ESPN’s David Ross says he’d ‘love’ a shot at managing Mets

The New York Mets have been a disaster of historically expensive proportions in 2026, and at least one member of the ESPN broadcast booth wants a crack at cleaning it up.

David Ross, who returned to the network this spring as a game analyst and studio contributor after being dismissed as Chicago Cubs manager following the 2023 season, told the New York Post at Fenway Park that he’d “love” a shot at the job when it permanently opens up this offseason.

“I hope they call,” Ross said. “It would be nice. It would be cool.”

Interim manager Andy Green, who took over after the Mets fired Carlos Mendoza on Friday, has already been told he will return to his front office role as senior vice president of player development when the season ends.

He’s not alone, as Albert Pujols threw his name into the ring on MLB Network as well, adding to what is shaping up to be a wide-open search for a franchise that has become, in Michael Kay’s words, “a laughingstock.” The Yankees play-by-play man spent a significant portion of his show after the Mendoza firing excoriating David Stearns, the president of baseball operations, who handed Steve Cohen a “steaming sack of poop” in exchange for the richest single-owner payroll in baseball.

“Every time he’s tried to spend Steve Cohen’s money, he’s gotten zoinked,” Kay said.

The Mets have gone 71-94 since June 26 of last season, a stretch that has prompted Gary Cohen and Ron Darling to take their gloves off on SNY on multiple occasions, most pointedly the night they lost a doubleheader to the Cubs and committed six infield errors in the nightcap.

“This has been nothing short of ugly,” Cohen said from the booth, with the camera panning directly to Mendoza.

Mendoza, who Cohen would later say was probably “the least culpable of everybody” for the franchise’s woes, was fired not 48 hours later.

Given how glowingly Cohen, Darling, and Keith Hernandez spoke of Mendoza in the aftermath of his dismissal, that framing is understandable. It’s also disingenuous to suggest Mendoza doesn’t bear meaningful responsibility for the team’s shortcomings over the last calendar year, having overseen a historic collapse, multiple prolonged losing streaks, and consistently making baffling in-game managerial decisions.

In his final game as manager, he ran Nolan McLean out there for 104 pitches on an afternoon when McLean was clearly gassed, only to watch him surrender a go-ahead three-run home run to Dansby Swanson that effectively sealed his own fate.

Ross knows the feeling of being on the other side of that equation. The two-time World Series champion joined ESPN shortly after winning it all with the Cubs in 2016 and spent several years working weekday MLB games alongside appearances on Baseball Tonight, Get Up, and SportsCenter before leaving to manage Chicago. He held the Cubs job for four seasons, reached the postseason once in 2022, and was dismissed after the organization cratered to 74-88 in 2023, sending him back to the ESPN booth.

Whether Ross actually gets a call from Flushing depends largely on whether Stearns survives long enough to conduct the search and whether Steve Cohen — who promised a championship within three to five years of buying the team and has instead presided over one of the most expensive disasters in franchise history — decides a complete overhaul is the only reasonable path forward.

The Mets’ job, for all its dysfunction, remains one of the highest-profile managerial vacancies in baseball.