David Lennon: Mets' nosedive puts Carlos Mendoza on the hot seat despite David Stearns' backing

Carlos Mendoza didn’t spark up the Weber grill he’s currently sitting on as manager of the spiraling Mets.

He can thank his players and the roster’s architect, president of baseball operations David Stearns, for the mid-April barbecue.

What is Mendoza’s responsibility, however, is coming up with ways to turn down the heat. The only way to do that, of course, is to stack up a few wins ASAP.

Nearly every manager’s firing has been preceded by a vote of confidence, whether it’s from ownership or some lower rung of the front-office hierarchy. So Stearns’ verbal embrace of Mendoza hours before Friday’s Wrigley Field massacre, which extended the nosedive to nine straight, mattered little.

“I think Mendy is doing a very good job,” Stearns said.

Although I share the belief that Mendoza is not the person primarily at fault for the Mets stumbling through their worst losing streak (now at 11 games after Sunday’s 2-1 loss in extra innings) in more than two decades, to suggest that anyone is doing “a very good job” on a $370 million team that is 7-15 instantly renders the statement hollow. It’s what Stearns has to say, obviously, in an effort to douse the flames rising around Mendoza.

But real solutions, other than this week’s return of Juan Soto and the schedule getting a little easier at Citi Field, are looking scarce for Mendoza, whose job had a higher degree of difficulty this season from the moment he arrived in Port St. Lucie for spring training. Saddled with a new coaching staff and a shuffled roster, Mendoza was a lame duck manager essentially back at square one again — with greater expectations than his rookie season at the helm.

That’s doable during the best of times. But when things go bad, as they have for these Mets from the jump, the manager quickly can find himself in desperate straits. Terry Collins is the longest-tenured manager in Mets history (1,134 games over seven seasons), which is a herculean accomplishment for one of baseball’s most turbulent franchises. But that can’t happen on an island.

“I think you have to have a real sense of what’s going on with your team,” Collins said during a phone interview.

Sounds simple, but what Collins means by that is relying on your lieutenants, from confidants on the coaching staff to clubhouse leaders among the players. Success — or even survival — isn’t feasible without those lines of communication. And trying to navigate a minefield like an extended losing streak becomes close to impossible, especially with the Mets’ current roster, one with mercenaries as a few of the key pieces, maybe now obsessing with their own personal struggles more than the overall mission.

Bobby Valentine presided over some of the Mets’ craziest seasons — no small statement — and is third on the franchise list in games (1,003) and wins (536). In 1999, the Mets finished 97-66 despite an eight-game losing streak in late September that killed their division title hopes (they lost to Atlanta in the NLCS that year). Three years later, he endured a 12-game losing streak in what turned out to be his final season despite an earlier vote of confidence from owner Fred Wilpon, who said he’d be back for 2003.

In other words, Valentine has lived the full Mets experience, and no one — before or after — could surf the chaos like him. Often, those waves were of his own making, and some by design, as the self-described “loud” Valentine believed cranking up the volume could help distract the players from whatever performance issues were going on.

“I would try to change something, and it was usually trying to do something that would make them laugh or make them get out of that stare,” Valentine said during a phone interview. “Get their attention on something else.

“I’m sure volume had something to do with it in my case, because I was loud. But you have to get their attention. It’s hard when a team’s in a funk. It’s hard to get a collective audience because everyone kind of goes into their own little world. They’re all either trying not to be the one to lose the game or trying too hard to be the one that wins it.”

Mendoza is not in the Valentine mold. Valentine is one of one, and it’s difficult to envision Mendoza going to a similar playbook. But Valentine, like Collins, had strong clubhouse leaders to amplify those messages — just as Mendoza did during the near-miraculous 2024 rebound. That clubhouse core has been dismantled, however, and it doesn’t seem like any current Met is equipped to step into that void.

Francisco Lindor used to be the most obvious candidate. Not only was he among the high-profile voices during the 2024 turnaround, but Lindor ignited the on-field resurgence with an MVP performance. But recent events appear to have sapped his influence, starting with Steve Cohen declaring . . . in February that the Mets will never have a captain for as long as he owns the franchise.

Cohen didn’t mention any names, but Lindor had been publicly groomed for the Mets’ captaincy during the previous two years, so you could see why that might sting. Taking that into account, it feels like a strange coincidence that Lindor subsequently has played as if his head isn’t in the game, committing a number of uncharacteristic mental mistakes (along with his offensive skid).

Factor in so many new faces and it becomes painfully apparent why the Mets needed a fast start to this season. Chemistry is easy to achieve when a team is winning. But when a disparate group like this is thrown together — a handful learning new positions, many adjusting to New York, some eyeing their next payday at season’s end — an early spiral like this can have a corrosive effect.

“All of a sudden, you get a couple guys who think they have to take it upon themselves to get out of the losing streak,” Collins said. “They start to swing [wildly] and they don’t make contact for two days. They think, I gotta be the guy. No, it takes 26 guys.”

That’s been another hurdle for Mendoza. He lost Soto to a calf strain on April 3, and after winning the next four straight, the Mets suddenly flipped into an 11-game plunge without their $765 million slugger.

Also, Jorge Polanco — signed to a two-year, $40 million contract to be Pete Alonso’s replacement — was limited to two starts at first base because of Achilles bursitis while clearly being hindered at the plate, too. The Mets put Polanco on the injured list before Saturday’s game, but the official reason was a bruised wrist.

Jared Young barely made the Opening Day roster but soon became one of the Mets’ few impactful players, and even he’s lost for two months because of a meniscus tear in his left knee.

Amid that fallout, it’s Mendoza’s job to create a winning formula — and we’ve witnessed the results.

On Friday, the Mets arrived at the “radical lineup shuffle” stage of their losing streak, moving .158-hitting rookie Carson Benge up to the leadoff spot — from his usual bottom third — dropping Lindor to No. 3 and hitting Francisco Alvarez fifth. Benge went 1-for-4, but the Mets did have 14 hits and showed some life in rallying from an early 4-0 deficit before Kodai Senga and Sean Manaea set the game ablaze.

Mendoza is running out of options. No offense to MJ Melendez, but he was acquired to be an extra outfielder, not a regular DH, and Sunday was his fourth straight game in that role.

Also a source of frustration for a modern manager? Load management. Last Sunday, Mendoza sounded even more defeated after a 1-0 loss in revealing that he couldn’t use Luis Robert Jr. as an eighth-inning pinch hitter because he was unavailable to play the field for the ninth (or beyond) if the Mets tied the score.

So much has conspired against Mendoza to this point that it’s only logical that his job should be in jeopardy — fairly or not — if for no other reason than change for change’s sake.

But Stearns did hire Mendoza, so that likely buys him extra time, even when you consider that this Mets malaise actually dates as far as June 13 of last season. Through Sunday, they’ve had a .391 winning percentage (45-70) since then, which is difficult to explain and getting harder to defend for anyone involved with the Mets, not just Mendoza.

Collins and Valentine are two of the winningest managers in Mets history. Both got them to a World Series. Neither one left on his own terms, and when the momentum shifts, to paraphrase “No Country for Old Men,” sometimes there’s no turning back the dismal tide.