Mets fire Carlos Mendoza, Mr. Met dances as team collapses

The Mets fired Carlos Mendoza on Friday after a 34-47 start, a six-game losing streak and a four-game sweep by the Chicago Cubs left the club 13 games under .500. In Queens, the dismissal was instantly overshadowed by a more surreal image: Mr. Met dancing behind Steve Gelbs during an SNY segment about the move at Citi Field.

Andy Green, who had been serving as the Mets’ senior vice president of baseball development, was named interim manager for the rest of the 2026 season. Team officials said Green could not solve the season alone, a direct acknowledgment that the club’s problems stretched far beyond one dugout change.

The firing also reversed a decision made in September 2025, when David Stearns kept Mendoza in place for 2026 after the Mets’ late-season collapse. That vote of confidence vanished with the team’s latest spiral, even as New York carried one of Major League Baseball’s highest payrolls, reported at just shy of $330 million. At the time Mendoza was dismissed, the Mets trailed NL East-leading Atlanta by 15 games and sat 9 1/2 games out of the final National League wild-card spot.

Mendoza thanked the Mets organization and fans in a statement after the dismissal. Around baseball, Don Mattingly downplayed the upheaval, saying, “I don’t worry about what’s going on with them.” But the most revealing response came from the mascot in Queens, where Mr. Met’s background dance turned a managerial firing into a public snapshot of a franchise losing control of its own story.

The moment landed during Pride Night coverage, when the gap between the Mets’ on-field collapse and the spectacle around it was impossible to miss. A high-payroll club, a restless fan base and a viral mascot joke now sit at the center of the same collapse, with Green inheriting a dugout that has already been defined by disappointment.