The Mets are not alone. The sinking lifeboat is crowded with teams with large payrolls, huge expectations and \u2014 so far \u2014 paltry results.<\/p>\n
The Mets have the majors\u2019 second-largest payroll for luxury-tax purposes between the Dodgers and the Yankees. Then come, in order, the Phillies, the Blue Jays and Red Sox. The Astros are 11th. The Mets, Phillies, Blue Jays, Red Sox and Astros completed play Tuesday a combined 43-74 and vying for the bottom of their divisions. They are the early front-runners for the most disappointing team of 2026.<\/p>\n
In each case, I think the bulk of the blame falls with the architects \u2014 the Mets\u2019 David Stearns, the Phillies\u2019 Dave Dombrowski, the Astros\u2019 Dana Brown, the Blue Jays\u2019 Ross Atkins and the Red Sox\u2019s Craig Breslow \u2014 more than the managers. But architects have much longer shelf lives in MLB than those who have to deploy their blueprints<\/a>. In part because in many of these cases they have had even more powerful co-conspirators, such as Astros owner Jim Crane, Red Sox owner John Henry and Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro, who are heavily influencing personnel or direction.<\/p>\n At this moment, though, the sharks are circling managers \u2014 notably the Mets\u2019 Carlos Mendoza, the Phillies\u2019 Rob Thomson and the Astros\u2019 Joe Espada. The Blue Jays\u2019 John Schneider signed an extension coming off a World Series appearance last year while the Red Sox\u2019s Alex Cora has a World Series title on his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 and is just in the second season of a three-year, $21.75 million extension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mets are not alone. The sinking lifeboat is crowded with teams with large payrolls, huge expectations and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,48,54,4,61,25,185,430,428,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-680983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-boston-red-sox","10":"tag-houston-astros","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-new-york-mets","13":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-sports-columnists","16":"tag-sports-plus","17":"tag-toronto-blue-jays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116448111062639728","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}