Carlos Mendoza faces harsh backlash as a former Mets pitcher labels his injury management “pathetic.” DD
A former New York Mets reliever put Carlos Mendoza and the entire team on blast during a recent live stream.
The New York Mets’ coaching staff got a lot of credit for the pitching staff’s success during the 2024 season. Not only did starters Luis Severino, Sean Manaea, and Jose Quintana produce great individual seasons, but the staff as a whole remained remarkably healthy.
The same can’t be said about 2025. The veteran starting pitchers struggled immensely, the bullpen crumbled (aside from Edwin Diaz), and a staggering number of pitchers suffered injuries, many of which were season-ending and required surgery.
And the Mets’ coaching staff paid the price for these struggles, largely in the form of former pitching coach Jeremy Hefner getting fired.
Adam Ottavino Shreds Mets, Carlos Mendoza in Passionate Injury Rant
While no current Mets pitchers have called the team out for its role in these injury woes, former New York reliever Adam Ottavino (who pitched on the Mets from 2022 to 2024) put the entire team, plus manager Carlos Mendoza, on blast during a November 19 live stream on his YouTube channel.
“This is something that really upsets me deep in my soul because, man, I’ve talked with every single one of these guys about having to take control over their own career because the team is not going to keep them healthy,” Ottavino said of the Mets. “They need to find a way to keep themselves healthy.”
“[The Mets] have to figure out something, whether it’s their protocols, whether it’s the way Carlos uses these dudes so haphazardly. Whether they even care about keeping the guys healthy or not, but they need to be better than this. This is embarrassing, this is actually pathetic, like pathetic. I would never let this happen if I was on the team last year,” Ottavino continued.
“I would have protected these dudes myself; I would have had to jump in front of them myself. Unfortunately, there was nobody willing to stand up and talk to Carlos this year. It was just me, I guess. So, a little bit of an issue there.
“And if they continue down this path, they’re gonna be f*****, because you can not injure this many dudes every year. Hopefully, this is not an actual strategy because it’s freakin’ pathetic and it’s not player-friendly. And eventually, people will catch on. And it’s funny, because they were bragging about keeping people healthy the year before, when it had nothing to do with them,” he said of his former team.
“So yeah, I’m a little annoyed. Because these are guys that should be playing. So it pisses me off,” Ottavino noted.
He later added, “The [Mets’] manager, I think he is a really good under-the-stress manager. I think he has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to bullpen guys and how to keep them healthy, or even how to care about them at all. There’s no communication there, there’s no feel there, there’s no bedside manner when guys get hurt.”
Ottavino did not hold back at all with this sentiment. It will be interesting to see what the response to his words are.
