The Carlos Mendoza era is officially over for the New York Mets.
The Mets fired Mendoza as manager on Friday and replaced him with vice president of player development Andy Green.
The Mets are fresh off getting swept by the Chicago Cubs in a four-game series where things got ugly. They were swept in a doubleheader on Wednesday, made six errors in the infield in the nightcap, and lost last night's game where they made a key error as well.
It's mostly on president of baseball operations David Stearns, who hired Mendoza, for constructing a poor roster. However, the bottom line is that the Mets needed to make a change in the dugout.
It had become abundantly clear that Mendoza and his coaching staff were not getting the players ready to compete on a daily basis. As a result, Mendoza is out as manager after just 2.5 seasons.
The writing appeared to be on the wall for Mendoza who did not have his 2027 option picked up by the Mets. He was showing up every day as a lame-duck manager and that's never an ideal situation for a skipper. He also had almost his entire coaching staff replaced this year.
But what does the Mendoza firing mean?
The Mets are 34-47 at the midway point of the season. It's likely too late to turn things around given they're 9.5 games back of the third and final Wild Card spot in the National League.
Green isn't going to take over and create a miracle, at least it's unlikely. But Green does have some managerial experience as the San Diego Padres skipper from 2016-2019. He has also done an excellent job with the Mets' minor league system since taking over in 2024.
Had the Mets acted sooner, there would've been more time to potentially fix what has been a disappointing season. For example, the Philadelphia Phillies fired Rob Thomson after a 9-19 start and are now leading the top NL Wild Card spot at 45-36.
Thomson led the Phillies to a World Series appearance and four straight postseason berths during his tenure. Mendoza led the Mets to the NLCS in 2024 after a rough start to the season, and saw the team collapse in 2025 to miss the playoffs by one game.
The firing of Mendoza was a necessary move, but the majority of the blame should be put on Stearns and the front office for constructing a bad team and overhauling the roster in the offseason.
