The New York Mets will move bench coach Andy Green back to the front office at season's end, concluding a one-year coaching detour that began when president of baseball operations David Stearns brought him from Milwaukee's front office in November 2023. Green, 52, returns to an unspecified advisory role under Stearns after serving as first-year manager Carlos Mendoza's primary in-game lieutenant. The Mets finished 89-73 and missed the postseason by three games.

Green managed the San Diego Padres from 2016 through mid-2019, posting a 274-366 record before his dismissal. He joined the Brewers' front office in 2020 as a special assistant, working directly under Stearns on player development systems and in-season roster construction. When Stearns left Milwaukee for the Mets' top baseball job, Green followed within 72 hours, initially hired as a senior advisor before shifting to the bench in a restructuring that surprised rival executives who assumed he was Stearns' eventual GM candidate. One AL front-office vice president at the Winter Meetings said Green's coaching assignment "looked like finishing school, not a demotion," noting Stearns' history of cycling lieutenants through field roles before promoting them.

The return matters for two groups. Inside, Mendoza loses his most experienced bench voice but gains flexibility to hire a coach with recent managerial tenure or a specialized skill set—several clubs have added former managers as bench coaches explicitly to smooth in-game replay challenges and umpire relations under the pitch-clock era. The Mets' replay success rate sat at 41% in 2024, fourth-worst in the National League, and Mendoza was ejected twice in confrontations that organizational sources described as "avoidable." A veteran presence with manager experience typically handles pre-series umpire meetings and challenge trigger decisions; Green did both, but his Padres tenure ended poorly and his relationships with the current crew-chief class are cold. His departure creates a natural entry point for someone like John Gibbons or Don Mattingly, both of whom are known to have strong replay processes and have expressed interest in returning to dugouts without the scrutiny of managing.

Externally, Green's front-office return revives the succession question Stearns has declined to address since taking the Mets job. Assistant general manager Colin Anderson currently handles trade execution and pre-draft scouting, but he's never worked outside the Brewers' system and is 33—too junior for a GM leap if Stearns moves upward or out. Green, who holds an MBA from Pepperdine and worked in Theo Epstein's Cubs front office before San Diego, fits the profile of a transactions-focused GM candidate at a larger-market club where the team president retains final roster authority. Two agents with Mets free-agent clients said Green's name appeared on offseason negotiation emails last winter, suggesting he remained in the contract loop even while coaching. That dual role is rare and points to a longer organizational plan. If owner Steve Cohen pursues a CEO-style restructuring—common among portfolio owners who run multiple entities—Stearns could elevate to a supervision role with Green handling day-to-day baseball decisions. Cohen's hedge fund, Point72, operates with exactly that division: a chief investment officer above several portfolio managers with P&L authority.

The reshuffling also opens Mendoza's bench as Stearns enters his second full offseason with payroll latitude. The Mets have $68 million coming off the books and are expected to pursue at least one frontline starter and a right-handed-hitting corner outfielder. Bringing in a bench coach with managerial résumé can signal front-office confidence in Mendoza while giving him adult supervision that doesn't read as oversight. The hire will likely come from outside the organization; the Mets currently have no internal candidates with managing experience, and promoting from within would leave Mendoza surrounded entirely by his own staff—a setup Stearns avoids after watching Craig Counsell's early tenure in Milwaukee suffer from insularity.

Mendoza's agent, Sam and Seth Levinson of ACES Baseball, declined comment. Green did not respond to a message sent through the Mets' media-relations office. The bench-coach search will begin after the World Series, with interviews expected at the GM Meetings in early November. Stearns typically moves quickly on coaching hires; he filled Counsell's entire staff within 19 days of taking the Milwaukee job in 2015.