The Boston Red Sox have been massively disappointing to start the season, and as a result, World Series winning manager Alex Cora was fired. He was replaced by Chad Tracy.

The Philadelphia Phillies have been massively disappointing to start the season, and as a result, pennant winning manager Rob Thomson was fired. He was replaced by Don Mattingly, who happens to be the father of the GM.

The New York Mets might just be the most disappointing team to start the season. Despite calls to fire Carlos Mendoza, Mendoza’s job appears safe for now.

We can speculate why Mendoza has kept his job while Cora and Thompson did not. There are legitimate reasons why Mendoza is still employed.

Juan Soto was hurt eight games into the season and missed 16 games. Francisco Lindor was hurt soon after Soto’s return, and he is poised to miss the remainder of the first half, perhaps more. That also discounts how Lindor was returning from hamate bone surgery to start the season.

With both Soto and Lindor in the lineup, the Mets were actually 5-4, which seems unsatisfying, but that is a 90 win pace. Yes, take that with a grain of salt.

The injuries are a major reason why the Mets have faltered to start the year. Soto has missed 16 games, and the Mets were 3-12 in his absence. The Mets have been 1-3 with Lindor out of the lineup.

Those are not the only injuries of consequence. Jorge Polanco has been injured most of the year before needing to land on the IL. The Mets are 3-11 in games he has not played.

Those are three significant bats that are out of the Mets lineup. Of course, they are going to struggle. However, that’s not the only reason the Mets have struggled.

While the offense has understandable struggled, so has the pitching. Unfortunately for the Mets, there are no injury concerns there to explain these struggles.

Notably, after the Mets fell apart to end the 2025 season, Stearns parted ways with Jeremy Hefner. Hefner is a well regarded pitching coach, who did not remain unemployed long.

Hefner is with the Atlanta Braves now, and the Braves pitching staff has an MLB leading 3.13 ERA. Keep in mind, that is without Spencer Strider, Spencer Schwellenbach, and Raisel Iglesias.

Meanwhile, the Mets have seen David Peterson fall apart. Kodai Senga seems to have suffered a fate worse than that. The current Mets pitching coaches have tinkered with Sean Manaea’s mechanics, and he can’t regain his velocity,

That’s nothing to say about Devin Williams being terrible as the closer. Luis Garcia was so bad he was released after just six appearances. Luke Weaver has a 4.91 ERA.

What could have helped was better defense. Believe it or not, the Mets pitchers have a 3.77 FIP, which is the sixth best in baseball. To that end, the Mets have a 1 OAA, which is tied for 13th in baseball. That’s not exactly the transformative defensive impact Stearns promised.

Joining Hefner on the Braves staff was Antoan Richardson. He was the well respected first base coach who had the Mets running the bases much better. Soto LOVED him.

Currently, the Mets have stolen 16 bases, tied for 7th worst in the majors. They’ve been caught 6 times, which is tied for 15th worst. Overall, they have a 72% success rate, far below their 89% success rate last year.

Looking at the returning players, nearly everyone is performing worse. You may want to attribute some of that blame to Mendoza, but in reality, he’s surrounded by a completely new coaching staff. Is it more likely Mendoza got worse, or the coaching staff got worse?

That’s the inherent issue. Stearns not only changed the lineup, defense, and bullpen. He also changed the entire coaching staff basically leaving just Mendoza.

Stearns’ hands are all over this Mets team. To be fair to him, there have been so many impactful injuries. Also, the only player who did not return that has performed well has been Brandon Nimmo, and if you look, he has been quite bad the last two weeks.

The heat is already on Stearns for this season falling apart. However, at this moment, that heat is shared by Mendoza. Once Mendoza is gone, all the attention goes to Stearns.

That makes Mendoza a shield for Stearns. That doesn’t mean that is the reason Stearns is keeping Mendoza. It could be Stearns acknowledges what has gone wrong, and he realizes Mendoza is not at fault. It could be that there are no obvious replacement candidates. After all, reports are Cora does not want an immediate return to coaching. ‘

Whatever the case, Mendoza is taking on the burden of shielding Stearns from total blame. There is no obvious answer as to when would be a good time to replace him, so at the moment, the only thing we can hope is he will be rewarded by this team righting the ship like it did in 2024.