrumental in the ultimate success of this team.  Keep an eye on how things develop.