Carlos Mendoza's Dismissal Leaves Mets With A Future-Defining Choice Pre-Lockout

If there was ever a single series that served as a paradigmatic example of an entire season, the New York Mets' recent disaster against the Chicago Cubs is it.

The pitching staff allowed 29 runs over the first three games of the set, including 15 RBIs in 24 hours to Dansby Swanson, who entered the series as the lowest-qualified hitter in terms of batting average in the league. Pete Crow-Armstrong continued to infuriate his original team, depositing home runs into right field and bunts over Bo Bichette's head at third base. And, somehow, the Mets couldn't muster enough offense to win any games against the league's most-injured pitching staff.

The lowlight of the series, of course, was the six error embarrassment on Wednesday night. Yours truly was at that game, helplessly watching as the entire Mets infield -- on the same night that Gold Glove shortstop Francisco Lindor returned to action after two months away -- played and performed like a tee-ball squad. In a near-impossible feat, New York hit four home runs to Chicago's zero, and yet had their score doubled up by the time the final pitch was thrown.

Those fielding miscues came back haunt the not-so-Amazins one night later, as the Mets lost 4-3... despite allowing zero earned runs. It's truly a boggling set of games when taken in a vacuum, but also a pointed reminder of just how flawed this roster is. Naturally, someone was going to have to take the blame for this, and it appears that skipper Carlos Mendoza will be the sacrificial lamb.

That's all well and good -- Mendoza finishes his tenure in Queens with a 206-199 record, and he was almost certainly a goner after this season anyway considering the lame-duck status of his contract. If anything, one could argue that the team should have moved on after last year's second-half collapse, though that magical 2024 run clearly bought Mendoza a little time.

In his stead, Andy Green, former manager of the San Diego Padres, will take over for the remainder of 2026. Over the past few years, his official title has been "Senior Vice President, Baseball Development." He'll be a steady-enough hand to guide this listless roster to the finish line, though anyone hoping that his arrival in the dugout can key a season-defining turnaround á la Don Mattingly in Philadelphia is kidding themselves. This roster is far too flawed to go anywhere but the bottom of the NL East.

Which, of course, raises the question: What happens to the man who built said roster? David Stearns tore the whole operation apart last offseason in the name of "run prevention" and then promptly watched his pitching-and-defense squad repeatedly shoot itself in the foot all year. The Cubs series was as LOLMets as any set of games you'll ever see from this team, defined by a truly incompetent game plan and lethargic group of players on the diamond at the same time.

Firing Mendoza for his part in that is fair, but does Stearns get a pass when he's the one who put Mendoza and those players in that position in the first place? Steve Cohen sold out to bring the architect of the Milwaukee Brewers to New York, but so far, all he has to show for it is a single trip to the NLCS and one of the two-most expensive rosters in baseball. This year's team, in particular, will go down in the annals of history given their historically large price tag and last-place performance.

Giving Stearns the boot may not be the right path forward -- he did such a good job turning around a moribund franchise in Milwaukee -- but it does have to at least be considered. At least, it would, if the league weren't staring down the prospect of the most disruptive work stoppage since the 1994 World Series was canceled.

Who knows how long the upcoming CBA negotiations will take, or what form the final ratified deal will assume, but what we do know is that both sides (the players and the owners) are preparing for a very long hiatus from the sport. That lockout (if it does happen) will begin on Dec. 1, which is just about two months after the regular season ends and only a month or so after the conclusion of the World series.

When the Mets fired Mendoza, they effectively chose Stearns for the remainder of 2026. It just so happens that, with the lockout coming, they basically have two months to replace him between the end of the season and then. That is a tight turnaround timeline to overhaul the front office ahead of a historic change in the economics of the sport.

Really, the question is: Do you trust Stearns to navigate the new economic world more than a guy you'll only be able to have in the building for roughly six weeks beforehand? Something tells me Mets fan won't like Cohen's answer to that query.