Postseason Managerial Report Card: Carlos Mendoza

I’m trying out a new format for our managerial report cards this postseason. In the past, I went through every game from every manager, whether they played 22 games en route to winning the World Series or got swept out of the Wild Card round. To be honest, I hated writing those brief blurbs. No one is all that interested in the manager who ran out the same lineup twice, or saw his starters get trounced and used his best relievers anyway because the series is so short. This year, I’m sticking to the highlights, and grading only the managers who survived until at least their League Championship series. I already covered Stephen Vogt and the Guardians. Today, I’m looking at Carlos Mendoza and the Mets.

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of the outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies or unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Mark Vientos and Jackson Chourio were also great this October. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Francisco Lindor is important because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Let’s get to it.

Hitting: B+
Mendoza didn’t have a lot of options on the hitting side. The Mets weren’t exactly blessed with depth this year. The closest thing to a decision that Mendoza had to make was how much to believe in Jose Iglesias and his OMG magic, because every other lineup spot felt more or less set in stone. In Game 1 of the Wild Card round, Iglesias batted second – sure, not my preference but not a huge deal. Jesse Winker started against a righty, and J.D. Martinez pinch-hit against the first lefty Winker would have faced. Full marks.

The entire Milwaukee series was like that – one of Winker or Martinez starting, and the other taking a pinch-hitting opportunity with the platoon advantage when available. By Game 3, Mendoza had changed his mind on Iglesias, too, dropping him to fifth and putting Vientos second. I would have started that way, but better late than never, and it wasn’t even that late.

In fact, Mendoza’s plug-and-play approach lasted through the entire NLDS. The only guys to pinch-hit were Martinez and Winker. Luisangel Acuña and Harrison Bader made defensive cameos, always in place of Vientos and Starling Marte. Complicated? Definitely not. Correct? Absolutely. When the rest of your bench is Bader, Acuña, and Luis Torrens, the correct decision is to ride the starters as long as possible. Mendoza didn’t try to make something out of nothing.

The first real decision for Mendoza came in the NLCS, and it came because he got more players to use. Jeff McNeil returned from injury, and he pinch-hit in a blowout to get his feet wet in game conditions. Meanwhile, Iglesias was sinking in the lineup like a stone – batting seventh and scuffling. The stage was set for a change when Mendoza wanted it.

The Mets won big in Game 2 and then Mendoza made a decision that I don’t understand. He deviated from his straightforward blueprint and sent Winker to the bench in favor of Martinez for two straight games, both against righty starters. I don’t really understand this one, to be honest. I looked for particular matchup or pitch type splits and couldn’t find anything. Winker wasn’t slumping, and I couldn’t find any reports of injury. He just deferred to the veteran, and even though Martinez was perfectly fine in those games, I still hated it.

With their backs against the wall in Game 5, Mendoza stopped messing around. He put Winker back in at DH and made the switch from Iglesias to McNeil at second. He went one for two on those moves – Winker had a great game and keyed an offensive explosion, while McNeil was pretty bad in his return from injury.

That’s basically it. Mendoza didn’t pinch-hit much in the Dodgers series because his team didn’t support it and the Dodgers didn’t have many lefty relievers to target. I didn’t like his sitting Winker for two games, and I probably would have gone to McNeil sooner, though that’s minor. I liked everything else Mendoza did. That sounds like a B+ grade to me.

Pitching: C
The first game of the Wild Card series showed what Mendoza wanted to do. He gave Luis Severino a ton of rope against the Brewers – 28 batters and six innings – despite Sevy not having his best stuff. He struck out just three, walked two, and garnered a mere eight whiffs out of 53 swings. If I’m being generous to Mendoza, the Mets bullpen had about two pitchers he trusted, but man, there are a lot of innings to eat in a playoff run. In any case, after Severino managed to labor through with only four runs allowed in his six innings (faint praise, check), José Buttó and Ryne Stanek closed out an easy 8-4 victory.

To Mendoza’s credit, this all did feel like a designed plan. When Sean Manaea pitched the next day, he was sharper than Severino had been, but the game was closer. Mendoza let Manaea go five innings – I’m good with it – and then subbed him out with a one-run lead in the sixth. He went with his “A” bullpen: Reed Garrett, Stanek, Phil Maton, and then Edwin Díaz for the save. He gave Maton the toughest assignment, the top of the order, and I don’t like that. The only reason Díaz didn’t get the call is because he’s the closer, but the dangerous part of the Brewers lineup is the top.

That’s not just an idle musing. Díaz never did get to enter the game because Maton got torched. I don’t have a problem with trusting Maton as part of the bullpen. I’m a pretty big Maton fan, in fact. But Díaz is obviously the better pitcher, and if I had to pick one of the two guys to face Chourio and friends with a one-run lead, I’d use my hammer. Sure, bad luck that Maton got got, but it was bad process, too.

In Game 3, Mendoza didn’t mess around with hierarchies. He tried Buttó as the first guy out of the bullpen, and got burned; two straight solo homers staked the Brewers to a two-run lead. But Mendoza learned his lesson quickly. With the top of the Milwaukee order due up and the season on the line, he brought Díaz in. Bottom seven, one out, and trailing by two isn’t exactly traditional closer territory. I absolutely loved it. That meant Díaz couldn’t pitch the ninth, but whatever. The good hitters were up in the seventh, so Mendoza used his good pitcher. After the Mets rallied in the ninth, David Peterson locked down the save against the bottom of the Brewers lineup. Excellent managing, in my opinion.

The biggest uncertainty facing Mendoza wasn’t how to handle a middling bullpen; it was how to integrate Kodai Senga, the team’s injured ace. Senga returned for Game 1 of the NLDS against the Phillies and piggybacked a start with Peterson. Peterson acted as a combination bulk guy/lefty specialist, sticking around to face Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper twice. Garrett then got the bottom of the order in a game the Mets trailed by one. The plan seemed pretty clear: keep it close and bring out the big guns for the top of the order. But whoops! The Mets put up a five-spot on the Philly bullpen, game over, and Maton and Stanek mopped up. I probably wouldn’t have used either there, especially on the first day of back-to-back games, but that’s a minor nitpick.

Severino was better in his second start, but he still didn’t have his best stuff in Game 2. I thought he was lucky to escape damage through the first five innings, but his luck ran out the third time through against Philadelphia’s best. Trea Turner singled, Harper homered, Nick Castellanos followed with a bomb of his own, and it was a 3-3 ballgame. I understand that the Mets didn’t really have a lefty specialist, particularly with Peterson in piggyback mode, but that’s a tough spot for a tiring pitcher.

Mendoza then went back to his hammer, giving Díaz the top of the Phillies order, but Díaz had an off night. He left a bad slider middle-middle to Bryson Stott to surrender a two-run triple, and that was the last batter he got. It was low-leverage time, and Tylor Megill came in as a long guy. Then the Mets tied it up in the top of the ninth — surprise! You’d expect the remaining high-leverage guys to come in; Mendoza had consistently looked to Maton and Stanek in key moments. But Megill stayed in and lost command of the strike zone. Of the last 17 pitches he threw, only three were in the zone, and one of those got scalded for a 110-mph game-ending single.

By this point, pretty much every option had failed the Mets. Maton had gotten roughed up. Díaz had surrendered a lead. Severino got hit around the third time through. The mop up guys were scuffling. That meant Manaea was going to get extended run in Game 3, and he delivered. I like that, particularly given that Philly’s best hitters are lefties. Manaea left the game with a 6-0 lead, and weirdly Maton and Stanek handled the rest.

If you’re playing along at home trying to figure out who the Mets trusted, Game 4 was another wrinkle. Jose Quintana cruised through five innings and got Schwarber and Harper three times each, then Garrett came in for the righties. This time, Peterson played a hybrid lefty specialist/long man role. Peterson took the middle innings – good choice. In the meantime, the Mets took a 4-1 lead, and Díaz locked down the save. I thought this was a well-managed game – and even with the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard to figure out which relievers Mendoza trusted, and which ones he should have trusted.

That brings us to the NLCS, and look, sometimes you get Dodgered. In Game 1, the Senga opener gambit didn’t pan out, as he gave up three runs in 10 batters. Garrett and Peterson did some mop up duty, as did Danny Young. Mendoza strangely turned to Buttó, who was frequently pitching big innings down the stretch, to finish out a game they were losing 7-0. I wasn’t a big fan of that decision, though to be honest so many Mets relievers struggled that I’m not quite sure who the mop up man was.

In Game 2, the Manaea blueprint worked: two times through the order, stick around for the dangerous lefties at the top, and then bail in favor of the bullpen. The Mets were up, but not by an insurmountable amount, so they also used their top relievers. With a day off and a deficit in the series, I think it’s the right decision, but it’s close. You hate to see every one of the best Los Angeles hitters getting a look at Díaz in a game the Mets led by four runs in the ninth.

Mendoza had displayed a lot of urgency in Game 2, but he took a strangely lackadaisical approach in Game 3. Once again, Severino didn’t really have it. He barely missed any bats and walked more hitters than he struck out. Mendoza finally pulled the plug after the top of the fifth went well-struck fly out, well-struck groundout, smashed line drive single, and then walk. That could have gone much worse, and it still didn’t go well. Garrett entered in relief and gave up two runs of his own, at which point the rout was on. Mendoza was, in essence, treating this game without the urgency he’d used earlier in the series. If you’re going to use Díaz with a four-run lead in the ninth, you should probably be willing to use good relievers in a close game in the fifth. I did like that Mendoza packed it in at that point and went to Megill, but I’m having a hard time drawing a consistent pattern of bullpen usage here.

Game 4 was more of the same, but I was happier with his decision-making. Quintana got hit hard, and Mendoza pulled the plug in the fourth inning. He even brought in Buttó, who I think is a good option here. It just didn’t work. The Dodgers are good! Maton, now clearly on the outs, got some work, and Young closed things out.

Let’s hit the last two games quickly. Game 5 was a blowout in the Mets’ favor right away, but after Peterson and Garrett gave up five runs in their 4.2 innings, Mendoza had seen enough. He turned to Stanek for a heavy 2.1 innings (31 pitches, eight batters faced), and then Díaz threw 23 pitches for a two-inning non-save in a 12-6 New York win. I mean… it’s the Dodgers, but how many runs would you need to not use two trusted relievers for large workloads in a series where you still need two more wins?

Game 6 was another anti-climax. Manaea got tattooed early and only lasted two innings. I liked Mendoza’s response, though. First, Maton got the bottom of the order in the third inning, with lackluster results. Then Díaz came in for the top of the order, and since he was dealing, he got a second inning too. Stanek was on tap for the next time up against the top of the lineup, but after he started walk/sac bunt/single, Mendoza pulled him and emptied the tank. Garrett, Senga, and Buttó pitched the last three innings, and Senga got mauled by the top of the order as well. It was a comprehensive crushing – the Dodgers scored a colossal 46 runs in the series. There’s just not much you can do when you’re giving up eight runs a game.

Overall, Mendoza’s approach to his pitching left me kind of confused. He was scattershot in his approach, though with one key through line. He displayed play-for-today tendencies when he had leads, and I think that’s wise given the construction of the Mets roster. They won a lot of their games via blowout, and they also lost their fair share of blowouts thanks to an up-and-down rotation. The counter of going all out with a lead makes a lot of sense to me.

That said, I was a bit lost when it came to determining who he trusted most. I would have said Stanek was in the circle of trust, but he actually had the lowest entry leverage of any reliever other than Young, because Mendoza also used him with big deficits. Both Maton and Stanek pitched a lot of mop up duty, and yet Megill got the ninth inning of a tie game against the Phillies with both high-leverage arms available.

Mendoza was extremely flexible in his use of Díaz, letting him pitch in all kinds of innings where you don’t see closers, but he strangely returned to a standard closer-gets-the-ninth mentality in a big spot against the Brewers. Buttó was getting key innings in the regular season, but he got treated as a mop up/long man hybrid in the playoffs.

I’m not sure any of this mattered much. Mendoza didn’t let his starters run too long for my taste – if anything, he was trying to push them when he could to make up for the mediocre relief corps. He couldn’t have magically made the Dodgers not score a trillion runs by sequencing his relievers differently. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt here and merely say this: When your bullpen has an aggregate ERA in the 5.00s and has to cover more than four innings a game, there aren’t many right options. Mendoza made some bad choices, and he made some good choices, and the result was somewhere in the middle. I’d be happy with him as my team’s manager, particularly as it relates to non-tactical responsibilities. I’d just try to give him a bullpen that was a little bit less of a disaster.

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