Shortly after Steve Cohen bought the franchise, he shared his desire to turn the Mets (43-60) into an east coast version of the Dodgers (65-38). Simply put, that hasn’t happened yet, as the Mets have spent quite a bit of money on their major league payroll but haven’t been consistent when it comes to making the playoffs and have yet to win the National League East during Cohen’s tenure.
As per usual, the Dodgers are having a great season and considered one of the favorites to win the World Series.
If they were to accomplish that feat, it’d make them back-to-back-to-back World Series winners, a rarity in Major League Baseball. And they’re doing just about everything well, as they’re third in baseball in scoring with 5.19 runs per game and the best team in baseball at run prevention with just 3.67 runs allowed per game.
Among Dodgers hitters with at least 100 plate appearances this year, Tommy Edman—who has exactly 100 plate appearances—leads the team with a 171 wRC+ that’s driven by his staggering .360 batting average and .439 batting average on balls in play. Among qualified hitters, Shohei Ohtani has been their best, though his 146 wRC+ is relatively pedestrian by his absurd standards. He’s recently taken a break from pitching, and whether or not he returns to his two-way role moving forward remains to be seen.
After Ohtani, Max Muncy and Freddie Freeman are in the 130s with their wRC+, and Dalton Rushing and Andy Pages are both comfortably above league average at the plate. Miguel Rojas and Will Smith are hovering just above league average, too. And all of those hitters are doing plenty to make up for the fact that Mookie Betts and Kyle Tucker each have a 94 wRC+, while Teoscar Hernández has a 92 wRC+.
The Dodgers’ bullpen is the seventh-best in baseball this year with a 3.77 ERA. Their rotation ranks second with a 3.42 ERA. No team is flawless, but it’s a lot harder to find them when you’re looking at the Dodgers.
As for the Mets, they’re coming off a 3-3 road trip against the Phillies and Brewers, a perfectly cromulent outcome for a team that’s having one of its most disappointing seasons in franchise history. When it comes to run prevention, the Mets are below league average with 4.69 runs allowed per game. And their lineup has been the fourth-worst in baseball with 4.07 runs scored per game.
Whether or not Juan Soto is fully healthy is something we’ll find out during this series. The Mets gave him the day off in their series finale in Milwaukee on Wednesday ahead of their off day yesterday, refusing to even pinch hit him in a couple of late and close spots where he might’ve swung the game in the Mets’ favor.
Anything better than getting swept this weekend would be a relatively welcome outcome here. But if you’re feeling optimistic, hey, maybe the Mets will sweep the Dodgers. And hopefully it won’t be too much longer before the franchise looks like the perennial contender that Steve Cohen set out to turn it into.
Friday, July 24: Sean Manaea vs. Roki Sasaki, 7:10 PM EDT on WPIX
Manaea (2026): 79.2 IP, 81 K, 26 BB, 12 HR, 4.74 ERA, 4.35 FIP, 116 ERA-
Considering how his season started, it’s impressive that Manaea’s are this decent. His most recent start, during which he faced the Phillies, wasn’t so good, but he has a 4.14 ERA since the beginning of June. That’s still disappointing given the contract he signed with the Mets ahead of the 2025 season, but if the Mets’ lineup were better, the team would probably be winning a decent chunk of his starts while he’s looking like a serviceable starting pitcher.
Sasaki (2026): 86.2 IP, 85 K, 34 BB, 19 HR, 4.98 ERA, 5.34 FIP, 118 ERA-
While it often feels like the Dodgers can do no wrong, the 24-year-old Sasaki struggled in limited work in 2025 after coming over from Japan and has either been slightly worse or slightly better than that this year, depending on whether you prefer ERA or FIP—or another ERA estimator.
Saturday, July 25: Nolan McLean vs. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 7:15 PM EDT on FOX
McLean (2026): 113.1 IP, 135 K, 41 BB, 10 HR, 3.34 ERA, 3.30 FIP, 81 ERA-
It would’ve been great to see McLean in the Cy Young mix in the National League this year, but the fact that he isn’t really has just as much to do with how great some of the starting pitchers in the league have been as it does with McLean himself. After some struggles earlier in the season inflated his ERA, he’s recovered very nicely, as he has a 2.11 ERA in eight starts since the beginning of June. He’ll face the Dodgers’ best pitcher of this series, but he is clearly the Mets’ ace at the moment.
Yamamoto (2026): 119.2 IP, 113 K, 25 BB, 13 HR, 2.78 ERA, 3.33 FIP, 66 ERA-
While his peripherals look very similar to McLean’s, Yamamoto is sporting an ERA that’s a half-run better. He’s also not really in the Cy Young race at the moment, but he is in the top ten in ERA among qualified starting pitchers in the National League. It’d take slip-ups by Jacob Misiorowski and Chris Sale for anyone else to really have a shot, but if those two do falter, Yamamoto could work his way up into that mix. Now in his third season in Major League Baseball, the 27-year-old has really been a boon to a Dodgers team that was already very good before his arrival.
Sunday, July 26: Freddy Peralta vs. Emmet Sheehan, 1:40 PM EDT on SNY
Peralta (2026): 109.2 IP, 110 K, 46 BB, 17 HR, 5.01 ERA, 4.51 FIP, 122 ERA-
Even if you came into the season without the expectation that Peralta would be the ace the Mets made him out to be when they traded for him, you’d be pretty disappointed in what he’s done in his time in Queens. Over his last six starts—an arbitrary selection of endpoints, but still—he has an 8.44 ERA. Over the last three of those starts, it’s been a 6.28 ERA. Ideally he’ll make a couple of better starts before the trade deadline, but facing the Dodgers this weekend obviously doesn’t make that easy.
Sheehan (2026): 87.2 IP, 99 K, 27 BB, 17 HR, 5.13 ERA, 4.50 FIP, 122 ERA-
Coming off an excellent 2025 season that saw him throw 73.1 innings for the Dodgers and finish with a 2.82 ERA and a 2.93 FIP, Sheehan was a pitcher to watch coming into the 2026 season. The 26-year-old hasn’t lived up to those lofty expectations, though, and like Peralta, he’s struggled recently. Over his last six starts, Sheehan has a 6.04 ERA.
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