Mr. Met blissfully danced the night away behind TV reporter Steve Gelbs on Friday night as he delivered a live report on the New York Mets firing manager Carlos Mendoza. It was the best-ever, worst-possible timing.
Congratulations, everybody. We’ve reached Peak Mets.
It is worth asking where Mrs. Met was while this was happening. Unlike her husband, she knows how to read a room. This was complete organizational failure.
The moment’s humor might have been lost on fans feeling too miserable to laugh, but Dancing Mr. Met will forever be the image of the team’s 2026 season, and it could serve as the image of the franchise in perpetuity until things improve. Assuming they do.
The bulbous-headed mascot resembled a modern-day Nero playing the fiddle, so goes the dubious legend, as ancient Rome burned down. Not entirely true, by the way! They didn’t even have fiddles 2,000 years ago.
A few errant details notwithstanding, the Mets last-place season is also burnt to a crisp. Nobody in Major League Baseball spends more on player salaries, and nobody gets less bang for the buck. And that buck stops not with Mr. Met, but with owner Steve Cohen and team president David Stearns. Nero gets a bad rap for the fire and his response to it, but he still was the man in charge. This is mostly on Cohen and Stearns.
Some have complained that upper management should have fired Mendoza in April, when the Philadelphia Phillies fired Rob Thomson after a similarly poor start. Philly is about 20 games over .500 since replacing Thomson with Don Mattingly. On its way somewhere. But, aside from Juan Soto and a small handful of others, the Phillies have much better players than the Mets. It’s difficult to imagine, much less show evidence, that any manager could have saved New York’s season.
Some parties want Cohen to replace Stearns less than three years into his tenure, to the point that a number of critics have come to Citi Field with signs promoting a change. But, like other teams do, if the Mets see a sign or behavior they find to be derogatory, they’ll quash it. It’s within their right, and it’s even understandable, but it also makes the team look like it’s more concerned with suppressing dissent than fixing the problems that caused it.
What’s next? No booing allowed? Probably better to ignore the signs that fans make and pay closer attention to the signs that Bo Bichette might not have been worth that contract, or that Brett Baty and Mark Vientos weren’t developing, or that the pitching staff was woefully short of being competitive for a playoff spot.
The Mets just reached the postseason two years ago, and came within two wins of reaching the World Series in ‘24, before ripping up most of the roster. Cohen talks like he wants to win and spends money like it. Stearns has a strong individual record as an executive, assisting the Astros to build a champion, and putting the Brewers in position to be one of the best teams in the National League. His record with the Mets is mixed. Is he going to come through? This much is certain: The time for fiddling around is over.
