The Mets have added a familiar baseball lifer to their coaching mix, and it’s the kind of move that says a lot about where this staff is headed.
Mariano Duncan, who was on the 1996 New York Yankees World Series championship roster, has been promoted from Double-A into an unspecified role on the major league staff. Joel Sherman reported: “Source: The Mets have hired Mariano Duncan to join their major league coaching staff. He is expected to help in multiple areas with the position player group.”
Duncan gives the Mets something they have not leaned on much during the David Stearns era: coaches with deep major league mileage. He played in parts of 12 MLB seasons and won a World Series before arriving with the Yankees in 1989 as a member of the Cincinnati Reds. For a team that has made only limited changes to its leadership, his addition stands out.
Andy Green is staying on as manager, which was one of the more notable holdovers in a period of change. But the broader staff is getting a different look, and Duncan’s presence fits the idea that the Mets wanted more people in uniform who have lived the same grind as the players.
That matters because the 2026 staff did not have much of that background. Green has some major league experience on his resume, but hitting coaches Troy Snitker and Jeff Albert never played in the majors.
Pitching coach Justin Willard did not either. Third base coach Tim Leiper spent a dozen seasons in the minors without reaching the big leagues, and bench coach Kai Correa went straight into coaching after his college career.
Of course, playing in the majors does not automatically make someone a good coach. And plenty of excellent coaches never got there as players.
But in an offseason where the Mets were not in position to tear everything down, adding someone who can speak from direct experience gives the staff a different kind of credibility. Players tend to listen a little differently when the person across from them has already been through the same thing.
Duncan isn’t coming in cold, either. Before this return to the Mets in 2026, he spent a year managing the Mumbai Cobras in India. He also worked as a minor league coach for several Mets affiliates before that.
At 63, he brings experience, familiarity and a possible bridge to the club’s Latin American players. Born in the Dominican Republic, he could be a useful voice for players like Juan Soto or Jorge Polanco.
He also could be part of Brett Baty’s development defensively up the middle. And he already knows Jefferson Rojas from the brief time they spent together in Binghamton last year.
There’s a practical feel to this hire, and that may be the point. Stearns has sometimes seemed eager to reinvent the wheel. Bringing in an experienced former big leaguer with a wide range of roles feels more straightforward - and for the Mets, more in line with what the staff was missing when 2026 began.
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