HOUSTON — Two games into the season, we have gathered some data on how Mets manager Carlos Mendoza will approach game strategy with his new roster.

Friday’s 3-1 win over Houston allowed Mendoza his first opportunity to deploy his current group of high-leverage relievers. He chose to bring in Reed Garrett to bail Tylor Megill out of a jam in the sixth, new acquisition A.J. Minter in the seventh, Ryne Stanek in the eighth and Edwin Diaz in the ninth.

All were effective, but that order of relievers was not what we will see every time the Mets are protecting a tight lead in the early part of the season.

— Mendoza said he is still tinkering with when to use Minter, Stanek and Garrett in the eighth versus the seventh.

“There’s going to be a combination,” the manager said. “[It will depend on] who is available, who is coming up.”

When Mendoza served as Aaron Boone’s bench coach with the Yankees, the coaching staff would meet before the game to determine the best “lanes,” as they called them, for each reliever against the night’s opposing lineup.

The Mets’ approach under Mendoza sounds similar. They will look every day at data that cuts deeper than handedness and prior history, like how a given pitcher’s stuff plays against an opponent’s swing. They will consider which pitchers are most capable that night of contributing length, among many other factors that will determine the ideal situation for each.

— You’ll see Diaz at some point in the spot that Stanek faced on Friday: eighth inning, best part of the lineup. In this case, it was Jose Altuve, Isaac Parades and Yordan Alvarez. Stanek took care of them, but contemporary managers, including Mendoza, often use their “closers” (a term that is gradually becoming anachronistic) in that spot.

I asked Mendoza after the game if he considered Diaz in the eighth. He said no, primarily because it was Diaz’s first appearance of the season. He wanted to get his closer out of the gate in standard fashion. But if, say, it’s next weekend at Citi Field and Toronto’s Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Anthony Santander are due up in the eighth with the Mets up by a few runs, that could easily be Diaz’s inning.

— One last bit of late-inning run prevention strategy: Mendoza said that he might use Luisangel Acuña as a late-inning defensive replacement at second base on days that Brett Baty starts. On Friday, Acuna pinch-hit for Baty in the seventh because of a platoon advantage. He then made a nifty play on a grounder in the eighth.

Baty is a hardworking neophyte at the position and Acuña is what Mendoza called a “plus-plus defender” there. Because of that, the manager might make the substitution for purely defensive reasons late in games, even if an obvious pinch-hit situation does not arise — provided that he is not facing a team with righty relievers that could make it unwise to remove the lefty Baty. Managing is complicated.