This All-Star week in Philadelphia, you can find three players who at one point were part of the Mets organization. Those three players played a grand total of…24 major league games in orange and blue. But all three left a mark on the franchise in their own way.
Here’s a closer look at the former Mets who are 2026 All-Stars.
Michael Wacha (2x All-Star; 2015, 2026)
A free agent signing following the 2019 season, Wacha made just eight appearances (seven starts) with the Mets in the covid-shortened 2020
campaign, when he pitched to a 6.62 ERA and allowed nine home runs in just 34 innings of work. Wacha’s career had begun in promising fashion, as a 2012 first-round pick and 2015 All-Star at just 24 years old. But between 2016 and 2021, Wacha struggled to find much success, leaving the notion of a second All-Star appearance relatively unthinkable.
Since the start of 2022, he’s pitched to a 3.51 ERA over 720.1 innings, finding a home as a resurgent fixture in the Royals’ rotation. This year, behind a 3.77 ERA in 119.1 innings (the most in the American League entering the second half), the veteran received that elusive second All-Star selection as a 35-year-old.
Wacha’s career has come full circle. Unfortunately for the Mets, they got him at the low-point of that journey.
Justin Verlander (10x All-Star; 2007, 2009-13, 2018-19, 2022, 2026)
A three-time Cy Young Award winner, Rookie of the Year Award winner, MVP Award winner, and two-time World Series champion, Verlander now becomes just the 10th pitcher to earn All-Star honors in 10 or more seasons, joining: Warren Spahn (14), Mariano Rivera (13), Tom Seaver (12), Roger Clemens (11), Clayton Kershaw (11), Steve Carlton (10), Randy Johnson (10), Tom Glavine (10), and Chris Sale (10), who also achieves the feat this season.
Verlander returned to the Tigers, where he spent his first 13 seasons, on a one-year deal this past offseason. It hasn’t exactly gone as planned, as the 43-year-old made just one start before being placed on the injured list where he currently remains. Verlander was elected to the All-Star Game by the commissioner as the American League’s “Legend Pick,” a fitting descriptor for a sure-fire Hall of Famer who’ll get one last look at the midsummer classic.
Only 16 of Verlander’s 556 career starts came in a Mets uniform, but they were nothing to sneeze at, yielding a 133 ERA+ and 2.2 bWAR. And in a way, Verlander is actually representing the Mets in Philadelphia as well, since Ryan Clifford – one of the two prospects acquired from Houston in exchange for Verlander at the 2023 Trade Deadline – was the Mets’ sole representative at Sunday’s Futures Game. Surely that will be the only Trade Deadline discourse in this article…
Pete Crow-Armstrong (2x All-Star; 2025-26)
Let’s take a moment to appreciate Crow-Armstrong’s 2025 season. He put up 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases (becoming just the eighth player to do so in their age-23 season or younger), won a Gold Glove Award, and finished top-10 in National League MVP Award voting.
It’s a season worth appreciating since, with the way his 2026 is going, that 2025 campaign probably won’t be remembered as more than a precursor to Prime PCA. Crow-Armstrong enters the All-Star break second in the majors with 5.7 bWAR (behind only Shohei Ohtani), leading the majors with a Fielding Run Value of 17, and ninth in the majors with a .917 OPS. Last year, he finished with 31 homers and 35 stolen bases. This year, he currently has 21 homers and 24 stolen bases.
There’s no sugarcoating it. The 2021 Trade Deadline deal which sent Crow-Armstrong to Chicago in exchange for Trevor Williams and a half-season of Javier Báez will likely haunt Mets fans for the next decade-plus. PCA is only 24 years old, and he already has the third-most career bWAR of any Mets first-round draft pick since 2003, behind Brandon Nimmo (27.7) and Cubs teammate Michael Conforto (17.4). Well, we’ll always have the memories – including this retrospectively tragic first answer to a question about player comparisons in his introductory press conference after being drafted.
