The final stretch of the regular season is here.
These next two plus weeks of games are as important as any in the major leagues. Some teams will be finalizing how their playoff rotation is going to play out and looking to clinch playoff spots. Other teams are playing out the string with players hoping to get noticed by teams to be on a big league roster next year.
Then there is the third group of teams. The group of teams are fighting for their playoff lives. Unfortunately that’s the group the New York Mets are currently in. The Mets currently hold the third wildcard spot in the playoff standings, just two games up on the San Francisco Giants. It’s been a rocky road for the Mets since June 13. Since that date they hold the fourth worst record in baseball at 31-46. Only the Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins and Washington Nationals have been worse during that time period. It’s been a stunning turn of events for a team that played so well early in the season.
There are many reasons why the Mets have struggled since mid-June.
You could point to the pitching staff, and it’s no secret that the veterans in their starting rotation have let them down. Lefty Sean Manaea has an ERA of 5.76 in his 11 games this season. He was a key piece in the Mets rotation last season and pitched to 3.47 ERA last year and was an important factor in the Mets’ run to the National League Championship Series (NLCS) in 2024. Manaea was a free agent at the end of the 2024 season and the Mets signed him to a three-year deal thinking they’d get similar production to what he did in 2024. He started the year on the IL and has struggled since coming off.
Kodai Senga has also been a major disappointment. So much so that he has been demoted to Triple-A Syracuse to try and work on whatever is causing him to struggle in the big leagues. Senga is in the middle of a 5-year deal and was considered an ace of this staff. He has certainly not been that.
Then there is the bullpen and the pieces that the Mets acquired at the trade deadline this July. Ryan Helsley has pitched to an 11+ ERA in his time in Queens. He was supposed to be an important set up man in the Mets bullpen but instead has become unpitchable.
Tyler Rogers’ time with the Mets hasn’t been great either. Rogers’ WHIP with the Mets is 1.20 in his 18.1 innings pitched with the club. In 50 innings pitched with the San Francisco Giants this season, his WHIP was a whopping .086, significantly better.
Offensively the club has underperformed for most of the season. The Mets had a recent stretch where they seemed to solve their issues with Runners in Scoring Position (RISP), but over the last week those gremlins have reemerged big time and you have to wonder if what we saw during their hot stretch was just a mirage.
They’ve been sloppy defensively as well this season, especially in the infield. Any Met fan that has watched the majority of the games this season will tell you how many games they’ve lost due to a sloppy defensive play or a miscue.
So what does all this mean? Why am I going through the problems of the 2025 Mets? I think their struggles are a reflection of their manager, Carlos Mendoza.
Mendoza finished third in voting for National League Manager of the Year in 2024. He got rave reviews from Met fans and media members for the team’s late season surge last year that thrusted them into the postseason and to the NLCS for the first time since 2015.
There is no doubt Mendoza was a big part of what happened in 2024. However, the way the 2025 season has played out, if the Mets miss the playoffs it should cost him his job. That may sound irrational after last season but their play since the middle of June has been that poor.
Earlier I presented you the Mets record since June 13. On June 13 they led the Phillies by five games in the National League East. On September 10, they trail them by nine games. That’s a 16 game swing in 3 months, if you are keeping score at home. Sixteen games!
Many would argue Mendoza doesn’t control what happens on the field and he is just a byproduct of the players around him. However, he has made some insane decisions this year that has left many perplexed as to what he is thinking. Whether it’s playing certain players when it doesn’t make sense and leaving little explanation for his thought process or odd bullpen decisions in which it seems that too often Mendoza is trying to not pitch his best arms in tight games, only for the back end of the bullpen to explode and put the game out of reach.
Yet, more importantly, it’s Mendoza’s job to make sure the team is focused and playing up to par. They have not done that. He is the conductor of the train and it’s his job to keep the train on the tracks no matter what chaos occurs during the ride.
The Mets train in 2025 is still on the track, but if this team misses the playoffs, it has officially gone off the rails. With a team as talented on paper as the Mets are and with their payroll well over $300 million missing the playoffs would be an utter disaster and the fact that they really didn’t even compete for a National League East title this year is a major stain on Mendoza.
When you think of all-time Mets collapses, everyone thinks of 2007 when the team blew a seven game lead in the NL East with 17 games to play and missed the playoffs. There was some thought that the manager behind that collapse, Willie Randolph, would be fired for how ugly that season ended. He was not and he was retained for the 2008 season, only to be fired in June of that season after a sluggish start. The team never recovered under Randolph and with the benefit of hindsight it’s clear the Mets would’ve been better off letting Randolph go after the 2007 season.
The Mets should learn from their history. If they miss the playoffs, they should fire their manager after the season. Carlos Mendoza should be managing for his job in these last 16 games. If the Mets make the playoffs, he should keep it. If not, he shouldn’t. It’s that simple.