With Mets Job Open, Time May Finally be Right for Long-Time Astros Coach

The Houston Astros have one of the most respected coaches in the game but there’s one thing he has yet to do — manage in the Majors.

New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza. | Brad Penner-Imagn Images

For most that don’t follow the hum of baseball every day, coaches tend to do unnoticed except in their local market. The manager gets the time to shine. But the staffs get the daily work done.

For many, that’s the pathway to the manager’s chair. It was for current Houston Astros manager Joe Espada. It might be for a member of his staff.

The New York Mets fired Carlos Mendoza as manager on Friday. The Mets won’t start looking for a full-time boss until after the season, but names are already starting to circulate, and some are big — Carlos Beltrán and Albert Pujols foremost among them. But, in a recent piece from The Athletic (subscription required), a current Astros coach made the list of potential candidates, and he’s one worth looking into.  

The Value of Omar López

Venezuela manager Omar Lopez. | Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

For those that watched the World Baseball Classic, they got a good look at López, who is the Astros’ bench coach. Earlier this year he was selected to manage his native Team Venezuela, and they went on to beat the field to win the WBC. He drew raves for his managerial style during the tournament, his second straight time leading his country.

But López is not a novice manager. He’s an Astros lifer. He played minor league baseball for two seasons in two organizations and couldn’t cut it. He joined Houston in 1999 as a scout and hitting instructor in Venezuela. For the uninformed, he’s the one that convinced the Astros to sign a young infielder named Jose Altuve.

He managed in the Astros’ minor league system for more than a decade, was named the organization’s player development man of the year in 2013 and led their High-A affiliate to a league title in 2013. He also led Double-A Corpus Christi to a Texas League postseason berth and was named Texas League manager of the year. In his native Venezuela, he led Caribes de Anzoátegui to a league championship.

That hard work got him a ticket to the Majors in 2020 when he became the first base coach under then-manager Dusty Baker. Three years later, he and the Astros won the World Series, giving López his first ring. When Baker retired and Espada — who was Baker’s bench coach — was elevated to manager, he made López his bench coach.

Bench coach is a typical pathway to an MLB managerial job. With his experience, he also has one more card to play. David Stearns is the Mets’ president of baseball operations. A quick check of Stearns’ bio shows that he was Houston’s assistant general manager from 2013-15, as he overlapped with López.

His resume should be enough to put him in the running. The connection could make his path to his first MLB managerial job a little smoother.