Steve Sica- Well the Mets have a new Manager, again...

Brad Penner / Imagn Images

If you're starting to feel like Tom Hanks in the movie Groundhog Day about the Mets Managerial situation, you're not too far off.

That's because since the team parted ways with Terry Collins in 2017, no Met Manager has lasted longer than three seasons. Carlos Mendoza, the latest manager to be given the axe, lasted the longest of the bunch, but still did not even make it halfway through his third season. 

Mendoza did have rapid success upon his arrival with the Mets in 2024. He was the first Met Manager to get the team to the postseason in his first year at the helm. A playoff run that will live in Met lore forever. But if Mendoza's rise was meteoric, then his fall was catastrophic.

After taking the Mets to within two games of a World Series in 2024. A team that, when the season began, wouldn't have dreamed of making it that far and pushing what was arguably one of the best teams of the 2020s, the 2024 Dodgers, to six games in the NLCS. 2025 began with a bang. By June, the team was looking less like a Cinderella team and more like the 2006 Mets and seemingly ready to lap the field in the NL East. 

Then the slow-motion collapse happened. The team would go 12-15 in June, 11-17 in August, suffer through an eight-game losing streak in September, and miss the playoffs on the season's final day. The coaching staff was fired, all but Mendoza, and coming into this season, he was on borrowed time. Frankly, I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did after a 12-game losing streak in April

The Phillies started off nearly as badly as the Mets did in April, fired their manager, and are now in contention and likely headed to the postseason for a fifth straight season. The Mets, meanwhile, held firm with Mendoza and are on their way to their first last-place finish in 23 years.

Next week, I'll give a more in-depth breakdown on the relative letdown of the first five years of the Steven Cohen era, but for now, this is more of a post-mortem on Carlos Mendoza.

A lot of fans were happy to read the news of his firing on Friday morning. I wasn't the biggest fan of his by the end of 2025 and admittedly wanted him gone in the early part of this season. He seemed to have lost control of the team sometime in the summer of 2025, and as a Millennial Met fan, I've seen that act before in 2007.

Mendoza's legacy as a Met will likely be looked at poorly, despite all he accomplished in 2024; his shortcomings over the last year and a half are what he'll be remembered for. Is it all on his shoulders? No, of course not. The Manager isn't responsible for a team completely dissolving in the second half of a season; he isn't solely responsible for a team that once stood at 45-24 and failed to win 84 games, which would've gotten them the last Wild Card spot in 2025.

His managerial decisions were questionable, but in today's game of analytics and the front office staff having more control of on-field decisions than ever, how much say did he really have in those choices? Did he tell David Stearns to blow up the core and trade fan favorites away in return for underachieving or injured players? Probably not.

There's something else under the surface of this team that goes beyond who the manager is. Next week, we'll take a further look at what it could be. Either way, the Mets are on their way to another losing season, and whenever the lockout-impacted 2027 season begins, the Mets will be on their sixth manager in ten years.