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Days After Being Sacked, MLB Coach Sounds Alarm on Divide in Mets Clubhouse

Originally posted on EssentiallySports | By Utsav Gupta | Last updated Oct 10, 2025 2:31 PM ET

Steve Cohen spent $765 million to win a championship. Instead, he got chaos, confusion, and one of baseball’s most amazing collapses. Not only did the New York Mets not make the playoffs, but they also fell apart, taking almost all of their coaching staff with them. One of those fired coaches has now spoken out, saying that there was a major problem that may have led to the disaster.

The numbers tell a bad story. The Mets were in charge of the NL East on June 12, with a record of 45-24. Till July 27, they had 62 wins and a 96.8% chance of making it to the playoffs. After that, everything went wrong. The team lost 38 of their last 93 games, which was the fifth-worst record in baseball during that time. The Miami Marlins put an end to their playoff hopes by shutting them out on the last day of the season, bringing their record to 83-79. In response, Cohen fired pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, hitting coaches Jeremy Barnes and Eric Chavez, and third base coach Mike Sarbaugh, breaking up his coaching staff.

Chavez went on Foul Territory a few days after he was fired and pointed out a major flaw in the Mets’ structure. “You cannot have two head hitting coaches,” he stated plainly. “Players get confused when there are multiple voices.” Chavez talked about how he and Barnes tried to work together even though they had different ideas: “We might have looked at each other and go, man, this guy is full of it, or I disagree with him. But whatever it was, we made sure that we brought it to the group that he and I were on the same page.”

Still, the arrangement never sat right with him. “I said this to Lindor a couple of months back, ‘I’ll never do the co-thing ever again’… When there’s one voice, I think it’s the best situation moving forward.”

Eric Chavez says he’ll never do the co-hitting coaches thing ever again.

“You cannot have two head hitting coaches. Players get confused when there are multiple voices.” pic.twitter.com/Lv0iOs7aPn

— Foul Territory (@FoulTerritoryTV) October 9, 2025

Chávez’s time with the Mets shows how unstable the team is. He became the hitting coach in January 2022, then the bench coach after that season, and finally the hitting coach again in 2024. He tried to give Barnes space because he knew that Barnes had made a name for himself while Chavez was the bench coach. But the two-part structure made things hard to understand. Carlos Mendoza, the manager, survived the purge, but now he has to rebuild a staff that was left behind after a season that promised everything and delivered nothing.

The chaos hasn’t ended with the changes in coaching staff. As the New York Mets head into an uncertain offseason, they keep losing important players.

Reed Garrett’s injury adds to the Mets’ troubles

The instability goes beyond just the coaching staff. The Mets took another big hit when reliever Reed Garrett had Tommy John surgery, which meant he could miss the whole 2026 season. The team confirmed the surgery on Thursday, just one day after the 32-year-old had it.

During the team’s late-season collapse, Garrett’s elbow problems came to light. He was put on the injured list in late August because his right elbow was inflamed, which kept him out for two weeks. He came back for four short appearances, but his elbow gave out again in mid-September. Doctors found that he had an elbow strain that cut his season short.

The timing hurts because Garrett had finally found his form after years of moving around the league. The Mets found something that Detroit, Washington, and Baltimore never did when they claimed him off waivers. During his two seasons in Queens, he became a reliable reliever, pitching in 111 games and throwing more than 112 innings. He had an ERA of less than 4.00 in both years and struck out 147 batters while only walking 56. He even saved seven games along the way.

The Mets now have to find a new pitcher to take the place of one who had become a key part of their bullpen. Garrett will be recovering in 2026 while the team looks for stability both on the mound and in the dugout.

This article first appeared on EssentiallySports and was syndicated with permission.

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