Numbers suggest firing Carlos Mendoza won’t jumpstart lowly Mets

Fans in the New York area are conditioned to view managers as disposable objects, maybe more so than in any other market. George Steinbrenner notoriously hired and fired Billy Martin five times. Lou Lamoriello, the former architect of the New Jersey Devils dynasty, did the same thing with Jacques Lemaire. Nicknamed “the Baby Boss” by Steinbrenner himself, if a coach wasn’t getting it done behind the bench, then he was gone within an instant.

Anaheim is where the Mets fired Willie Randolph in June 2008, hours after a 9-6 win.

The Mets have made hires so egregiously bad that they had no choice but to put everyone out of their misery. Mickey Callaway was nearly fired after a disastrous month in 2019. A press conference was scheduled at Citi Field after being swept by the lowly Miami Marlins, only for former general manager Brodie Van Wagenen to announce that Yoenis Cespedes had broken both of his ankles in a wild boar accident on his ranch. Callaway stayed on until the end of the season.

It’s easy to armchair-quarterback the in-game decisions Mendoza has made over the last few years, but what isn’t easy is deciphering which decisions were made solely by him, which ones were made by the analytics group, or influenced by other coaches and/or analysts.

The manager’s primary responsibilities are to lead the clubhouse and make in-game decisions. Sometimes these in-game decisions are subjective. They’re viewed as good when they work, but bad when they don’t. Conventional decisions can backfire if the right personnel aren’t in place to execute plays properly, and health becomes a key factor as well.

Mendoza has frequently mentioned the need to trust his players, but has operated in a way that shows he can’t quite do that. Would you trust Mark Vientos to make a throw home in a tie game? Stearns stuck him with an aging hitter who didn’t have spring training in Tommy Pham to try to jumpstart the offense and give Mendoza a bench piece that could hit left-handed pitching. Pham did not get a single hit in 14 plate appearances and had only one walk before being designated for assignment.

The root issue of this team is roster construction, which is the job of Stearns and his team. At some point, the players have to perform because there is no guarantee that a new manager will get more out of the roster than Mendoza. The data shows that it’s more likely a new voice will produce similar results.

That doesn’t mean the Mets shouldn’t make any sort of changes; what it means is that they need to be absolutely sure they know what or who the problem is before going about trying to fix it.