Making sense of Carlos Mendoza’s expiring contract situation with the Mets

Carlos Mendoza’s exasperation has come earlier this year.

Positive through so many of the undulations in 2025, Mendoza’s simmering frustration only came through in last season’s final weekend, as the Mets let a playoff berth slip through their grasp.

That was the same tone Mendoza struck at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday night, after just the 19th contest of the season, when the Mets lost their eighth consecutive game.

“They’re pissed. Frustrated. Obviously not happy about it,” Mendoza said about his team. “And I want them to be pissed.”

Prior to last September, the Mets had had one losing streak of at least eight games in the previous 21 years, a span covering 3,303 games. They’ve had two in the last 40 games.

Earlier this week, Will Sammon summarized the many reasons not to expect a managerial change from the Mets so soon into the season. That said, the conversation around Mendoza’s job is unsurprising given a trio of job security warning signs:

• He’s coming off an explicitly disappointing season, in which everyone involved with the organization publicly expressed disappointment with the way it transpired.
• A significant chunk of his coaching staff was not retained.
• He himself is working in the final guaranteed year of his contract. The Mets have not yet exercised the club option they hold on Mendoza for the 2027 season.

It’s that last part that I want to explore here. Mendoza is one of just three managers in the majors this season (out of 30, of course) who don’t have a guaranteed contract for next year. (The Diamondbacks’ Torey Lovullo, pretty much perpetually in this position, and the Angels’ first-year skipper Kurt Suzuki are the others.)

Since 2010, only about 15 percent of managers have entered a season as so-called “lame ducks” — working without a guarantee for the following season. Often, teams use the end of the offseason or the start of spring training to exercise club options or extend managerial contracts. Four managers who ended 2025 without a guaranteed contract for 2027 have gained one since: the Phillies’ Rob Thomson, the Brewers’ Pat Murphy, the Blue Jays’ John Schneider and the Cardinals’ Oliver Marmol.

Since the Winter Meetings, I’ve talked with agents, executives and managers to contextualize Mendoza’s contract situation with one main question: How much does this matter? Here’s what I’ve learned.

Why do teams generally avoid having a lame-duck manager?

There are a few main reasons why many teams avoid this scenario:

1. It makes the manager’s job security a question from the very first losing streak.
2. That added scrutiny can influence the way the manager goes about his job daily.
3. Players may doubt the manager’s job security and thus tune him out over the course of the season.

Exercising a club option is considered a straightforward and relatively inexpensive way to prevent any negative momentum from snowballing. It is relatively inexpensive because most managers are making middle-relief money (and for teams like the Mets in the luxury tax, there are no associated fees with paying that salary).

Therefore, if circumstances change and the club wants to make a change, the extra guaranteed money should be too small to even factor into its decision. It’s not a buyout of a college coach worth tens of millions of dollars. The Giants fired Bob Melvin last fall after exercising his club option for 2026 in the summer. The Twins, Rockies, Royals and Reds — not exactly the Mount Rushmore of winter spending — have all recently fired managers who had options exercised or been extended within the previous 12 months. One industry source compared firing a manager despite exercising the club option to a buyout you’d have on a player’s contract option — an amount you figured you’d pay the day you signed the deal.

Why are some teams OK with having a lame-duck manager?

Mainly, because they don’t care very much about those three concerns. They may rebut them as follows:

1. A manager’s job security is almost always a question from the very first losing streak, regardless of contract status.
2. That added scrutiny should not influence the way the manager goes about his job daily.
3. If the manager’s good at the job, players will not tune him out over the course of the season.

You don’t exercise an option or extend a contract just to do it. You want to know you have the right guy in the role, and there are even times when you don’t mind putting that person into a prove-it situation.

One industry source put it this way: If you’re worried about how your manager is going to react to outside conversation about his contract status, then you’ve got the wrong manager.

What is it like to be a lame-duck manager?

Take it from Terry Collins, who managed the Mets without a contract for the following season in 2013, 2015 and 2017.

“It’s going to be put in your face,” Collins said. “You’re going to go through a five-game losing streak, and they’re going to bring it up. It can be tough because people think you don’t think about it. The writers will bring it up to you 20 times over the summer. Even if you try to forget it, they’re not going to let you.

“But you still have to go do your job. You can’t let the last year of your contract stand in the way of what you think is best for the club. Just be the guy you are. Don’t change. Even when the pressure’s on and times are tough, don’t be any different than who you were when you’ve won 10 in a row.”

When I talked to Collins in the spring, he didn’t think that would be an issue for Mendoza.

“Carlos will handle it well,” he said. “He respects the job. He knows what comes with it. He understands the scrutiny and the pressures.”

How do lame-duck managers typically fare?

Before we start a collective analysis here, it’s important to note that not every lame-duck situation is the same. Some managers prefer to play out their deal, as Craig Counsell and Skip Schumaker have in recent years. Some teams run it back with the same manager on year-to-year deals all the time, as the Diamondbacks have done with Lovullo of late and the Astros did with Dusty Baker.

Let’s look at the first measure: Did their teams do any worse than expected?

Here are the 77 teams from 2010 through 2025 that employed a lame-duck manager, with their actual number of wins compared to the expected number of wins according to preseason over/under totals in Las Vegas and whether the manager was retained for the following season.

Here, 38 teams beat their expectations, 38 didn’t match them, and one hit the nail on the head in Collins’ 2013 Mets. On average, teams with a lame-duck manager performed 0.02 wins worse than expected, which I’m going to call a wash.

Thirty-one of those managers were no longer in that role by the start of the next season (basically 40 percent). Fifty-seven percent of them were not in that job by the start of the subsequent season, or 2028 if applied to Mendoza.

What about teams in bigger markets, though, where there’s usually more pressure? Did those teams have any more trouble? (I’m subjectively defining the bigger-market teams as the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, Dodgers, Cubs, Blue Jays and Giants.)

Here, seven teams did better than expected (topped by Schneider’s pennant-winning Blue Jays last season), and 10 did worse, bottomed by two really disappointing Mets seasons in 2017 and 2021. Collins’ 2013 Mets were again on point. Overall, there’s a bit more of an effect: Collectively, these 18 teams averaged about 1 1/2 wins below expectations — which isn’t nothing, given the Mets’ penchant for finishing a game in or out of the postseason.

And the turnover was a bit more pronounced. Ten of the 18 big-market lame-duck managers didn’t make it to the following season. Seven of the eight that were retained made it through at least the next two full seasons; the exception is Toronto’s Schneider, who was just extended through 2028 this spring.

What should we make of all this?

I think it’s fair to reach these conclusions:

1. In bypassing a straightforward and inexpensive way to publicly express confidence in Carlos Mendoza by exercising his 2027 club option, the Mets have placed added scrutiny on his job status.
2. This is New York, and the Mets are coming off that 2025 season. Even if the team had exercised Mendoza’s option, there would be significant scrutiny of his job status.
3. The Mets are, to this point, confident that all that scrutiny has not and will not alter how Mendoza does his job daily or his relationship to the clubhouse.
4. Things change.

Collins put it best.

“If they go play well, everything’s going to be fine,” he said. “If they don’t, stuff happens in our game. It comes with the territory.”