As the New York Mets lick their wounds on their day off after getting swept by the Colorado Rockies, including scoring one run in their Sunday doubleheader, concerns are now raised that the team may fire manager Carlos Mendoza. Especially after the Boston Red Sox decided to fire manager Alex Cora. Cora was very successful as the Red Sox skipper, while Mendoza has seen a downward trend since his rookie year in 2024. New York is 47-74 since June 13th of last year. However, while the Mets may indeed fire Mendoza, it won’t solve everything.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
Mendoza is set to be the fall guy for the Mets dismal beginning to the 2026 season. It is a continuation of what has gone wrong with the Mets since they missed the playoffs in 2025 after starting 21 games over .500. But why? Why are the Mets falling short of expectations yet again? Mendoza shares blame, but the simple reality is this: The Mets offense can’t score runs.<\/p>\r\n
Dating all the way back to last year, New York has struggled to score with runners in scoring position. They tried to fix those issues by bringing in players such as Bo Bichette<\/a>\u00a0and Marcus Semien<\/a>, players who have historically been good in that category, to help. They were also relying on young players like Brett Baty to continue improving. While also hoping Mark Vientos would bounce back.<\/p>\r\n Bichette has struggled with runners in scoring position this season. Mightily. He’s batting below .200 in that category. Semien has been fine with runners on base, but what has hurt him is his decision-making at the plate\u2014striking out on pitches nowhere close to the strike zone. Baty has struggled and has only drawn four walks. Vientos, after a hot start, is back to struggling yet again. Jorge Polanco, who was expected to give the Mets power at first base and designated hitter, is on the injured list.<\/p>\r\n Luis Robert, another one of the Mets’ offseason acquisitions, has cooled down significantly after a hot start. Tommy Pham, who was recently designated for assignment, did not record a hit. Ronny Mauricio has hit well in the minor leagues but has yet to translate that into the big leagues.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Then the Mets were betting on rookie Carson Benge from the first day of the season. Benge started slow, which is to be expected, but has come along well in the past few games. Catcher Francisco Alvarez has shown steady improvement at the plate since he was called back up from the minor leagues last year, but they are still waiting on him to take off fully.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Francisco Lindor <\/a>and Juan Soto<\/a> were expected to be the heavy hitters, carrying the offense throughout 2026. However, it’s hard to do that when they have only played in 7 full games together. They both got hurt in the same way and injured the same body part. First, Soto hurt his calf while running the bases in San Francisco, costing him two weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Then, against the Minnesota Twins, on the same day Soto returned to the lineup, Lindor injured his calf while running the bases. This one seems more significant than Soto’s injury. Lindor is currently in a boot and will be reevaluated in three weeks. Bottom line: the Mets needed Soto and Lindor together to have a chance at success, but bad luck has now kept them out of the lineup.<\/p>\r\n New York has lost 15 out of their last 17 games. These are the runs scored in those 17 games: 2, 1, 0, 6, 0, 0, 1, 2, 4, 2, 1, 3, 3, 10, 3, 1, 0.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n In all, it’s bad. They’ve been shut out four times during this stretch and scored three runs or fewer in 14 of those games. Only five runs or more in two games, one of which they lost. New York’s offensive futility is unprecedented, especially for a team with the hitters they have. With this, New York is at the bottom of the league in every offensive category.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n It’s not entirely Mendoza’s fault. There are not many buttons he can push to suddenly get an underachieving offense to start hitting and for injured stars to be on the field. However, the Mets have been one of the worst teams in baseball since last June. For a team trying to contend, it’s unacceptable, and as Boston showed, no manager is secure in that situation. Again, Cora was much more successful and had a greater impact in Boston.<\/p>\r\n But it doesn’t matter if the Mets fire Mendoza. They may do that and replace him with bench coach Kai Correa or Carlos Beltran, who is now in the Mets front office and, once upon a time, was named team manager until the Houston Astros cheating scandal came to light. It could even be Cora himself. No matter who the Mets manager is for the rest of the season, if the offense doesn’t hit, nothing will truly change.<\/p>\r\n Main Photo Credits: Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images<\/span><\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the New York Mets lick their wounds on their day off after getting swept by the Colorado Rockies, including scoring one run in their Sunday doubleheader, concerns are now raised that the team may fire manager Carlos Mendoza. Especially after the Boston Red Sox decided to fire manager Alex Cora. Cora was very successful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4682,"featured_media":120629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,1071],"tags":[1734,1608,183,4683,380,2133],"class_list":["post-120295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mets","category-mlb","tag-alex-cora","tag-bo-bichette","tag-carlos-beltran","tag-carlos-mendoza","tag-francisco-lindor","tag-juan-soto"],"modified_by":"Evan Mazza, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4682"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120295"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120657,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120295\/revisions\/120657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Key Players Struggling & Young Players Not Progressing\u00a0<\/h3>\r\n
Lindor & Soto Injuries Halting Offense<\/h3>\r\n
Mets Team Offensive Failures\u00a0<\/h3>\r\n
Mendoza Will Take the Fall<\/h3>\r\n