Devin Williams
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.
In case you haven’t been paying attention the last two years, the New York Mets have been signing former New York Yankees left-and-right. The latest example was the Mets signing Luke Weaver to a two year deal.
Weaver will be setting up for former Yankee Devin Williams. Certainly, they will pitch in relief of former Yankee Clay Holmes.
The pitching changes will be made by former Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza. Mendoza will fill out his lineup card with former Yankee Juan Soto.
You may see a pattern here. Certainly, Yankees fans are noticing and are trolling the Mets and their fans.
To hear Yankeee fans, this is a new development that only works one way. The irony is the Yankees helped build a dynasty off former Mets players.
The Yankees manager was Joe Torre. Torre finished his playing career and began his managerial career with the Mets.
Torre’s pitching coach was Mel Stottlemyre. Stottlemyre was a well known Yamkees pitcher, but he began his career as a pitching coach with the Mets.
Torre’s first base coach was Lee Mazzili. Mazzili was a beloved Mets player. He did play very briefly with the Yankees after a 1982 trade.
Another coach. Jose Cardenal played two years for the Mets. Interestingly enough, he actually played for Torre.
Aside from the coaching staff, the Yankees roster was full of Mets during those dynasty years.
One of the Yankees big game starters was former Met David Cone. Cone was joined in that Yankee rotation by Mets legend Dwight Gooden.
We’d see those Yankees teams use some former Mets relievers in the bullpen. Those pitchers included Wally Whitehurst, Paul Gibson, and Allen Watson.
The Yankees had Darryl Strawberry, who was a significant contributor and mentor. He should’ve been the 1996 ALCS MVP. He was great again in the 1999 postseason.
When the Yankees beat the Mets in the 2000 World Series, it was former Met Jose Vizcaino who had the 12th inning walk-off single to win Game 1. Cone had a big strikeout of Mike Piazza in Game 4.
Look at the current Yankees team. They just re-signed Amed Rosario. Last year, they also had former Mets Marcus Stroman, Paul Blackburn, Carlos Carrasco, Rico Garcia, Geoff Hartlieb, Pablo Reyes, and former Mets draft pick Allan Winans. The Yankees also had former Mets Adam Ottavino, but to be fair, Ottavino was a former Yankee when the Mets signed him.
Put another way, the Yankees love former Mets. They don’t seem to even care if that former Met was good or not. Ability comes second to a history with the orange and blue.
You can honestly say this has been a two way street. It has, but that’s also the point. The Mets aren’t doing anything different than the Yankees do.
They love each others former players and go out of the way for them. The Mets signing a few relievers this offseason only highlights this.
In reality, the Mets signings shouldn’t lead to mockery of the Mets for signing former Yankees. Rather, the Yankees should be mocked for losing so many quality pieces to the Mets.
New York Mets fans are devastated Pete Alonso has left the New York Mets for the Baltimore Orioles. It’s an especially tough hit after Edwin Díaz left to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
There are some differences and similarities. In reality, who cares what they are when the end result is Alonso is a former Met.
With Alonso, he’s a forever fan favorite with some truly great moments. He was the Rookie of the Year breaking the rookie home run record. That would also be the first of back-to-back Home Run Derby titles.
He’s the Mets all-time single season and career home run leader. We can tick off all of our favorite memories, but we should all be able to agree his best moment as a Met was in Game Three of the 2024 Wild Card Series:
Imagine telling a Mets fan on October 3, 2024 that come 2026 Alonso would be gone, and Devin Williams would be a Met.
From a Mets perspective, it’s hard to argue with them not re-signing Alonso. There are plenty of slugging first basemen that fell apart at this point in their careers.
Fred McGriff had 262 homers through his age 30 season. He hung around for another 10 years and never got to 500 homers. For reference, Alonso is at 264.
Ryan Howard had 253 through his age 30 season. As we know, his career fell apart after that, and he’d only hit 129 homers over the next six years.
Yes, there are other examples for guys who were successful past 30. We don’t have to look far with the Mets bidding for Kyle Schwarber before Schwarber returned to the Phillies on a five year deal.
Whatever the case, we can look to last offseason as to the big reason Alonso likely left.
Alonso was looking for a massive payday, and no one was willing to give it to him. The negotiations irritated Steve Cohen with Cohen remarking, “I’m being brutally honest. I don’t like the negotiations. I don’t like what’s been presented to us.”
Both sides were angry and hurt with the bitterness apparently still lingering. After all, Alonso didn’t even wait to get out of his full uniform before announcing he was opting out of his deal.
For their part, the Mets never made a formal offer. That was on the heels of their pursuit of Schwarber.
Let’s be honest. Both sides were ready to go separate ways. The Mets didn’t want to give him a massive deal that will likely age badly, and Alonso wanted to go somewhere that would pay him like a superstar.
Alonso wanted to go, and he found a home. Unlike Díaz, he didn’t go somewhere to win a World Series. He went and got paid. There is nothing wrong with that.
All this means is that LFGM is dead like OMG died when Jose Iglesias left. A future Hall of Famer left the door with the Mets searching for ways to replace him.
Pete Alonso is an Oriole, and the Mets are in transition. That’s for the best for everyone. Best of luck to him, thanks for the memories, and for one last time:
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