NEW YORK, June 26 — The Mets have run out of people to fire. First came the coaches, dismissed after last season’s disappointment. Then, early Friday morning, manager Carlos Mendoza was let go.
Now the buffer is gone. There is no one left between David Stearns and the full weight of what he has built.
This is Stearns’ use of money, philosophy and roster building. His puzzle of mismatched and injury prone and not-as-good-as-hoped players. The names on the field tell the story.
Gil Hodges could not make Jorge Polanco healthy. Davey Johnson could not make Marcus Semien young.
Bobby Valentine could not make Mark Vientos athletic. And Carlos Mendoza did not assemble this jigsaw. That work belongs to the president of baseball operations.
It is the way these things generally go in the baseball world. Large disappointment follows great expectations. The manager goes.
The coaches go. And eventually, the architect stands alone.
For Stearns, that moment is now. The roster he constructed is a collection of players whose best days are behind them, whose bodies have not cooperated, whose skills have not translated. This is not a team that simply underperformed.
It is a team that was built with fundamental flaws, and those flaws have been exposed over the long grind of a season. Mendoza took the fall.
But the problems run deeper than any manager could fix. What comes next for the Mets is unclear. The season is not over, but the trajectory is set.
Stearns now faces the consequences of his own design. There is no more scapegoating. No more shuffling of coaches or managers to change the narrative.
The spotlight is on the front office. For fans who watched the promise of a new era fade into another lost season, the human side is painful.
These are real people with families, with careers, with hopes that did not materialize. The players who could not stay healthy did not choose to get hurt. The veterans who could not turn back the clock did not choose to age.
But someone chose to build around them. That someone is David Stearns.
And now, there is no one left to protect him from the mess.
