Shortly after the New York Mets fell to 34-47 on the season via a 4-3 extra-innings loss to the Chicago Cubs
on Thursday night, the Mets fired manager Carlos Mendoza.
While there was no sign that the Mets were going to turn things around under Mendoza this summer, team owner Steve Cohen and Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns are understandably receiving the bulk of the blame among pockets of fans and media members.
Steve Cohen needs to “face the music” amid disastrous season
“The idea that you’re not going to have accountability on this franchise is a joke,” New York sports radio legend Mike Francesa said on the latest edition of his podcast about Cohen, per Erich Richter of the New York Post. “I’m going right past Mendoza, because I don’t care, he’s small potatoes. I’m going right past Stearns because in the grand scheme of things, he’s small potatoes. And [I’m going] right to the owner. The owner, going on five-and-a-half years ago, with a big wallet and a big mouth and made big promises, and now he’s in the witness protection program. Doesn’t work that way. Get off your rearend. Get up and stand up. Face the music. Get into a press conference, make some statements about your team, and answer some questions from the media about where you’re headed.”
Francesa was referencing how Cohen made it known when he assumed
ownership of the Mets in the fall of 2020 that he would consider it “slightly disappointing” if the Mets didn’t win a World Series title “in the next three to five years.” While the combination of Stearns and Mendoza guided the Mets to the National League Championship Series in 2024, the team has largely been a massive and expensive disappointment since June 13, 2025.
David Stearns more to blame for Mets’ woes than Carlos Mendoza?
According to MLB insider Chelsea Janes of SNY, “a week of being demoralized by early deficits and battered by big deficits finally led the Mets to decide they needed a new voice in the dugout.” That said, former Mets general manager Steve Phillips shared during an appearance on SiriusXM’s MLB Network Radio that he thinks the Mets were responsible for “a clumsy roster from the start.”
“I don’t think Carlos Mendoza is a bad manager at all,” Phillips added.
For reasons that may or may not have been related to supposed issues within the clubhouse, Stearns dismantled and restructured the core of the Mets’ roster this past offseason. In a results-based business, such decisions have thus far blown up in Stearns’ face.
“He’s probably the least culpable of everybody who has contributed to this morass of a season that the Mets are in,” legendary Mets play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen said about Mendoza.
While Gary Cohen did agree that the Mets “had to do something” amid their ongoing woes, he also mentioned that “poor decisions by the front office” are at least partially to blame for why New York is currently a last-place team.
It remains to be seen what it would take for Steve Cohen to fire Stearns. On Friday afternoon, ESPN’s Jorge Castillo and David Schoenfield reported that Stearns, who is under contract through 2028, is safe in his job “for now.”
“The 2025-26 offseason for the Mets might go down as the worst ever for a general manager,” Schoenfield said.