Mets Double Down on Mendoza Despite MLB's Worst Record
The New York Mets entered May 2026 with a 10-21 record — the worst in Major League Baseball. On 1 May 2026, the club's owner Steve Cohen and president of baseball operations David Stearns moved to quash speculation, announcing the organization was standing by manager Carlos Mendoza.
The decision is not without internal logic. Stearns, a former Milwaukee Brewers general manager, joined the Mets in late 2023 and installed Mendoza — a former New York Yankees coach — shortly after. Dismissing a manager less than two seasons into the regime would undermine the very rebuilding process Cohen hired Stearns to execute. When you spend years engineering a front-office overhaul, the organizational logic runs, you don't torch it over a brutal six-week stretch.
That logic has teeth. Cohen, whose net worth Forbes estimates in the tens of billions, has shown willingness to absorb short-term losses in pursuit of long-term competitive windows. The Mets opened 2026 with a younger roster than in previous seasons — a deliberate pivot that Stearns signaled during the off-season. Francisco Alvarez, a 23-year-old catcher the organization views as a cornerstone piece, started the year behind the plate. The foundation the front office is constructing does not require elite results in April.
But the numbers are what they are. Ten wins and twenty-one losses is not a slow start — it is a historical outlier. The Mets' run differential through 31 games sat deep in negative territory, suggesting the record understates something worse. With a payroll that, per Cot's Baseball Contracts, exceeds $290 million, the roster carries expectations that the front office's patience cannot fully insulate from.
MLB history offers limited comfort to patient franchises. The 2019 Cincinnati Reds hired a new manager in Year Two of a supposed rebuild and fired him before June. The 2022 Boston Red Sox, similarly priced, cycled through internal accountability after a poor opening stretch. Even organizations with longer fuses eventually encounter a floor beneath patience.
The question is where that floor sits for this Mets regime. Stearns and Mendoza have time — but not unlimited time. A $290-million-plus payroll buys slack with the fanbase, but it also buys pressure. Citi Field draws expect contention. Cohen's stated ambition is a championship, not a development process, and the gap between those two goals narrows with every loss.
What the sources do not yet specify is whether the club's veteran pitchers — Marcus Stroman and Pete Alonso among them — have privately expressed frustration with the on-field product. The ESPN reporting that anchors this piece does not extend to clubhouse sentiment. That lack of corroboration matters: a manager can survive a bad stretch if the locker room holds, and can fall quickly once it fractures.
The organization is making a bet that the foundation it is laying will outlast the current losing run. That bet has financial backing and executive support. Whether the record forces an earlier reckoning than the front office intends is the question that will define the Mets' summer.
Wire provenance
This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Mendoza
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Mets