Following a disappointing 2025 season, there was always going to be a spotlight on Carlos Mendoza in the final guaranteed year of his contract in 2026. Now, thanks to pointed criticism from one of Mendoza’s former players, there will be extra focus on how the Mets manager uses his bullpen.
Adam Ottavino, who pitched for the Mets from 2022 through Mendoza’s first season in 2024, took aim at the manager’s deployment of his relievers on his “Baseball & Coffee” livestream earlier this week. Ottavino, a free agent after appearing in three games for the Yankees this past season, was frustrated by the number of Mets pitchers who suffered significant injuries in 2025.
“There’s a lot of pressure on a lot of guys to play even when they feel a little compromised,” Ottavino said on the livestream Wednesday. “And the manager, I think he is a really good under-the-stress manager; I think he has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to bullpen guys and how to keep them healthy or even how to care about them at all. There’s no communication there, there’s no feel there, there’s no bedside manner when guys get hurt.”
On his livestream, Ottavino was reacting to the litany of arms on the expected injured list on FanGraphs’ depth chart for the Mets: Tylor Megill, Reed Garrett, Max Kranick, Dedniel Núñez and Danny Young all required elbow surgery in 2025.
“This is something that really upsets me deep in my soul,” Ottavino said. “(The Mets) have to figure out something, whether it’s their protocols, whether it’s the way Carlos uses these dudes so haphazardly, whether they even care about keeping the guys healthy or not. They need to be better than this.”
Add Frankie Montas to the list, and the Mets sent six pitchers to the operating table for elbow surgeries this past season — five of them Tommy John surgery, with Kranick going under the knife for flexor tendon surgery. Lefty A.J. Minter, another integral part of the pen, suffered a lat strain in May that required season-ending surgery as well.
The Mets had never before endured more than three Tommy John surgeries in a single calendar year. Only the Arizona Diamondbacks had more Tommy John surgeries this past season.
Bullpen usage is the low-hanging fruit when criticizing a manager; every blown lead is because the manager kept this guy in too long or too short or didn’t use the other guy that definitely would have gotten out of the jam. That being said, this is criticism not just from a respected, veteran relief pitcher with more than 700 career appearances — but one who appeared in 60 games for Mendoza and the Mets in 2024.
In a follow-up call with The Athletic, Ottavino said that Mendoza is a good manager in most every other aspect of the job, and that he doesn’t view the Mets’ bullpen deployment as unique in a sport that values efficiency and doesn’t mind constant roster churn. He singled the Mets out for criticism, he said, because of his first-hand experience there.
John Gibbons, a longtime former manager who served as Mendoza’s bench coach the last two years before moving on after the 2025 season, disagreed with the criticism.
“I think to go after his bullpen usage is wrong,” Gibbons told The Athletic. “I thought he did a tremendous job trying to protect those guys. I know his heart, I know his mind. He had those guys’ best interests at heart, and anyone saying otherwise is just wrong.”
After the season, the Mets declined an option on pitching coach Jeremy Hefner and allowed assistant pitching coach Desi Druschel to leave the organization, replacing them with Justin Willard (from the Red Sox) and Dan McKinney (from Double-A Binghamton). While many of the club’s coaching changes were expected, the ones on the pitching side raised some eyebrows.
With all that in mind, let’s take a step back and examine the criticisms Ottavino levied here, leaning on conversations we’ve had with members of the 2024-2025 Mets both this week and dating back to the regular season about Mendoza and the Mets’ pitcher usage.
(President of baseball operations David Stearns did not reply to a request for comment. Mendoza declined comment.)
Do the Mets overuse their relievers in the aggregate?
By most measures, the Mets under Mendoza have no glaring red flags for their reliever usage.
• Over the last two years, New York ranks 21st in relief appearances on consecutive days.
• Of the 58 pitchers who have appeared in 70 or more games in either of the last two seasons, three were Mets — all of them trade deadline acquisitions that were already on pace for that many games when acquired (Tyler Rogers and Gregory Soto this past season, Phil Maton in 2024).
• Of the 62 pitchers who have compiled at least 70 innings in relief in either of the past two seasons, only one was a Met — Rogers, the deadline acquisition.
Of course, it’s hard to compile those appearances or innings if you get hurt during the season. If you look at appearances or innings in given months, you still seldom see Mets relievers being worked into the ground.
• Only three times in the last two years has a Mets reliever appeared at least 14 times in a month; the league average is 6 1/2 per team.
• Six times a Mets reliever has thrown 15 or more innings in a month, just above the league average of 5.7 per team.
What about the specific circumstances surrounding the injuries?
This is where it gets murkier as subjectivity bleeds in and you can slip into the kind of cherry-picking that would make any modern major-league organization look bad. However …
• Coming off hip surgery and a question mark all spring for the Opening Day roster, Minter was used 13 times in the first 27 games of the season before injuring his lat.
• Kranick hadn’t pitched in the majors since 2022; through Memorial Day, he was on pace for just under 100 innings in relief.
• Entering 2024, Núñez had thrown 90 innings over the prior four years (thanks to COVID and Tommy John surgery). As he started to excel in the majors, he threw 27 innings over 47 games — a pace of 93 relief innings stretched over a full season. After an elbow strain required a month on the injured list, he was used for five outs in a blowout in his first game back. He missed the rest of the season, was delayed into spring training, and eventually required another Tommy John surgery this season.
• Drew Smith had already appeared four times in the previous week when he was called on to replace an ejected Edwin Díaz on June 23, 2024, against the Cubs. Smith got two more outs that day; he hasn’t pitched professionally since, thanks to Tommy John surgery.
• Although Brooks Raley did remain healthy this season, it was eye-opening that the veteran appeared in 30 of the team’s last 63 games following a 14-month absence recovering from his own Tommy John surgery.
Are the Mets doing rehab assignments properly?
In our season-ending story on what went wrong for the Mets in 2025, one small point was the belief among multiple staffers that the club had rushed back both Sean Manaea and Kodai Senga from their rehab assignments in July. Two guys supposed to lead the staff in 2025 instead pitched to ERAs in the high-fives once off the IL.
A relatively swift build-up for Megill late in the season also didn’t work out. Instead of being an option for September, the right-hander was shut down early in the month and eventually required Tommy John surgery himself.
The Mets also eschewed a rehab stint for Minter to start this season. They’ll handle it differently this time, as you can project the left-hander to start 2026 with a rehab assignment after this year’s surgery.
It’s essential to note that these decisions are made by Stearns, not Mendoza, and an industry source indicated that Stearns takes a more hands-on approach to his clubs’ pitching decisions than other executives the Mets have recently employed.
Does Mendoza have a communication problem?
Again, in that season-ending story, we mentioned a potential communication problem for the manager in passing: “A few players thought Mendoza’s communication was not as sharp as it could be.”
Ottavino was blunt in his assessment, and relievers often feel the most pressure from a manager. One source this week questioned the level of trust between New York’s relief corps and the manager; that’s a precarious spot to be in as a leader and an issue Mendoza has to clarify early in 2026. Ottavino said Mendoza’s issues managing a bullpen are not uncommon for first-time skippers; most improve with time.
Gibbons, a veteran manager himself, was impressed with Mendoza’s caution in using his relievers.
“I’d sit in their room during the day when they go over who’s available that night,” Gibbons said. “And I was shocked the nights the guys couldn’t pitch because they were protecting them, which is unusual in the big leagues. I’d think to myself, and I’d even say to Carlos, ‘There’s three guys available — what are you going to do?’ I mean, there were nights that were like that. It was like, OK, this guy can’t pitch and we want to stay away from this game. But you still have to run a major-league game.”
Ultimately, a lot has to improve for the Mets in 2026. Stearns needs to be better; Mendoza needs to be better; the pitchers need to be better. However you feel about Ottavino’s specific criticisms, six elbow surgeries are too many for a pitching staff, and the Mets should be introspective about the processes that led them to that end. New York’s pitching ecosystem was a smashing success under Stearns, Mendoza and Hefner in 2024. Under the same leadership, it crippled their chances of contention in 2025 and prematurely dented their 2026 roster.
The best response for Mendoza and the Mets will be on the field starting Opening Day.