Why did the Mets fire Carlos Mendoza? New York makes major shakeup as 'embarrassing' season gets worse

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Why did the Mets fire Carlos Mendoza? New York makes major shakeup as 'embarrassing' season gets worse originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

The New York Mets have been one of the most disappointing teams in baseball this year, and now they are making significant changes. On Friday, the Mets decided to fire manager Carlos Mendoza midway through his third season with the team, forcing the team to go in a new direction.

After his first year, when Mendoza led the Mets to the NLCS, it appeared that New York had a manager for the next decade with Mendoza. However, the team was not able to live up to the expectations that were set after that playoff run, so Steve Cohen and the rest of the Mets front office decided that Mendoza was no longer the future leader of this team.

Moving forward, the Mets now must decide whether to try and compete for the rest of the season or whether to focus on the future of the team. In the meantime, the team will be undergoing a major shift in the near-term.

Here's a breakdown of why the Mets fired Mendoza.

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Why did the Mets fire Carlos Mendoza?​

Since June 12, 2025, the Mets have been one of the worst teams in baseball. New York had one of the best records in the league at that point, but blew it by failing to make the playoffs with a terrible second half that saw them with the third-most losses in that span.

In recent days, New York had endured a comedy of errors during a homestand against the Cubs. A doubleheader on Wednesday saw the Mets commit six errors in the field and Chicago scored 10 runs each game. Mendoza called the losses "embarrassing."

That appears to have been the final straw in New York's season gone wrong.

Andy Green will serve as the interim manager with the Mets sitting at 34-47.

In the offseason, the Mets made major changes to their roster, letting players like Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo and Edwin Diaz go while bringing in players like Bo Bichette, Jorge Polanco, Luis Robert and Devin Williams. The idea was that the team needed to change the composition of the roster after such a disappointing collapse.

However, the team has not improved to begin the 2026 season. The Mets had a 12-game losing streak in April, the team's longest such losing streak in over two decades, and many of the new additions have struggled through the first month of the year.

The Mets had World Series aspirations this year, as the team has the second-highest payroll in baseball this year. However, that amount of money hasn't translated to wins, since the Mets struggled out of the gates and now sit with the sixth-worst record in MLB.

Mendoza's contract is set to expire after the season, so making this move now allows the team to get a head start on looking towards its future.

Carlos Mendoza record​

Mendoza has only been the Mets manager since 2024, as this is his first managerial job at the major league level. Previously, Mendoza spent 15 years in the New York Yankees organization, both as a minor league manager and as an assistant on the major league staff.

Year	Record	NL East finish	Playoff result
2024	89-73	Third place	Lost in NLCS
2025	83-79	Second place	Missed Playoffs
2026	34-47	Fired	Fired
Career	206-199	—	—

Mendoza's first year with the Mets was a massive success. After a tough start to the year, New York got hot and made an impressive second-half run to earn a playoff spot, then won two playoff series before losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS.

That success led to the team signing Juan Soto in the offseason and entering the 2025 year as one of the World Series favorites. However, after starting 2025 so strong, the Mets collapsed and finished the year six-games worse than the previous season, missing out on the playoffs in the process.

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