FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: June 27, 2026
The first thing to know about the firing of Carlos Mendoza is that nobody in the Mets’ clubhouse believes their poor performance is the former manager’s fault. Not David Stearns, the president of baseball operations. Not Francisco Lindor, the franchise shortstop. Not Bo Bichette, the big offseason acquisition. Not Andy Green, the farm director-turned-interim manager. Mendoza did not lose the clubhouse, Stearns said at a press conference Friday afternoon, less than six hours after the team announced the dismissal, while Lindor said he and the players failed Mendoza.
It would be easy to point to the embarrassing series the Mets just played against the Cubs at Citi Field, the low point coming in the second game of Wednesday’s doubleheader. Each of the four infielders made at least one error; that hadn’t happened since Sept. 8, 1962. New York recorded six defensive miscues in total. But the truth is, neither one game nor one series did Mendoza in. The only thing surprising about his firing is that it didn’t happen sooner. The Mets went 34-47 (.420) under Mendoza this season, making them the third-worst team in the National League. On June 12, 2025, the Mets held the best record in the majors. As of Friday morning, they had a record of 72-102 (.414) since that high-water mark. This is a team in free fall, and the descent has lasted for longer than a full calendar year. During the offseason, Stearns and the Mets cleaned house of most of their veteran players and brought in a new group of guys. That hasn’t worked through the first 81 games of the season, and so the next thing to do was fire the manager. Stearns said during his press conference on Friday that his own job is safe, that he has the support of ownership. The thing is, so did Mendoza — until he didn’t.
Jay Jaffe will take a more detailed look at Mendoza’s firing and the Mets in a story early next week, so that’s the last I’ll say about the news in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about the unwritten rules of ABS challenges, what would happen if a team were made up of nine Frank Thomases, the amount of money a player would make from spending just 24 hours on a big league roster, and more. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
Thanks for such an elaborate and thoughtful answer! I agree that unwritten rules are mostly dumb. It is Tatis’s history of getting called out for supposedly violating them (noted in my reference to a couple of manufactured “incidents” from early in his career) that made me especially curious to imagine the consequences of him challenging that pitch.
On Caminero not challenging that call and the supposed Unwritten Rules….: he then pulled a Yermin Mercedes and absolutely let it fly, hitting an absolute bomb of a HR in a 48 mile lollipop.
I think you’re missing the point completely. There aren’t truly any unwritten rules. It’s like any other line of work. Don’t do things that make it about you, don’t embarrass your coworkers. As fans not on the inside we don’t see everything going on, but the players have a sense about who’s being an asshole whether by showing off too much or trying to make yourself the enforcer of the “right way to play “. usually this stuff works itself out. I don’t get worked up about someone just giving an opinion even if I don’t agree. I think it’s only a problem when someone is getting injured and most of that stuff is now directly addressed in the rules by umpires.
Notgraphs lives!
https://not.fangraphs.com/dangerous-experiment-a-roster-of-25-adam-dunns/
My first thought too. Classic.
That article is maybe the funniest piece of baseball related writing ever.
I’ve always wanted to see this done with 25 prime Ichiros. Or 25 Ohtanis, good grief.
Just to nitpick, AFAIK Junior was not allowed to challenge the pitch. ABS challenges are disallowed with a position player on the mound.
This is true. And it is a good rule for two reasons. First, the umpire should be able to expand the zone a bit in these instances. Second, it is probably when the difference between the 3-D rulebook strike zone and the 2-D challenge system could have the most divergence, as lollipop “fastballs” could very easy drop just over or under the ABS system but still be strikes by the actual rule book zone.
Impressed that two of the first 5 comments pointed this out. Glad some fans know that rule. TBF, I only learned that earlier in the week. But an editor should have caught this.
Isn’t the MLB rule book strike zone now the ABS strike zone? I know what you mean, but I doubt that’s a consideration. I think it comes down to, “position player pitching=get this game over”.
I’ve heard that slow pitches are tough for ABS. It’s 2D, not 3D. So that makes sense. ABS isn’t the strike zone, strictly. ABS is the strike zone for allowed challenges. The strike zone for anything else is the umpire’s call. The rule book says the plate is 3D. ABS measures it as 2D. That’s all I’m saying.
It was a throw away comment, but I wonder what percentage of 44-year olds (let’s not force them to be lawyers) would be better major league outfielders than Frank Thomas, given the primary skill is range and Thomas doesn’t have much.
What age of Frank Thomas? He played tight end at Auburn, which requires some speed. So at 22 I’d say he could hold his own a little. But he played until age 40 when he was a full time DH.
Also, the name game made me think of the other All Star Frank Thomas who played 3B and OF. I wonder how much he would help at specific positions.
Not many. Arguably theslowest player in MLB right now is Christian Vazquez, and Statcast estimates 4.67 for a 90 foot sprint. I believe that dead center in the normal range for active adult men, and most 44 year old men are a whole lot less active than that.
Also I know baseball players don’t have freak gym athleticism in the same way that football and baseball players do but the modal 44 year man would just hurt himself doing normal baseball things.
Very few. Let’s start with a majority don’t exercise regularly and are overweight. Picking those that are active, they might be in the, er, ballpark of Thomas in terms of speed, but unless they play baseball regularly still, they are going to be far worse at reading the ball. I still play outfield slowpitch in my late 40’s now, and can say that most 40-somethings who do not play regularly are going to be terrible at reading flyballs. I’m not saying that Frank Thomas would be great at it, but he will be so much better at tracking the ball than an amateur. I think 1% being better than Frank Thomas is a fairly generous estimate.
I was a good defensive outfielder at 13-15 (meaning I wasn’t good enough a player to play SS or 3rd but was fast enough and could catch fly balls). I quit slow pitch softball at the age of 38 after absolutely botching consecutive fly balls and realizing I couldn’t play defense without embarrassing myself anymore. I’m 44 now; I would easily be the worst defensive player on any major league team. Maybe with practice I could improve to being better than Marcell Ozuna? Maybe.
I agree, and I’d expect that subset to be meaningfully worse not just at reading the ball. Also meaningfully worse as a group, compared to a former major leaguer, at actually catching a major league fly ball that’s rather easily within reach.
One underlying reason for range being so important for major league OF is that these players almost always catch the ball if it can hit their glove while they’re stationary or moving at a slow pace. There are of course some times that major league players botch a play by dropping a routine fly ball, but these stand out as egregious errors because they happen so infrequently.
For the general population of 40-somethings – even relatively athletic ones – I’d expect that the rate of simply dropping a fly ball would be *far* higher.
Hey! I did a FanGraph! And it involved Ray Charles and Rick James, the baseball players.
Fantastic mailbag.
One is a Frank Thomas.
2-4 Frank Thomas are Big Hurtses
5 or more Frank Thomas in a group are called an ‘Owie’ according to the OED
I thought I was familiar with most of the unwritten rules of baseball but I’ve never heard of “don’t swing at the first pitch after a pitcher has given up back to back home runs.” I wonder if that’s left over from the era when an annoyed pitcher would likely thrown a high, tight fastball at the next batter’s chin.
This isn’t an ABS challenge, but in the same game that the White Sox lost two ABS challenges up 17-1, the Sox did (successfully) challenge an inning-ending GIDP in the 7th, which extended the inning and the lead to 21-1.
And also gave mor RBI to a player.
I wonder if the team of Franks would get marginally better defensively as the season went on just by virtue of all the reps they’d be getting.
I’m fairly certain the last pitch of Philip Humber’s perfect game on April 21, 2012, which was a 3-2 pitch, would not have survived a challenge. The score was 4-0 and obviously it was early in a season where the Mariners would finish 4th and the White Sox 2nd, but 8 games out of the wild card. Challenge or no challenge?
I’m kind of baffled by the choice of Frank Thomas as your cloned player if you aren’t even going to use all the available varieties of Frank Thomas. If you’re only going to use one player, you’re just repeating the NotGraphs exercise in a less funny way.
With regards to chained names -it’s really a shame that Pablo Picasso never picked up a MLB appearance, since supposedly his full name on his baptismal record was:
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad María de los Remedios Alarcón y Herrera Ruiz Picasso.
To make the name string game more difficult, maybe try just one position, or team, or HOF only, etc.
“(T)he one true Frank Thomas keeping eight supplementary Big Hurtses around for possible organ and tissue replacement as he ages.” This reads like an HBO-style apocalyptic series treatment for MLB Network in the offseason. Get on it Dan, especially with the lockout coming.
Hi, I have a question. Looking at the hitter leader board, I see Ohtani’s, Schwarber’s,and Alvarez’s fWAR taking a big hit for bad defense. Since these guys, as DHs, don’t pay defense, can you explain why their fWAR is downgraded for something they are not asked to do? ww.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2026&month=0&season1=2026&ind=0&sortcol=19&sortdir=default&pagenum=1