Carlos Mendoza Deserves Better Than Becoming the Mets’ Fall Guy

The good news for New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza is owner Steve Cohen is on the record as not being a fan of midseason firings.

“Everybody says ‘Fire this person, fire that person,’” Cohen said on June 28, 2023, when the Mets were in fourth place in the NL East and seven games below .500 under Buck Showalter. “But I don’t see that as a way to operate. If you want to attract good people to this organization, the worst thing you can do is be impulsive and win the headline for the day.”

Cohen lived up to his word three years ago, when Showalter wasn’t dismissed until the conclusion of a 75-87 season.

But that may also be the bad news for Mendoza, who at this point probably deserves the sweet relief of getting booted off the sinking ship “constructed” by president of baseball operations David Stearns.

If Cohen wants to make a midseason change, he may never be better positioned to do so than Thursday. The off-day for the Mets — who are in last place in the NL East at 22-33 — presents the opportunity to swap skippers without having to play a game hours after the tumultuous transaction.

With a loss tonight, the reeling Mets will be fresh off being swept by the Cincinnati Reds and mired in a six-game losing streak, putting them halfway towards matching the 12-game skid they endured from Apr 8-21. Even with a win, they’ll only be 2-7 in their last nine games.

The Colorado Rockies and Boston Red Sox booted Bud Black and Alex Cora following victories over the last 13 months. And the most infamous managerial firing in Mets history happened off a win on June 16, 2008, when Willie Randolph was canned at 3:15 AM EST, shortly after a 9-6 defeat of the Los Angeles Angels.

A managerial change would both fly under the radar in New York, where everyone’s attention is on the NBA Finals-bound Knicks, while resetting the narrative for the Mets headed into Saturday afternoon, when Lee Mazzilli and Bobby Valentine are scheduled to be inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame.

Of course, a managerial change would also create some awkwardness Saturday. Does the new guy sit on the field during the ceremony?

And how many times will the ever-unfiltered Valentine — who was fired in 2002, two years after managing the Mets to the World Series — be asked at a pre-induction press conference to compare his dismissal to the firing of Mendoza fewer than two years after the latter steered the Mets to the National League Championship Series?

Winning the headline for a day, as Cohen put it in 2023, would likely be the only tangible victory from a managerial change. The Mets are eight games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks, who occupy the last wild card spot and are on a 90-win pace.

To get to 90 victories, the Mets would have to go 68-39 the rest of the way — a 106-win pace over the course of a full season. Is a team without four Opening Day starters — including Francisco Alvarez and Francisco Lindor — and staff ace Clay Holmes for the foreseeable future capable of playing at that pace?

Firing Mendoza would be ripping a page straight out of the playbook utilized by the Wilpons, who were obsessed with winning news cycles while making the manager the fall guy for the flawed team built well above his pay grade.

Stearns is the one who decided to detonate the Mets’ core instead of carefully tinkering with it. The dumped trio of Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil have combined for 18 homers while missing just five of their new teams’ combined 164 games.

The Mets have hit 48 homers as a team and sent eight position players to the injured list, including Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert Jr., the injury-prone replacements for Alonso and Nimmo. Marcus Semien, who replaced McNeil at second base, has a .575 OPS, which is almost 100 points lower than the career-low .669 OPS he posted last season.

Mendoza probably isn’t headed for a Valentine-like tenure and a spot in the Mets’ Hall of Fame. But making him pay for Stearns’ many mistakes isn’t fair. Then again, neither is making Mendoza endure the rest of this lost season.