Mets Fire

Manager

Carlos Mendoza FiredBlame Shifts To StearnsFrancisco Lindor Owns FailureWho Could Manage Next?Aaron Boone Reacts

Andy Green’s role changes, not mission: Building a foundation for the mismatched Mets

Interim manager Andy Green called his experience guiding players from prospects to big leaguers 'freaking fun' and 'life-giving.' Jim McIsaac / Getty Images

By Tyler KepnerJune 27, 2026 5:15 am EDT Updated

The first time Andy Green managed in the major leagues, a decade ago, his team took four games to score a run. The San Diego Padres of that era were dreadful and dull, barely a blip on the baseball consciousness.

The 2026 New York Mets are nothing like that. Well, maybe they’re bad — a half-season of evidence says so — but their roster commands attention.

For Green, that was the allure of managing the team for the rest of this season after Friday’s firing of Carlos Mendoza. Green will resume his job as the Mets’ farm director after this season; but spend a summer filling a lineup card with names like Juan Soto, Bo Bichette and Francisco Lindor? That’s big league.

“It’s an awesome opportunity to be around greatness,” Green said on Friday, in his first news conference at Citi Field. “There’s greatness in that clubhouse, and how many times in your life do you get to be really a part of something great?

“I know it hasn’t been great, but the individual component pieces in there have that inside of them. And for anybody who’s loved competition in their life, that’s what you’re after.”

Green listed Soto, Bichette and Lindor, in that order, as part of his inaugural Mets lineup against the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday. Just before them, though, was Carson Benge, a rookie who had thrived as the leadoff man for a month and a half. Benge smoked a leadoff single, but that was about as good as it got; the Mets lost, 2-1.

If the Mets are going to become the steady, consistent winners under David Stearns, their embattled president of baseball operations, they need more development successes like Benge. That is what really gets Green going.

“To see A.J. Ewing as a kid in A-ball make his way across the boards, it’s freaking fun,” Green said. “It’s life-giving if you love what you get a chance to do. And then you watch Carson Benge tear across, and you fall in love with the way Nolan McLean competes. You get to fall in love with some people before the city gets to fall in love.”

The Mets' troubles don't solely belong to former manager Carlos Mendoza

New York loves winners, wherever the players come from. The Knicks drafted none of their starters, and somehow they seem pretty popular. The pieces just have to mesh, which tends to happen more naturally when the team supplements a homegrown core with high-priced talent — not the other way around.

Green is right about these Mets: the individual component pieces have greatness inside. Soto and Lindor are on track for the Hall of Fame. Bichette is a born hitter (.290 career average) whose World Series homer last fall — off Shohei Ohtani in Game 7 — nearly carried the Toronto Blue Jays to a title.

Marcus Semien was the Texas Rangers’ best player when they went all the way in 2023. Jorge Polanco once started an All-Star Game at shortstop and ended a playoff series with a hit last October. Luis Robert Jr., a center fielder with extraordinary tools, has won the Silver Slugger and Gold Glove awards.

Four pitchers who have started games for the Mets this season — Clay Holmes, Freddy Peralta, Kodai Senga and the just-traded David Peterson — have been All-Stars since 2023. Another, McLean, started for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. Devin Williams has twice been named reliever of the year.

So much greatness, so little to show for it.

“I feel like we have the personnel and we have the experience and we can do it all, to be quite honest,” Lindor said. “We just haven’t done it.”

Bichette was similarly baffled.

“There’s a lot that goes into winning,” he said. “For whatever reason, we haven’t come together and found, I guess, what our identity is. And I’m sure partly that has to do with not having our full team on the field at the time. But there’s no secret sauce.”

Soto, who said he was “really close” with Mendoza and did not expect him to be fired, could not explain why a team with such talent was stuck in last place.“I feel like it’s tough,” he said. “It’s part of baseball. We just haven’t been coming through in big situations, and that’s the way the game goes. You’ve got to come through in the right moment and the right time.”

If Bichette had hit early the way he’s hit lately, and Soto and Lindor had been healthy at the same time, and Holmes hadn’t broken his leg in mid-May … well, the Mets might have been able to mask the flaws of their roster construction.

Misfortune haunts every team, but few fall apart so emphatically. Stearns watched the Mets wheeze to a 21-32 finish last summer, then overhauled the roster coaching staff. He kept Mendoza, but the results did not change. The Mets went 34-47 for Mendoza this season, a 94-loss pace that would be their worst since 2003.

Those 2003 Mets had greatness in the clubhouse, too: three Hall of Famers (Roberto Alomar, Tom Glavine and Mike Piazza), another should-be Hall of Famer (David Cone) and a former Most Valuable Player (Mo Vaughn).