NEW YORK — Francisco Lindor had been through managerial firings before with the New York Mets. He watched Luis Rojas get canned in 2021 and Buck Showalter get dumped in 2024. On Friday morning, the last-place Mets made a desperate attempt at saving their nightmare season when they fired Carlos Mendoza.Lindor took this one personally.“I failed Mendy,” he told reporters in the clubhouse at Citi Field before a game against the Philadelphia Phillies. “I didn’t play up to my capabilities to help the team win as many games as we could.”
Lindor and Mendoza spoke on the phone Friday morning.
“He apologized for not helping us win as much,” Lindor said. “But at the end of the day, this is not about him. It’s more on us, the players, that we didn’t perform to our capabilities.”
The 32-year-old shortstop went into Friday night having suited up for just 25 of the Mets’ first 81 games. It was just Lindor’s second game back from his second major injury of the season, a left calf strain that kept him on the injured list for two months.He also needed surgery to fix a stress fracture in his right hamate at the start of spring training, but he was able to rush back in time for Opening Day. Lindor wasn’t productive, hitting just .214 with two home runs, five RBIs, two steals and a .637 OPS. His 79 OPS+ meant that he was producing at a rate 21 percent lower than the league-average hitter.Lindor also made a major gaffe in a game that might have finally forced the Mets to fire Mendoza. He botched a routine grounder in the first inning of the Mets’ ghastly six-error effort in a 10-5 loss to the Chicago Cubs in the second game of Wednesday’s doubleheader.Lindor said he was “shocked” when he learned the Mets had fired Mendoza.
