Carlos Mendoza Paid the Price for the Mets’ Faulty Blueprint and Listless Play

Across two decades that have produced just three pennant winners and one champion between New York’s two teams, the city’s sports media industrial complex has spent a fair bit of time calling for one manager’s head or another, or at least stoking that sentiment among fans. Still, it rated as a bit of a surprise on Friday when the Mets announced they had fired manager Carlos Mendoza — er, announced “the departure of” Mendoza, as if he were a flight leaving LaGuardia Airport — and named former Padres manager Andy Green, who’d been the Mets’ senior vice president of player development, to serve as interim manager for the remainder of the season. It was the first time that either the Mets or Yankees had changed skippers during a season since 2008, when the Mets canned Willie Randolph during a California road trip. While the team’s play this season, and indeed for over a year, made the case for a switch, Mendoza didn’t assemble this expensive band of underperformers. But like so many managers before him, he took the fall for someone else’s flawed blueprint.

The Mets were 34-47 when Mendoza was axed, exactly halfway through this season, and halfway through the five-year contract of president of baseball operations David Stearns, who hired Mendoza in November 2023, five weeks after leaving the Brewers to join the organization himself. At the time of the firing, the Mets were last in the NL East and had the league’s third-worst record, with just a two-game margin separating them from the major league-worst Rockies. They had lost six games in a row — their third losing streak of at least five games this season — while being outscored 54-22. In the nightcap of a doubleheader against the Cubs on Wednesday, the Mets’ infield combined to make six errors, with a player at each position making at least one in the same game for the first time since 1962. Amid that debacle, fans chanted the name of bygone slugger Pete Alonso, whose departure via free agency last December has come to symbolize a roster overhaul that went too far.

“Embarrassing,” Mendoza said after the six-error game and the doubleheader sweep. “Overall, the whole day. Two losses, but the way we played overall. That last game was unacceptable. Everybody’s pissed. Everybody’s frustrated.”

Evidently, that level of frustration was enough for Stearns to make a change. “Despite all of our efforts — Mendy’s included — we haven’t been able to get this going this year. I take responsibility for that,” he said at the outset of his press conference at Citi Field on Friday. “Ultimately, everything that occurs in baseball operations, including our major league record, is my responsibility.”

Stearns’ offseason moves haven’t panned out — more on that below — but as of Opening Day, the roster he assembled positioned the Mets as co-favorites in the NL East along with the Braves, with New York estimated to have a 38.4% chance of winning the division and an 80.4% chance of reaching the postseason. After dropping two out of three to the Phillies over the weekend, they’re 15 games below .500 (39-54) and 15 games out of first, with just 4.6% odds of making the playoffs. The offense’s 91 wRC+ is tied for the majors’ third-worst mark, and with subpar defense (-14 FRV, sixth worst), the team is dead last in position player WAR, at 4.5. Meanwhile, the rotation’s 4.82 ERA is the fourth-worst mark in the majors.

While there’s plenty of blame to go around for mistakes and underperformances, injuries have been a big part of the Mets’ story this season. Their starter with the lowest ERA (2.39) and FIP (3.21), Clay Holmes, has been out since May 15 due to a fractured fibula, but more than anything, what stands out is that prior to Friday’s game, a 2-1 loss to the Phillies to inaugurate Green’s tenure, the team hadn’t been able to field shortstop Francisco Lindor and left fielder Juan Soto — two likely future Hall of Famers to whom owner Steve Cohen has committed more than $1 billion in guaranteed salary — within the same lineup since the first eight games of the season. Soto strained his right calf, landed on the injured list on April 6, and missed 15 games, including two while the Mets were still evaluating the severity of his strain. Lindor, who missed all but the final week of spring training following surgery to remove his fractured left hamate in mid-February, strained his left calf and landed on the IL on April 23, by which point the Mets were just clear of a 12-game losing streak, their longest since 2002.

The aforementioned six-error game marked Lindor’s return, and he committed the first of those errors by bobbling a first-inning grounder, but unlike all but one of the other miscues, it didn’t lead to any runs. Soto sat out both ends of that doubleheader due to tightness in his back, but he retuned to the lineup on Thursday while Lindor sat. Soto has hit .300/.406/.567 in 65 games, but Lindor just .219/.305/.352 in 27 games. The former’s 168 wRC+ is 10 points above his career norm, and while the latter’s 89 wRC+ is 32 points below his own standard, he’s got plenty of company in that department.

“We failed Mendy. I failed Mendy,” said Lindor on Friday, two days after becoming the longest-tenured Met with the trade of lefty David Peterson to the Cubs. “I didn’t play to my capability to help him win as many games as we could.”

Just two seasons ago, as a rookie manager, Mendoza guided the Mets to 89 wins and a thrilling late-season run that culminated in their first trip to the National League Championship Series since 2015. The vibes around that team were immaculate; it was the season of Grimace spurring a winning streak to escape a 28-37 start, Jose Iglesias collecting hit singles, Lindor launching a playoff berth-clinching home run off the Braves’ Pierce Johnson in the season’s penultimate game, and Alonso clouting a three-run homer off Devin Williams, then of the Brewers, in the ninth inning of Game 3 of the Wild Card Series. The Mets were eventually steamrolled by the Dodgers in the NLCS, outscored 46-26 in a six-game series, but the 44-year-old Mendoza felt like a rising star in the managerial ranks — even-keeled, sincere, able to rally his team from its slow start to within two wins of a trip to the World Series.

The good vibes continued as the Mets outbid the Yankees for Soto that winter, and retained Alonso on a two-year, $54 million deal with an opt-out. The 2025 team stormed to a major league-best 45-24 start, building a 5 1/2-game NL East lead as of June 12, but that day Kodai Senga strained his right hamstring while reaching for an off-target throw from Alonso, and basically it’s been downhill ever since. The starting pitching collapsed amid further injuries, save for promising showings by rookies Nolan McLean and Brandon Sproat. Besides Edwin Díaz, the bullpen also went south despite Stearns’ work to restock it at the deadline. The Mets went 38-55 from June 13 onward, finishing 83-79 and on the short end of a tiebreaker with the Reds for the third NL Wild Card spot.

Whether it was a mandate from owner Steve Cohen or merely a desire to reshape the roster he had inherited upon taking the POBO job, Stearns used the postseason miss as a reason to clean house. In addition to turning over almost the entire the coaching staff around Mendoza, Stearns traded Brandon Nimmo, the longest-tenured Met, to the Rangers in November in exchange for Marcus Semien; let both Alonso and Díaz depart as free agents in December, the former without making him a formal offer, the latter after signing Williams to a three-year, $51 million deal; and traded away Jeff McNeil for a 17-year-old pitching prospect. He signed free agents Jorge Polanco and Bo Bichette, and traded for both Luis Robert Jr. and Freddy Peralta, the latter in a deal that sent Sproat to Milwaukee. Individually, each of those moves had merit, or at least a defensible rationale. Collectively, their short-term focus created a win-now roster that was still short on high-end starting pitching given the extent to which Peralta, who helped the Brewers to four playoff berths while Stearns was in Milwaukee, was oversold as an ace.

Almost none of Stearns’ moves has worked out so far. The 35-year-old Semien, whose performance had already declined over the past couple seasons, produced just a 73 wRC+ and -0.3 WAR before landing on the IL on Thursday with a Grade 3 flexor strain in his left hip. Polanco has played just 14 games with a 52 wRC+ and -0.3 WAR because of bursitis in his left Achilles tendon. Robert has been limited to 24 games with a 92 wRC+ and 0.1 WAR due to a lumbar spine disc herniation, and his return is being talked about in terms of “before the end of the season.” Bichette hit for a 66 wRC+ through the end of May, though thanks to a red hot June, he’s up to a 93 wRC+; a good chunk of his 1.1 WAR is for defense, both at third base and as a fill-in for Lindor at shortstop. Peralta has been lit for a 4.53 ERA while averaging just 5.37 innings per start; he’s completed six innings in only six out of 17 turns, placing an extra burden on the bullpen. Williams has a 4.28 ERA, though he’s only blown one save chance. The only offseason acquisition who has played up to his potential is setup man Luke Weaver, who has a 2.06 ERA.

It hasn’t helped that several key holdovers have also struggled. Peterson, an All-Star last season, had a 6.09 ERA before being traded. Senga, whose injury compromised his mechanics en route to a 5.90 ERA after his hamstring injury last year, has been hit for a 9.09 ERA in eight appearances this year. Mark Vientos (77 wRC+, -1.1 WAR) and Brett Baty (72 wRC+, -0.3 WAR), both of whom have shown signs of breaking through in years past, have been flat-out terrible. One has to wonder if the changes in the coaching staff set them back.

All of this reflects poorly on Stearns, arguably the one whose job should have been in jeopardy instead of Mendoza. With a $365 million payroll — the game’s second highest, behind only that of the Dodgers — he’s the architect of this year’s edition of the worst team money can buy, but with the amateur draft and the August 3 trade deadline coming up, it’s a particularly bad time to have a leadership vacuum. Had Cohen decided to replace Stearns at this juncture, Mendoza would have been ripe for replacement by his successor anyway.

“I understand there’s no magic bullet here, there’s no one change that immediately is going to turn this around,” said Stearns, who described his evaluation of what had gone wrong with this past offseason’s slate of moves as “ongoing.”

“Clearly we’ve fallen short,” he added. “I believe in the talent that’s in our room, but belief on its own does not lead to results.”

Enter the 48-year-old Green, a former infielder who spent the last three seasons (2008–10) of his 11-year professional career in the Mets organization, including a four-game cameo with the big club in 2009. After four seasons of managing in the minor league system of the Diamondbacks, who originally drafted him in 2000, Green spent 2016–19 managing the Padres, albeit with little success. The team never won more than 71 games on his watch, though it was on pace to exceed that total when he was fired in late 2019 with a 69-85 (.442) record. He spent the 2020–23 seasons as the Cubs’ bench coach alongside manager David Ross, then interviewed for managerial openings with the Guardians and Mets. While he lost out to Mendoza for the latter job, he impressed Cohen enough that the team hired him to run its farm system. In that capacity, he oversaw the development of current rookies McLean, Carson Benge, and A.J. Ewing, who have been among the team’s few bright spots this year.

At his introductory press conference, Green praised his predecessor, saying, “I don’t think anybody dreams of sitting in this seat this way, especially when the person walking out the door has the level of character and competence that he has.” He described taking the job as feeling “like a responsibility more than an opportunity.” As someone who has now been both the outgoing and incoming manager during in-season changes, he offered insight into the rationale for such moves:

“I can’t stand in the [batter’s] box, I can’t go catch a groundball, I can’t throw a pitch from the mound. This isn’t a strategy problem. I think what it comes down to is the best thing we can do is recognize what keeps most people from performing is the burden they carry with them to work every day, and that burden is usually from carrying too much and wanting to be great for a city, for a manager, for a team, and it comes from carrying the baggage of yesterday into today, how you’ve performed previously.

…“[W]hen you get to these types of moments where a manager change occurs, you eliminate a measure of the burden in a way that nobody wants to, which is those guys are trying to come together for Mendy, to be great for Mendy, because they care about Mendy, and then when you get to the finality of this moment, then it’s passed, and then sometimes you see guys play with a greater measure of freedom, and that’s the best thing I can do for this group.”

Green, who will return to his player development role at the end of this season, did not cast himself as a miracle worker. He stressed that his first message to his players was that “you have one game that really matters in the world, and it starts at 7:10 tonight,” and that tomorrow’s game and the daunting scale of the task ahead were distractions. “It’s human to be distracted by especially the enormity of it, especially the level of care that exists in the world and in this city for it,” he added. “That doesn’t make it constructive or good for us.”

As the Mets’ playoff odds suggest, salvaging the season is a long shot. The Peterson trade and the managerial switch are just the first wave of several changes likely to take place over the next several weeks. We’ll see whether they leave the Mets in a better place when the dust settles — and eventually, whether Stearns will get another chance to build a team that can live up to expectations.

Matt Martell contributed reporting from Citi Field.