Mets honchos David Stearns and Steve Cohen seem supportive of manager Carlos Mendoza. But scapegoating the less powerful is a long-standing baseball tradition.
Following the Mets’ disastrous disintegration last season, Stearns, their baseball president, made the call to change most of the coaching staff. That fit the usual order for blame, as the firings usually go in order of pay, from lowest to highest.
First come the coaches, who mainly make in the low six figures ($100,000 to $400,000). Then comes the manager, who naturally earns more than his coaches but ordinarily less than the fellow who runs baseball operations (except in cases of celebrity skippers like Terry Francona or very long-tenured ones).
It’s no shocker extremely highly paid talking heads who’ve done zero reporting, covered no games and frankly know next to nothing are calling for the also extremely highly paid Stearns ($10 million plus) to whack manager Mendoza (about $1.5M) next. Fair or not, that’s baseball tradition when teams lose beyond expectation, whether the expectation was correct or not.