Carlos Mendoza finally gives Mets fans what they want with Game 5 lineup

The New York Mets face a long road back if they want to reach the World Series. Two tough losses in a row at Citi Field have New York trailing 3-1 in the NLCS to the Los Angeles Dodgers, needing to win three straight to keep their season alive. There's been plenty of blame to go around over the past couple of days — from bad starting pitching to stars slumping at the worst time — but the team hasn't been helped by manager Carlos Mendoza's lineups, which benched some of New York's hottest hitters in favor of veterans who hadn't been hitting well for weeks.

Ahead of Game 5 on Friday evening, we have some good news and bad news for Mets fans. The bad news is that it might be too little too late, historically speaking. But the good news is that Mendoza seems to have finally seen the light, at least when it comes to lineup construction.

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Mets NLCS Game 5 lineup: Jesse Winker, Jeff McNeil back in

Mendoza is unwilling to make the same mistake three times in a row. JD Martinez and Jose Iglesias have finally been benched, with Jeff McNeil starting at second base for New York in Game 5 and Jesse Winker serving as the DH. Tyrone Taylor will be back in the lineup as well after light-hitting Harrison Bader got an inexplicable start in Game 4.

It may not be a cure to everything that ails New York, but it's a start. It also raises some questions about what Mendoza was doing the last couple of days: The Dodgers are once again putting a righty on the mound in Jack Flaherty, so if the Game 3 and 4 lineup was the one that Mendoza wanted against right-handed pitching, why wouldn't he be willing to go back to the well one more time for Game 5?

The answer, of course, is that those lineups weren't actually rooted in evidence; they were rooted in Mendoza's misplaced faith in his veterans, and a belief that he could afford to give them a start in the hopes that they'd suddenly revert back to prior performance. If New York is going to complete an unlikely comeback, they're going to need Mendoza to manage with much more urgency than that, and this is at least a step in the right direction.