It seems inevitable that Carlos Mendoza is the one who’ll pay the bill for the mess the Mets find themselves in, despite the votes of confidence both obvious (David Stearns said so last week) and subtle (he still has his job as you read this).

Mendoza hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory. Ultimately, it’s on him that the Mets play a lot of unsmart baseball, make a lot of unsound decisions on the basepaths and in the field and actually had two pitchers heading to the mound in the ninth inning of a recent game. Still, it’s hard to fathom Connie Mack or Muggsy McGraw could beg this team to score more runs.

They aren’t available, but ex-Red Sox skipper Alex Cora is, and until the Phillies (drowning in their own doldrums) make what seems like their own inevitable play for him, it would be wise for the Mets to make Cora a Godfather offer to see if that persuades the best manager available to rescue a roster that makes the doleful one he was just paroled from look like the 1998 Yankees.

It may not be fair, but it is hard to imagine Steve Cohen can tolerate five more months of this, because Sunday afternoon his ballpark already resembled the late ’70s version of Shea Stadium dubbed Grant’s Tomb (after M. Donald Grant, who, wherever his soul rests now, must be enjoying the impossible reality that Stearns is charging hard after his title of “most reviled Mets boss ever,” a trophy presumed to be retired eternally).