The Phillies fired Rob Thomson on Tuesday morning. The Red Sox fired Alex Cora last weekend. The Mets are 9-19, tied for the worst record in baseball, and the silence from Steve Cohen and David Stearns is the loudest thing happening in New York right now.
So yes, Carlos Mendoza is managing for his job. The market has already priced that in. The question is whether firing him would actually move the line, or just give the front office a clean news cycle while the same broken roster keeps losing.
I am going with the latter. And I will tell you exactly why.
Dead Last Is a Roster Problem, Not a Lineup Card Problem
The Mets rank last in MLB in runs, OBP, SLG, and OPS. All of them. That is not a managerial fingerprint. That is a personnel collapse on a $380 million payroll, which is the second-highest in the sport. Juan Soto said it Sunday: "This is not Mendy's fault." Soto is right, and he is also the guy who has to look at himself in the mirror before pointing at the dugout.
Mendoza's track record actually complicates the hot-seat narrative. In 2024 he took a 22-33 team and finished 67-40 the rest of the way, then pushed the Dodgers to 6 games in the NLCS. That is not a fluke. That is a manager who knows how to hold a clubhouse together when things go sideways. The 2025 season had the best record in baseball through mid-June before it fell apart on the final day. Two years of evidence say this guy can coach.
The fair point for the other side: Mendoza is in a lame-duck year, his 2027 option was never exercised, and repeated slow starts, 22-33 in year one, 9-19 now, do raise a legitimate pattern question. I hear it. I just do not think the pattern is about the manager.
The pattern is about a roster that goes cold and has no margin for error because the front office built it with zero depth behind the stars.
The Northeast Firing Contagion Is Public Money, Not Sharp Money
Here is what I keep coming back to. The Thomson and Cora firings created a steam move in the media market. Suddenly every struggling Northeast manager is on the hot seat because two other teams pulled the trigger. That is the public betting into a number that has already moved. The sharp play is to fade the narrative.
Firing Mendoza right now would cost the Mets their best available replacement options. Alex Cora already said no. The internal candidates, Andy Green, Kai Correa, Carlos Beltran, are fine, but none of them fix dead-last offense. The juice on this bet is terrible. You are paying a lot to get very little.
Mendoza said Tuesday he is "not going to run away from it" and that his energy is going toward getting the best out of his players. That is the right answer. It is also the only answer available to a man whose bosses have gone completely silent while the building burns.
Cohen and Stearns need to either back their manager publicly or make the move. This middle-ground silence is the worst possible outcome: it destabilizes the clubhouse, it feeds the media cycle, and it does nothing to fix the actual problem, which is that this roster cannot score.
Mendoza should keep his job. The players who are collecting checks and producing nothing should not feel nearly as comfortable as they apparently do right now.
