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.
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With Dustin May pitching a perfect game with nobody out in the top of the seventh inning on June 15, Fernando Tatis Jr. ran a count to 3-0. The next pitch was just off the upper inside corner, but called a strike. Tatis Jr. didn’t challenge, but it brought to mind a question about the unwritten rules of perfect games and no-hitters. Down by three to start the seventh, just how big of a violation would it have been for Tatis Jr. to break up a perfect game by calling for a challenge that would have resulted in a walk? Or was the violation of the unwritten rule that he didn’t challenge when it would have brought the tying run to the on-deck circle? Either way, please rank on a rules violation spectrum from “Tatis Jr. stealing third base while up six in the fourth” to “Tatis Jr. hitting a grand slam on a 3-0 count up seven runs in the eighth.”
Also, what sort of unwritten rules of ABS challenges do you see developing?
Am I allowed to ask a bonus question? I see Tatis Jr. has only challenged one pitch all year, but has had five challenges against him. Which hitter has the biggest discrepancy between getting challenged/challenging calls?
Thanks,
“Transmission”
I spent nearly the first three months of the season reporting on when, why, and how players and teams decide to challenge a ball-strike call, and none of the 40 people I spoke to for the story mentioned the unwritten rules — at least not in the traditional sense. The unwritten rules to which “Transmission” is referring are all about how actions toward an opponent uphold or violate a code between players and teams. Some of the most notable ones include:
- Don’t bunt when the opposing pitcher is throwing a no-hitter.
- Don’t steal in a blowout.
- Don’t swing at a 3-0 pitch when your team is up big.
- Don’t celebrate after a home run when your team is losing by a lot.
- Don’t swing at the first pitch after the opposing pitcher has given up back-to-back home runs.
First off, I think most of the unwritten rules are dumb and should be eliminated from the game. At the youth level, some unwritten rules should be encouraged so long as they’re observed in the name of sportsmanship. Kids should never stop trying their best when batting, but when their team is winning by a lot, I think they should stop stealing and avoid advancing on passed balls or wild pitches. In the majors, though, things are different. Batters should be able to swing and bunt whenever they want, and baserunners should be able to steal whenever they have the opportunity to do so. If the opposing team can’t get you out or prevent you from swiping a base, that’s their problem, not yours. A no-hitter is an impressive feat because opposing batters are trying to get hits. As long as a bunt single is considered a hit, batters should be permitted to try and bunt their way on under any circumstances if they believe it is their best shot to reach base.
For those reasons, I also don’t think the unwritten rules should apply to ABS challenges, with one notable exception that I’ll touch on in a bit. As I said before, I haven’t heard anybody mention unwritten rules for ABS, but just because I haven’t heard anything doesn’t mean they don’t or won’t exist. It’s possible that there simply hasn’t been enough time to develop them, but really, we only learn about unwritten rules when a player or team takes vocal exception to an alleged violation. All it would take is one red-ass pitcher or catcher yelling at a batter for challenging a pitch in a blowout or during a no-hitter for the debate to begin and baseball’s vigilante justice system to spring into action.
Two recent events come to mind when considering this question. First, with the Rays leading the Royals, 10-0, in the bottom of the eighth inning of a getaway day game Thursday afternoon, Junior Caminero chose not to challenge a called strike on a 42-mph pitch from Tyler Tolbert, a position player, that would’ve nearly hit him if it weren’t thrown so softly. The umpire was clearly expanding the zone to get the game over with, and Caminero obliged him. It didn’t seem like Caminero’s no-challenge was in deference to any unwritten rule. He just wanted to keep the game moving.
Can't stop thinking about this pitch:
— Levi Weaver, but for baseball (@threetwoeephus.bsky.social) 2026-06-26T04:37:34.522Z
Then, on Friday, the Royals were once again getting the bejeezus kicked out of them, this time by the White Sox, who decided to challenge two pitches with a 17-1 lead. Hilariously, both calls were confirmed — which, serves them right. This is the one instance where an unwritten rule for challenges should be observed, not because of running up the score or showing the other team up or anything like that, but for the same reason Caminero didn’t challenge the eighth-inning pitch on Thursday — it just isn’t worth prolonging the game.
Anyway, even if there were unwritten rules for challenges, I do not think either example “Transmission” asked about — challenging a 3-0 pitch when the opposing pitcher is throwing a perfect game and your team is only down three runs, or not challenging a 3-0 called strike that, if overturned, would’ve brought the tying run to the on-deck circle — would be a violation. “Transmission” is right that if Tatis had challenged the pitch, the call would’ve been overturned and May’s perfect game bid would’ve ended, but in such a close game, I don’t think the Cardinals would’ve taken umbrage with that. The pitch was, in fact, a ball. Even though I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with bunting when you’re getting no-hit, because I think a bunt single is just as earned as a bloop one, I see a difference between that and walking on a challenged pitch to break up a perfect game. In the case of the successful 3-0 challenge, the walk would’ve happened if the umpire had made the correct call. During a perfect game, you wouldn’t expect the batter to swing at every 3-0 pitch, would you? If it’s a ball, it’s a ball, and that’s on the pitcher for not throwing a strike, no matter what the umpire initially called.
Now, moving on to the other example, the event that actually happened — Tatis didn’t challenge the call and therefore didn’t take advantage of an opportunity to get in a close game — also would not be a violation because the pitch wasn’t so far off the plate that it was an obviously incorrect call.
Players are less likely to challenge 3-0 calls because, as I wrote last week, “With two more strikes to give and only one more ball needed to walk, batters overall don’t seem to think a close 3-0 pitch, even if it’s a ball, is worth risking a challenge.” I would assume that’s what Tatis was thinking here. Besides, as “Transmission” mentioned in his bonus question, Tatis has only used one ABS challenge all year (he lost it), so he probably isn’t confident or comfortable challenging calls in any situation. Either way, he ended up walking later in the plate appearance.
To answer the bonus question, Tatis is not the player with the largest discrepancy. Entering play Friday, three qualified batters have yet to use an ABS challenge: Yandy Díaz, Brandon Marsh, and Shea Langeliers. Of that trio, Díaz leads the way with 10 catcher-initiated challenges while he’s at bat, and nine of those calls were overturned to strikes. Somehow, that’s not the largest discrepancy. That honor belongs to Nick Kurtz and J.P. Crawford. Kurtz has challenged 10 pitches, but opposing teams have challenged 24 ball calls with him at the plate, for a difference of 14 pitches. Crawford has challenged just four pitches, with opponents challenging 18 with him at the plate.
One last point: Remember up top when I said nobody I talked to had mentioned unwritten rules “in the traditional sense” for challenges? Well, that’s because they did discuss internal team guidelines that hadn’t been written down. With few exceptions, there were no team-wide memos or explicit directives dictating when players are allowed to challenge ball-strike calls, but as I detailed in my story, those rules very much do exist. It’s just that, in this context, they’re known as strategies.
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Hey FanGraphers —
I hope this one isn’t too weird for you, but I wanted to announce that I’ve finally found a new longest string of… well, names that run together of MLB players.
For years, I just had this one… three players, four names: Junior Félix José Canseco.
And this one is the same: Eric Milton Bradley Zimmer
But then, just this year, we got not one, but two, new names to complete my first ever four players with five names:
Blaze Jordan Walker Cooper Pratt
But only because Blaze Jordan and Cooper Pratt have made the bigs.
Is there a longer chain out there? What is it?
Best,
Sad Ness
Davy Andrews: Here’s my confession, Sadness. I’m the wrong guy to answer this question. I love Immaculate Grid, but I’m not one of those people who racks up super-low scores. Matt assigned your question to me because he knows that what I lack in encyclopedic knowledge I make up for in willingness to search through our entire database to find someone who can match up with Dillon Dingler (hello, Joe Dillon!). So I did just that. I pulled every single name in our database – every player in major league history – and then I brute-forced a bunch of Excel formulas to find a couple hundred guys whose first names have last name matches and vice versa.
Can I interest you in Gary Nolan Ryan Howard Farmer Steelman? Or maybe a nice Charlie Frank George Brett Cecil Travis Buck Ross Taylor Cole Henry Aaron Judge McCredie?
My personal favorite is Tommy John Connor Joe Connor Griffin Conine, but I’ve got lists like this all over the place. Billy Bryan Corey Ray Pepper Martin Glendon Rusch. Joe Nolan Gorman Thomas. Herbert Buster Emmett Nelson.
You see the problem, right? I made it too easy. I got bored. My longest chain is 28 names long, but it only stopped there because it had to stop somewhere. I bet Jon Becker, Sean Forman, or Keaton Arneson would be able to write some code and string together a list 75 names long before they even got out of bed in the morning.
| # | Name | # | Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Luis Robert | 15 | Russell Martin |
| 2 | Robert Ray | 16 | Martin Duke |
| 3 | Ray King | 17 | Duke Brett |
| 4 | King Cole | 18 | Brett Kerry |
| 5 | Cole Henry | 19 | Kerry Taylor |
| 6 | Henry Austin | 20 | Taylor Davis |
| 7 | Austin Riley | 21 | Davis Daniel |
| 8 | Riley Greene | 22 | Daniel Robert |
| 9 | Greene Farmer | 23 | Robert Manuel |
| 10 | Farmer Ray | 24 | Manuel Lee |
| 11 | Ray Boone | 25 | Lee Howard |
| 12 | Boone Logan | 26 | Howard Farmer |
| 13 | Logan Allen | 27 | Farmer Vaughn |
| 14 | Allen Russell | 28 | Vaughn Grissom |
In order to bring the fun back into the exercise, I reached out to my friend Dan. You may know him as Daniel R. Epstein of Baseball Prospectus, or maybe even as the bruising drummer from our Monster Cereal-themed garage rock album Sweet Things Inside. Did I make a music video for one of our songs whose entire premise was that it was just one continuous shot of me eating a gigantic bowl of Count Chocula? You know I did.
You remember when I said I loved Immaculate Grid? I was lying. I used to love it, but Dan and another friend murdered that love. Dan knows every ballplayer. He plays Out of the Park and fantasy and probably Strat-O-Matic, too. He gripes if he doesn’t get a zero on Immaculate Grid. He used to send his scores to our group text every day, and they were so demoralizing that I stopped playing altogether.
Twenty minutes after I passed along your question, Dan replied asking whether he could use minor leaguers. Just to be clear, I told him that he could use every single player in major league history, and he didn’t respond, “Great, 10,479 names seems like it should be enough to work with.” His response was to ask if there was any way he could pull in Jansel Luis. Within half an hour, Dan had a list 15 names long. Twenty-five minutes after that, he’d bumped it up to 18. Three minutes after that – and here I will make sure you know that it was 10:44 PM on a work night – Dan texted, “Wait, I can go further!” He started texting again at 7:11 the next morning. He’s now up to 25 names – nearly as many as I got without using our database and Excel! – and in a delightful stroke of good fortune, his list ends with part of Sadness’ original list. I’m sure he will be up to 30 by the time this mailbag actually gets published.
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By a miracle of modern science, nine clones of Frank Thomas have been created in a lab. Some team, thinking outside the box, signs all nine to become its new starting lineup. Frank is playing all nine non-pitcher positions every day. Simultaneously the best offense and worst fielding unit in MLB history. Assuming an average overall pitching staff, how does this team do? — Keith
Dan Szymborski: Ah, human cloning, and one of the more positive theoretical uses of it. A much darker mail could have been sent to the medical equivalent of FanGraphs wondering about the philosophical and ethical concerns about the one true Frank Thomas keeping eight supplementary Big Hurtses around for possible organ and tissue replacement as he ages. In this scenario, we can focus on the baseball!
While you only gave me authority to clone Frank Thomas an additional eight times, in for penny, in for a pound (of flesh). I’m also going to provide some additional Thomas-cloned reserves so that the lineup is constructed of Franks Thomas all the way down, like turtles.
Playing baseball players at positions they’ve never played and likely don’t have the proper skillset for is, of course, not ideal. But the damage is not unlimited, and many outs are strikeouts or popups that any MLB player could catch. Many, many grounders, liners, and fly balls are fairly routine, and a professional athlete in his 20s or 30s, even a rather out-of-shape, slow one, has a higher baseline for defensive ability than, say, a random 44-year-old lawyer. Thomas would have had abysmal range compared to a typical shortstop or center fielder, but he literally had to do things like catch balls and make throws all the time when he played first base, as he did in 971 games in the majors. The difference in 2026 home-to-first time between the slowest in baseball (Christian Vázquez) and the median player is 0.6 seconds, not six seconds.
ZiPS actually can project any player at any position, purely for theoretical reasons. It uses each player’s performance at other positions they’ve played, speed indicators, age, and error tendencies to make an educated guess as to performance. So while I never officially projected him as a shortstop, I can tell you that the worst projected shortstop back in 2021 was Rowdy Tellez at a projected 77 runs worse than the average defender at the position. So ZiPS projects an array of poor defensive performances for Thomas, from -11.8 runs per 162 games (his real career average at 1B) to -68.1 runs per 162 games at shortstop. Thomas, at least, is already right-handed; I have a somewhat arbitrary lefty penalty (-10 at SS, -8 at 3B, -6 at 2B, -4 at C) that doesn’t typically matter so it never actually needs to be tested.
Using Thomas’ career average numbers, this method estimates the all-Thomas team will score 431 runs more than the average team. It also estimates that the team, with league-average pitching, would allow 307 runs more than the average team. Going with the 727 runs per 162 games that the league is averaging this year as the baseline, that gives us a Pythagorean record (with an exponent of 1.82 instead of two) of 89-73 per 162-game season. You probably wouldn’t have that league-average pitching staff for very long given that an average performance with this team would result in your team having an ERA around six. But still.
Naturally, there’s a lot of speculation involved in coming up with this number. But remember, you’re the one who gave a baseball analyst the power to tinker with the fundamental nature of humanity, so you can’t complain if things start getting weird!
(Editor’s note: We did not include the other Frank Thomas, who made three All-Star teams with the Pirates in the 1950s. Perhaps a team of nine of him is a question for another day.)
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Curtis Washington Jr., 19th-round pick out of Purdue in 2022, now a 26-year-old minor league lifer playing for the Mariners’ Northwest League (High-A) affiliate in Everett, found himself added to the Mariners’ 40-man roster and called to the majors in an emergency situation last week. Within 24 hours, he had been optioned back to Everett. I wonder, how much will Washington get paid for his 24 hours on a major league roster? Thanks.
— Mitchell Moore
Jon Becker: This was an awesome story. Washington basically got called up because Everett was at home and Triple-A Tacoma was on the road. The Mariners essentially needed a warm body because, at the last minute, Randy Arozarena landed on the injured list when the team determined that his hamstring wouldn’t be a day-to-day situation any longer. And so, Washington got the call. Unfortunately, the speedy outfielder didn’t get into the game, which the Mariners won 3-1, but he did get to join the, uh, illustrious club of phantom ballplayers.
Now, for the cash. This MLB season has 187 days, so the daily rate for a player earning the league minimum $780,000 is a cool $4,171.12. That’s at least 75 trips up the Space Needle (depending on day of the week) or about 10 drinks at Starbucks, give or take.
* This article was originally published here
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