What can you even write for recaps nowadays? After a strong early May where the Mets legitimately got themselves back into the conversation, they immediately said that was enough of that and lost five in a row, and six of their last seven, to bring themselves down to a lowly 22-33.
The game was whatever. David Peterson, sans opener, was bad, surrendering 11 hits, three walks, and six runs. The bullpen was good, with The Most Expensive Mop-Up Guy In MLB History(™) Sean Manaea throwing three innings
of one run ball, striking out six. Carlos Mendoza said postgame that its possible he will switch Manaea and Peterson in the rotation, which does make sense, even if I was being rather glib a sentence ago. A.J. Minter came back from a torn lat that sidelined him for a year and played well, which is lovely to see. Juan Soto hit a two run home run, and the Mets had a whopping four hits outside of that.
Games, losing streaks, seasons like this, drive me to existentialism. Will the Mets ever be good again? Will Juan Soto play meaningful baseball in Queens while he is here? Will I be one of those grandpas you saw after the Cubs won in 2016, saying they’ve been waiting 90 years for this? As one of the rare Lakers-Mets fans in existence (it’s a really funny story that involves my dad trolling his high school best friend about the Lakers being better than the Knicks back in the 1970’s despite not watching basketball at the time, and working himself into a shoot, brother, accidentally giving himself a lifelong Lakers fandom he passed onto me), will Soto and Luka Dončić get their primes wasted by nonsensically bad organizations? Frankly, all of these thoughts are more compelling than 99% of the games the Mets played this season, because everyone is either hurt, bad, or a rookie (or Juan Soto).
Of course, while things seem terribly hopeless at 10:49 pm, the exact time I am typing this sentence, things change on a dime in baseball. The 2024 Mets were once 22-33, and the Jorge Lopez glove throwing game happened on May 30th of that year. If you told a Mets fan at that time that they would go to the NLCS your sanity would have been called into question, and rightfully so. While that is not a recipe for success, its an example of how things can change. The 2025 Atlanta Braves were a disaster, and they did not do much this offseason, and look like the Atlanta Braves again in 2026. Because sometimes, stuff happens.
The recaps to the these games are dull, its true. A.J. Ewing looks like a future building block, Carson Benge has really turned it around after an absolutely horrific April, and, like I said a few times, Juan Soto is Juan Soto. However, with the amount of injuries on the offensive side of the ball, they just do not have the juice right now. The pitching has largely been fine, outside of the recent McLean blowups and the Peterson/Senga/Manaea spots. They lose in alarmingly similar ways almost daily: they fall behind early, Soto does something cool, Ewing and Benge get on base, and nothing else happens.
Maybe they’ll go on a run, maybe they won’t, but the beauty of baseball is it’s always on tomorrow. The Mets will look to get back into it starting then.
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Big Mets winner: Luis Torrens, 5% WPA
Big Mets loser: David Peterson, -28% WPA
Mets pitchers: -27% WPA
Mets hitters: -23% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Juan Soto’s two run home run in the sixth, +4.1% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Eugenio Suarez’s two run double in the first, -19.1% WPA
