One: About a year ago, the Mets hired ESPN commentator Jessica Mendoza as an advisor to GM Brodie Van Wagenen’s front office. Mendoza kept her broadcasting gig while also working for the Mets, which created its own potential conflict of interest.
Two: The Mets are tangentially caught up in the hoopla surrounding Major League Baseball’s investigation into the 2017 Astros as new manager Carlos Beltrán was a player on that Astros squad and the only player mentioned by name in the league’s report on its investigation. While Beltrán avoided punishment from the league, the Mets are under mounting pressure to oust their skipper like the Astros and Red Sox did.
These two items met each other in the middle on Thursday as Mendoza appeared on ESPN Radio’s Golic and Wingo to discuss the sign-stealing controversy. Mendoza chose to criticize pitcher Mike Fiers, who was on the ’17 Astros, for telling The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich about the Astros’ sign-stealing scheme. Here’s what was said:Golic: You have a problem with Mike Fiers leaving the Astros, going to another team, and then going public with all of this?
Mendoza: Going public, yeah. I mean, I get it. If you’re with the Oakland A’s and you’re on another team, I mean heck yeah, you better be telling your teammates, “Look, hey, heads up. If you hear some noises when you’re pitching, this is what’s going on.” For sure. But to go public, yeah. It didn’t sit well with me. And honestly, it made me sad for the sport that that’s how this all got found out. This wasn’t something that MLB naturally investigated or that even other teams complained about because they naturally heard about, and then investigations happen. But it came from within. It was a player that was a part of it, that benefited from it during the regular season when he was a part of that team. When I first heard about it, it hits you like any teammate would. It’s something that you don’t do. I totally get telling your future teammates, helping them win, letting people know. But to go public with it and call them out and start all of this, it’s hard to swallow.
Mendoza isn’t listed in the Mets’ front office directory, so it’s not clear if she is, to the letter, considered an official employee of a Major League Baseball team or simply a freelancer. The league doesn’t like for team employees to comment on ongoing matters such as this. At any rate, something involving Mendoza and her nebulous tie to a club was bound to pop up, so here we are.
Mendoza’s comments are just as baffling. Fiers is a whistleblower. For as uncomfortable as they make things for those involved, whistleblowers are ultimately a collective good, seeking to improve the industry from within. And Fiers didn’t do so anonymously, which lent credibility to what he was saying at his personal expense. Baseball is better off for having learned what Fiers shared with The Athletic about the Astros’ scheme. The league should strive for cleaning up the game and leveling the playing field, just as it attempted to do with performance-enhancing drugs.
By criticizing Fiers, Mendoza is helping to create and maintain social pressure against those who dare to speak out. For Major League Baseball, that is antithetical to its mission. Remember: the bad actors here are the Astros and (likely) the Red Sox. Saying anything else obfuscates that fact.
In the end, though, Mendoza’s criticism doesn’t hold up because people had been suspecting the Astros of being up to no good long before Fiers spoke up. In a mid-September 2017 appearance against the Astros, White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar noticed “a banging from the dugout” and changed the signs with his catcher in the middle of an at-bat against Evan Gattis. As The Athletic’s Eno Sarris notes, other players were talking to reporters off-the-record about it. It’s not like this never would have come up if not for Fiers. He just provided specifics.
Update: Mendoza posted a statement on Twitter to clarify her comments. It reads: