00:00Carlos Mendoza was relieved of his duties, fired early on Friday morning.
00:05Feels like a classic Friday news dump.
00:09The Mets were not intending to fire Carlos Mendoza when this Cubs series began at Citi Field.
00:17The plan was, even if it continued to go poorly pretty much,
00:22he wasn't being blamed for the construction of the team, and they didn't see this as his fault.
00:28But the four games against the Cubs in three days, all losses where they became 0-7 this year against
00:33the Cubs at all
00:34and lost these four games at home, at a point where the fans are screaming for blood and to do
00:39something,
00:41Mendoza became a sacrificial lamb.
00:44And at this point, I would say, you know, like, could he have won more games? Maybe.
00:52But, like, Gil Hodges isn't making Jorge Polanco healthy.
00:57Davey Johnson isn't making Marcus Simeon young.
01:02Bobby Valentine isn't making Mark Vientos athletic.
01:07And no manager in the history of the Mets or any can win if you don't know which guys are
01:14starting on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
01:16Hey, it's all to be determined because there's so many guys doing poorly and so many injuries.
01:20And we don't know who's starting the games.
01:23Combine that with a bad offense, I just don't know what manager would have overcome this.
01:29And yet this felt preordained to some degree if there was going to be a bad season.
01:34The Mets didn't pick up Mendoza's 20-27 option after last season.
01:40And it felt like he was on the chopping block if things didn't go well.
01:46And they have the third worst record in the National League.
01:49The idea of contention is pretty much out the window.
01:52I consider it a joke when they're leaking stuff like they're not open for business after they traded David Peterson.
01:59Of course they're open for business.
02:00Make them a good offer for Freddy Peralta.
02:02Are they really going to say no?
02:03What are they trying to build towards?
02:05If you make them a good offer for anyone, pick your guy, the Lefty Relievers, Minter O'Reilly.
02:11They're open for business.
02:13Andy Green is now the interim manager.
02:17Andy was the manager of the Padres from 2016 to 19, well before the Padres were a bit of a
02:27National League strong team, powerhouse.
02:30And he had a terrible record there for the four years.
02:33It was kind of teams that looked like this.
02:36It was mismatched, veterans, young players, salary-cutting team one year.
02:43The other thing is it really shows some lack.
02:46Look, a lot of this, and we're going to talk about it here, falls on David Stearns.
02:50Part of why they didn't want to fire Mendoza, and again, they were not planning to fire Mendoza, is if
02:55not him, who?
02:58Last year, this would have been an easy decision.
03:00John Gibbons, a guy who played for the Mets and was a manager in the major leagues, was the bench
03:06coach.
03:07Jeremy Hefner, who wasâso he just moves over to manager.
03:11He could have handed all the pitching to Jeremy Hefner, a veteran pitching coach who had played for the Mets
03:17and gone through multiple administrations, both in the executive office and in the dugout, as the pitching coach, a well
03:23-regarded pitching coach.
03:24Could have handled all the pitching, and they would have gotten, you know, through a season with those two guys.
03:29Who were they going to name?
03:31The bench coach, Kai Correa?
03:32He was brought in to improve the infield defense, in part.
03:37Do you like the infield defense?
03:38That's what gotâjust got Carlos Mendoza fired.
03:41You can't name Kai Correa the manager.
03:43Justin Willard, the pitching coach, just showed up here also.
03:46He's a young guy.
03:47You can't just say those two young guys were going to do it.
03:49So they have to reachâat a time where they're going to need minor leaguers to come up and their farm
03:54system to get better, they're bringing Andy Green, who was their farm director, here.
03:58It's an act of desperation.
04:01And by the way, all the best players from the farm systemâthe McLeans, the Benjes, the Ewingsâare here.
04:07The Mets are having a bad year in the farm also, especially at the upper levels of the farm.
04:11It's not like Andy Green is going to help Andy Green by bringing some guys up here.
04:15He's got what he's got.
04:17Now this is his mess, and really the mess is David Stearns.
04:21And look, the history of the game pretty much for the disappointing, the hugely disappointing team that creates great disappointment
04:30is first you fire coaches.
04:32Check.
04:33That happened after the last season, including the bench coach John Gibbons and Jeremy Hefner, right?
04:39That's David Stearns' decisions.
04:41Next, you fire the manager.
04:44Check.
04:44That happened this morning.
04:47Stearns is going to get the ability to hire the next manager.
04:51But there is nothing between him and Steve Cohn now when it comes to this.
04:57And I do find it interesting.
04:59The Mets have played exactly 81 games, which means they're halfway through this season.
05:05They're also at two and a half years exactly halfway through David Stearns' five-year contract.
05:11Are they really better today than they were two and a half years ago?
05:15Are they better set up for the future than two and a half years ago?
05:18This is stuff Steve Cohn's got to worry about.
05:21That's not about the manager.
05:22That's about the guy running baseball operations right now.
05:26And the guy who's running baseball operations, his first big move was to hire Mendoza.
05:32So this Mendoza was his guy.
05:35Andy Green is his farm director.
05:37Andy Green is his manager.
05:38Kai Correa is his bench coach.
05:41Justin Willard is his pitching coach.
05:43And look, the whole team is in Stearns.
05:46If you watch these past four games and watch Pete Crow Armstrong running around and being
05:51able to five-tool the Mets to death, you know that there are still problems of Mets executive
05:57sweep and ownership past from here.
06:00Like there's stuff that's going on.
06:02But more and more, this is close to Stearns' team.
06:05It's mainly his philosophy.
06:07A lot of guys were playing out of position.
06:09He signed injured guys.
06:11He let popular players go.
06:13So Mendoza is a ramification of a poorly constructed team under a philosophy that right
06:24now isn't working.
06:25There is no buffer now.
06:28Steve Cohn does not want to fire David Stearns.
06:32He waited two years to hire him for him to get out of his Milwaukee contract.
06:36He seemed the perfect guy at the moment.
06:39A lifelong Met fan who had proven on a shoestring that he could create contender after contender
06:45in Milwaukee.
06:47Cohn wants this to work.
06:49Cohn had trouble because of his reputation from Wall Street of hiring a top executive when
06:54he took over ownership from the Wilpons.
06:56The last thing he wants to do is fire this guy, make all those executives even edgier that
07:02he is the character and caricature from Billions, and try to hire somebody else to replace him.
07:10He is desperate for Stearns to figure this out.
07:13But having said that, bullseye is on Stearns.
07:17The coaches are gone.
07:19These are his coaches.
07:20The philosophy is his.
07:22Mendoza is gone.
07:23He's going to get another manager.
07:25We are exactly halfway through the five-year contract of David Stearns, and today he fired
07:32a big missile by giving in to the moment and firing a good man and a good baseball man whose
07:40fault this was not.
07:42This is mostly on David Stearns.
07:45He really has to get off of this executive losing streak he's been on and get this team
07:51back on the right path, because today it's Carlos Mendoza.
07:56Tomorrow it's not going to be Carlos Mendoza.
Comments