The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: Carlos Mendoza Fired
Vol. 18, No. 51
June 26, 2026
Friday morning, the Mets announced that Carlos Mendoza is no longer their manager. They didn’t use the word “fired,” which is just a fig leaf. Mendoza, in his third season at the helm, had overseen a decline from 89 to 83 to this year’s 68-win pace. The Mets are in last place, and while he’s not the primary reason for that, he’s not someone who was part of the solution, either.
I’ve been a Mendoza critic for a while, mostly owing to his incredibly slow hook with starters. As far back as the 2024 playoffs...
It was all the decisions around that one that got Mendoza in trouble. We’ve been talking about his slow hook all year. Perhaps letting Luis Severino start the sixth with a three-run lead, with Severino on five shutout innings with no walks and a low pitch count, wasn’t a mistake. Severino allowed a .272/.364/.479 line to batters facing him a third time this season, but the Phillies’ #9 man was starting the sixth, so go batter by batter. You have to have someone ready, though, and when Severino allows a two-out single to Trea Turner, it’s time to be aggressive. If Danny Young isn’t on the roster to face Bryce Harper with two outs, why is he on the roster? You’re up a set and a break on the Phillies with a chance to go home up 2-0 in the series. It’s not the time to sit back and watch, it’s the time to be aggressive.
Once Harper homers off Severino, you have to pull him. Mendoza, though, let Severino pitch to Nick Castellanos. Castellanos obliterated a sweeper to tie the game at three.
The general third-time penalty (TTP) isn’t some esoteric bit of data yanked from a darkened cave two weeks ago, nor are Severino’s struggles when left in a game to face hitters a third time. You’re carrying 13 pitchers, there’s an off day tomorrow. If you take nothing else from this year’s postseason coverage, take this: There is no such thing as “cruising.” A pitcher’s performance to date in a game is in no way predictive of what his performance will be for the rest of the game. Luis Severino had no business pitching to Bryce Harper, and that’s the biggest managerial error of the playoffs to date. The series is now tied.
I would go back to the theme of Mendoza’s handling of his pitchers again and again during the Mets’ October run.
In the summer of 2025, it came up again.
I’ve been complaining about Carlos Mendoza’s slow hook on Slack for more than a year now. Had Patrick Bailey not done what he did Tuesday night, Wednesday’s Newsletter may have been entirely about the topic. With Mendoza, though, you’re never far from the next chance to write about it.
Sean Manaea made his debut yesterday in relief of Clay Holmes, clearly a planned tandem start that was perhaps thrown off kilter by Holmes getting through five innings on just 81 pitches. Manaea tacked on three shutout frames, laboring a bit in the eighth before escaping unharmed. I was watching that eighth, and Manaea looked tired to me, It was his first outing back, a hot day in Kansas City, maybe the adrenaline was wearing off. Manaea couldn’t finish off Vinnie Pasquantino, who singled on the tenth pitch of his at-bat. Mendoza, though, left Manaea in to pitch to Maikel Garcia, who popped out on the first pitch.
When the Mets tied the game off Carlos Estevez, though, Mendoza sent Manaea back to pitch the ninth. I understand that Manaea is a starter by trade, but nothing in his third inning of work indicated he was ready for a fourth. Manaea struck out Salvador Perez, then allowed singles to Tyler Tolbert and Nick Loftin, with a stolen base between them, for the walkoff run.
Manaea had lost his velo by this point. He was 93-94 in his first inning of work and 91-92 at the start of the eighth. He reached back for a bit more when trying to finish the eighth, leaving it all on the mound in what he must have figured was his last inning. Sent back out for the ninth, he didn’t throw a single fastball at 92 mph or better. The Mets lost.
Mendoza has done this time and time again, and if anything, seems to be getting worse about it. It’s as if he’s single-handedly trying to change how starters are used, even if it costs the Mets runs, costs the Mets wins. If the Mets do make the playoffs, I am certain that they’ll eventually be eliminated when Mendoza leaves a tired starter in for too long.
The Mets, of course, never gave Mendoza that opportunity, closing the season 38-55, losing their final two games to a non-contending Marlins team and missing the playoffs on a tiebreaker.
This year, it was Mendoza’s lineup cards that gave me agita. From March 28:
All of this is run by a manager who, while seeming to be good at the interpersonal stuff, is bad in the dugout. One reason the Mets missed the playoffs a year ago was Carlos Mendoza’s very slow hook, which directly cost the team three wins. This year. Mendoza starts by burying his fourth-best hitter in the nine hole so Robert and Marcus Semien can make outs ahead of him. I wasn’t looking for more reasons to ding the Mets for keeping him -- they already took as large a projection hit as I’ll ever give a team for its manager -- but the Opening Day lineup bolstered my confidence that I pegged him well.
Finally, Mendoza made a clear tactical mistake that led to a loss on April 19.
[T]he Mets’ best chance of getting out of the inning was to intentionally walk Hoerner and try to strike out Busch. In the event Kimbrel walked Busch, that would bring up Alex Bregman. Bregman is also a good contact hitter, but not as good as Hoerner, and if he were batting, there would be a force available at every base, making some of his contact good for the Mets.
There won’t be two times a year I advocate for an intentional walk, but this is one of them. Mendoza needed to maximize the chance of a strikeout, and instead he minimized it. Hoerner flied out to right, PCA scored, and the Mets lost their 11th straight contest.
The sequence once again underlined Mendoza’s inability to make the right game-level choices. His lineups, his persistent slow hook, and his batter-to-batter decisions are all lacking. The Mets didn’t miss the playoffs last year, and they’re not 7-15 this year, just because Mendoza is a poor Xs and Os guy. But he isn’t helping. I thought the team would be better off letting him go after last season, and instead David Stearns jettisoned every longstanding player while retaining the manager.
The timing of the today’s decision is odd. I thought Mendoza would be fired that same week in April that Alex Cora and Rob Thomson were, and he was not. Then it seemed David Stearns would ride out the season with Mendoza and do a full search for a long-term answer in the offseason. Stearns, who I don’t think is actually in danger of losing his job, would nevertheless reset the leadership and buy himself some time.
Firing Mendoza today is neither fish nor fowl. The Mets are probably too far buried, especially given their injury issues, to become relevant in any playoff race. They’re 15 games out in the NL East, 9 1/2 games removed from the last wild-card slot. They would have to play .580 ball from here on in just to get to .500, and that’s not going to be nearly enough. To get to 85 wins, they’re have to go 51-30, a .630 pace. There’s a version of this roster capable of doing that, with full health and performance. I’m not sure Mendoza nor Andy Green nor Casey McGraw Weaver can make it happen.
The Mets’ season isn’t over solely because of Carlos Mendoza. As Mike Petriello pointed out, this is a .500 team when Juan Soto plays, and a disaster when he doesn’t. Stearns’s terrible offseason has been a bigger factor than Mendoza’s poor decisions. Mendoza, though, was over his head. He’s a bad tactical manager, and the argument that he’s good at the interpersonal stuff becomes harder to make as the questions over the relationship between Soto and Francisco Lindor persist.
There will be pressure to follow Mendoza, a first-time manager, with one with more experience. Alex Cora’s name will come up a lot. (I’m low man on Cora, who is still living off 2018.) Other veteran managers under the age of 70 next summer include Bob Melvin, Joe Girardi, and Mike Shildt. Torey Lovullo’s contract is up at the end of the season, and while his strong relationship with GM Mike Hazen makes it likely he’d continue with the Diamondbacks, Steve Cohen can throw a lot of money at Lovullo to change that.
Since parting ways with Terry Collins after the 2017 season, the Mets have had four managers in 8 1/2 seasons. None has lasted longer than Mendoza’s 2 1/2. The team’s inability to settle on a dugout leader is one reason the Mets have been so disappointing over the last decade. Stearns got a lot of his personnel choices wrong last year; now he faces his biggest one. Stearns inherited Mendoza, and it is possible the next Mets manager will be the only one he gets to hire. (Ed. note: Stearns hired Mendoza. I got the order of events wrong. --JSS) He’ll have to get this choice right.
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