What ties the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Mets, and Boston Red Sox together? All three have some of the highest-paid rosters in baseball, yet as May approaches, they find themselves near the bottom of the Wild Card standings.
Unsurprisingly, that has led to changes. The Phillies wasted no time firing manager Rob Thomson and replacing him with MLB legend and experienced skipper Don Mattingly.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, parted ways with Alex Cora, who was later offered the Phillies’ job but declined. Boston took a different route than Philadelphia, promoting young Chad Tracy from Triple-A as interim manager.
Then there are the Mets, wandering aimlessly through 2026 with the league’s worst record, despite having the second-highest payroll trailing only the ever-dominant Los Angeles Dodgers. It would be logical for them to fire manager Carlos Mendoza, especially since he’s on a lame-duck contract.
But no one stands in the Mets’ way like the Mets themselves.
The race for the NL East basement is close, but you can never overestimate the (not-so) Amazing Mets’ talent for self-sabotage.
New York’s generational ineptitude serves as a reminder to Phillies fans that things could always be worse.
Mendoza famously led the Mets to the NLCS in his first season (2024), though that run felt like a fluke even when it ended. After all, Jose Iglesias was their third-most valuable hitter that year, posting 3.0 WAR in just 80 games. No rational person thought they could catch lightning in a bottle twice.
Still, New York has been shockingly bad since the 2025 All-Star break. They started that season 45-24, then collapsed to 38-55. Add an 11-21 start to 2026, and the Mets rank among the three worst teams in baseball by record since last June.
The front office tried to fix things over the winter, swapping out nearly half the roster via free agents and trades. But the newcomers haven’t meshed with the existing core, which explains why they’re last in the NL East.
You’d think Mendoza a free agent after 2026 anyway would be the obvious scapegoat. It’s not as if the Mets have hesitated to blame managers before; they’ve gone through four since Terry Collins left after 2017.
Yet the Mets remain committed to their own brand of insanity. The Phillies are surely grateful, able to hide behind their rival’s dysfunction even if things don’t improve under Mattingly.
