Former New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza will be back in the NL East next season, landing a job as the Philadelphia Phillies infield/third base coach.
Mendoza was announced by Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski on Thursday morning during the end-of-season press conference. The news comes just a day after the team confirmed that 2026 interim manager Don Mattingly would return as the full-time skipper following Alex Cora’s refusal of the job.
Like Cora and like Mattingly’s predecessor Rob Thomson, Mendoza was the victim of a mid-season firing following a putrid start. The Red Sox and the Phillies pulled the trigger much sooner though, with both firings coming in April while Mendoza hung around until late June.
His tenure in New York was short with distinct highs and lows. His first season with the club was the magical 2024 NLCS run, falling just short of the team’s first World Series appearance since 2015. But after a brutal collapse dropped them out of postseason contention in 2025, Mendoza’s seat was hot coming into 2026. The Mets’ terrible start to the forgettable 2026 campaign was not the response he needed, and they canned him on June 26th with a 34–47 record.
With Philadelphia, Mendoza will settle into a similar role to when his major league coaching career began. In 2018, he was promoted to an infield coaching job with the Yankees after several years with minor league affiliates within the organization. He was named bench coach ahead of the 2020 season and remained in that role until the Mets hired him.
Mendoza probably didn’t get real consideration for another manager position, though the Phillies job may be as close as he could get to a fit down the line if Mattingly should falter. The club fired Thomson in reaction to Cora’s firing and Dombrowski pushed hard to hire his former manager before turning to the 65-year-old Mattingly on an interim basis. The organizational expectation from there seemed to be that Cora would take the job after the season, but after being rebuffed again the Phillies went back to Mattingly.
With his foot now in the door with a team like Philadelphia that expects to win and is facing a crucial season, Mendoza now has a great opportunity to get back into some meaningful baseball games after a few months off.
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