Carlos Mendoza's move makes Mets and Yankees friends . . . for now
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza and Yankees manager Aaron Boone during spring training. Credit: AP/Jeff Roberson; Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — There’s no reason to expect a Subway Series game played in early March to generate anything more than a flicker of competitive heat. We’re talking about practice, after all.
But what transpired on the field between the Yankees and Mets before Tuesday’s nationally-televised matinee at Clover Park felt more like a family reunion. Only friendlier.
If not for the different shades of blue, splashed with the Mets’ traffic-cone orange caps, a casual observer would have had trouble figuring out these were opponents. It was a mutual lovefest, the product of so much cross-pollination between the two franchises, and most recently the defection of Carlos Mendoza, the former Yankees’ bench coach now manager of the Mets.
Mendoza greeted the visiting Yankees like it was a navy-and-white receiving line: handshakes, hugs, laughs. He took plenty of good-natured abuse for the new goatee, a no-no during his days in the Bronx.
“So [his wife] Francis is OK with it, but he’s got to tighten it up a little bit,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said, smiling. “We’ll see how long he sticks with it. Looks all right.”
Consider the beard a symbolic break from Mendoza’s pinstriped past. He obviously doesn’t have the Yankees’ legacy of his Flushing predecessor, Willie Randolph. But Mendoza does have deep ties to the organization, rising through the minor-league ranks for nearly a decade before joining Boone’s major-league staff in 2017, then sitting beside him as bench coach two years later.
Seeing all his Yankees colleagues Tuesday gave Mendoza the opportunity to catch up after a winter’s worth of changes. At one point, Brian Cashman jogged over to chat with Mendoza, then the GM pulled him aside to meet Cashman's mom near the Yankees’ on-deck circle.
Cashman had been touting Mendoza as a superb managerial candidate well before the Mets hired him in November. The fact that he got the Flushing gig brings a new dynamic to the relationship now, and the two teams sharing the same city — separated by only 13 miles — tends to foster a territorial rivalry that supersedes any fond personal feelings.
It’s easier to be buddy-buddy right now. The games don’t count. And the franchises are currently in different places as they head into the 2024 season. The two owners went head-to-head this winter in the bidding for Japanese ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who ultimately signed a $324 million deal with the Dodgers, but otherwise the Yankees and Mets stayed in separate lanes.
That won’t continue, especially when Hal Steinbrenner and Steve Cohen are expected to engage in a half-billion-dollar battle for Juan Soto next winter, with the Mets having plenty of cash coming off the books for 2025. In the meantime, Boone will be a free agent himself at the end of this season, and is saddled with getting Steinbrenner’s $306 million investment to the World Series for the first time since 2009. He’s never faced more pressure since taking over for Joe Girardi six years ago, but rarely lets the stress bleed through to the public domain.
Mendoza isn’t faced with those Everest-level expectations. The Mets have baseball’s highest payroll at $329 million, but nearly $50 million of that is playing for other teams this season. They have a new president of baseball operations in David Stearns and Mendoza was hired to help pilot the Mets through this transitional phase, without any sort of playoff mandate. His primary mission is a combination of relationship-building and prospect development before Cohen gets aggressive with the checkbook next winter, so going toe-to-toe with the Yankees in his first year doesn’t seem realistic. They’re in a higher weight class this season, as much as Mendoza can’t concede that.
“Once the games start, it’s about beating them,” Mendoza said. “And that’s the mentality here.”
The Mets don’t get the upper hand too often. The late ‘80s. Again in 2006, when Randolph’s crew advanced to within a W of the NL pennant and the Yankees got bounced early from October. And of course the 2015 trip to the World Series, where their Bronx pals haven’t been since winning the ’09 crown.
Mendoza is now a former Yankee in what still is very much a Yankees’ town, and now he’s tasked with flipping that script, as soon as possible. It won’t happen overnight. Just being the only guy wearing blue-and-orange amid his former colleagues in navy required an adjustment, same as the other guys who switched sides over the winter.
“This game’s hard, and sometimes that jersey can get heavy,” said Harrison Bader, a Bronxville native who spent 1 1/2 seasons with the Yankees before signing a one-year, $10.5 million deal with the Mets. “So I think we all understand that in New York, and sharing that experience ... I think it creates a bond where when you do see them, you get that reaction that you saw today.”
Once the hugs and handshakes were over, Mendoza’s Mets — using a preview of the Opening Day lineup (without the ailing Jeff McNeil) — edged Boone’s backup-heavy travel squad, 5-4. It’s just the Grapefruit League. But Tuesday served as a chance to get the fraternization out of the way before things gets serious in three more weeks. Nothing will be quite the same when the Mets host the Subway Series on June 25 at Citi Field. Except Mendoza’s bottom line.
“I don’t know how they view the Mets,” Mendoza said of his former club. “I know how I view the Yankees — I want to beat them.”
If that happens, with the stakes involved, Mendoza can likely expect some chillier receptions in the future.
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.
