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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 18 April 2026 7:26 pm The New York Mets, entering Saturday’s matinee as losers of nine in a row, intermittently overcame some of what was stacked against them. The wind was blowing in at Wrigley Field, but Mark Vientos ripped a fly ball so hard that it landed well over the fence in the top of the second inning. That made for a run. They were going up against the defensively excellent Chicago Cubs, yet during the top of the eighth, a series of bounces and bobbles went their way, allowing them to build another run.
What a great way to take on destiny. Except the Mets have become a team destined to lose on a regular basis, as evidenced by the tops of the other seven innings when they scored not at all. Meanwhile, in those pesky inning bottoms, there was Ian Happ matching Vientos’s solo blast in the bottom of the second, and Freddy Peralta stopping short of serving as a stopper in the sixth. Freddy got the first two outs. Then he issued two walks on full counts. Peralta left. The formerly flawless Brooks Raley replaced him. The very first pitch the lefty threw, to pinch-hitter Carson Kelly, got belted beyond the ivy-sprouting barrier.
At that point, Cubs 4 Mets 1. Ultimately, Cubs 4 Mets 2, a tenth consecutive Mets loss. Not the sign of a good team. I think it’s been established that the 2026 Mets are not good. What few breaks they catch, they drop after an instant. If they can score more than one run in an inning, they don’t. If they are poised to prevent an opponent’s rally, they are instead trampled. A good team finds a way to win. By definition, this eliminates the Mets from consideration as a good team.
Does this make them a bad team? Well, bad is the opposite of good. On the other hand, I’ve watched Mets teams that I knew were bad, and this team, while not good, hasn’t quite sunk to the level where I’m ready to label them as awful. I suppose it doesn’t much matter. A record of 7-14 pretty much labels itself. Maybe it’s the Aprilness of it all that’s kept me from deciding they are truly horrendous. When the Mets dive into a lengthy losing streak in other months, they’ve had time to identify themselves as good, bad, or middling (usually bad or en route to bad). These Mets continue to strike me as assorted individuals not close to forming a collective identity. I’m tempted to say they’ve shown no heart, though it’s only April, probably too soon to render such an unkind judgment. I read a quote from “an American League executive” who termed the Mets “a weird collection of high-profile players,” and observed, “I’m not sure there’s much of a soul to that team.”
Heart in question. Soul uncertain. Identity vague. Wins absolutely non-existent. After each loss, Carlos Mendoza and whichever veteran is designated to step in front of the backdrop of dancing logos to answer reporters’ questions acknowledge the season isn’t going according to plan. Then Carlos and the dour veteran du jour reject any notion that the Mets doubt themselves or need a good internal talking-to. There’s eventually a dose of familiar blather about competing and grinding. None of that rock-steadiness that baseball people love to cite as necessary across a long season seems to be getting it done. Maybe somebody needs to admit they are dwelling on their lack on results. Maybe somebody needs to stand up amid an assemblage of 26 introverts and get everybody else’s attention. Maybe, as long as they played a day game in Chicago, they should all avail themselves of the nightlife on Rush Street.
That same AL executive alluded to above inferred from afar, “That has to be an odd clubhouse […] It just doesn’t scream ‘winning team,’ even though objectively it adds up.” In our decades as Mets fans, we’ve periodically seen clusters of players who’ve proven themselves in other places and seasons simply not coalesce in the here and now. We’ve been able to detect the toxicity of those can’t-miss “back of the baseball card” mixes the second we step off the 7 train. I don’t sense that’s the case here. Whatever constitutes leadership, whether vocal or quiet, appears to be absent. Or most everybody has decided in unison to be less effective at what they do than they have been previously.
If you want to deem them a bad baseball team, the Mets have offered no compelling counterargument, save for just wait until Juan Soto returns. The Bill Parcells insistence that you are what your record says you are rarely fails to apply when it joins the group chat. When your record is 0-10 in your last ten, your record leaves little room for interpretation. You don’t need Bill Parcells to tell you that’s dreadful. Ray Handley could have figured that out.
Still, to not accidentally win even one ballgame over this span while not being clearly one of the worst Mets clubs you’ve ever witnessed is, perversely, kind of impressive. Just not good.
by Greg Prince on 17 April 2026 11:29 pm “The Mets are a team bursting with all the desperation, psychosis, pain, chaos, and cruel optimism for a better future that persists though civilization’s sunset. We watch the catastrophe unfold, refusing to fully admit our doom…”
—A.M. Gittlitz, Metropolitans
Today I decided the Mets would win a ballgame. They were playing the Cubs on a Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field, where everything except the ivy appeared summerlike. Back here in New York, I know everything felt summerlike. We’re two months from summer. Why not take premature wonderful weather as an omen?
At Wrigley, a summerlike afternoon has always offered the possibility of The Wind Blowing Out, meaning the hits would accumulate, the homers would fly, and the Mets might win by some absurdly high score. Why not in this game?
Carlos Mendoza and whatever committee that weighs in on the subject had shuffled the lineup. Carson Benge would bat leadoff. Francisco Lindor would bat third. MJ Melendez, our bolt of offensive lightning from the other night in L.A., would remain relied upon. Maybe a computer spit out this batting order. Maybe nine names went into a hat. However it arrived, why couldn’t it work?
It was fun convincing myself the Mets were going to win. I’m glad I tried it, since it appears envisioning a Mets victory is the only way I’m going to see one.
I was feeling good enough in my faith-based delusional state to withstand the four runs Kodai Senga allowed in the bottom of the first, three when Moises Ballesteros homered with two Cubbies on. As if Mendy’s Metsies were on my wavelength, they answered with three in the top of the second. Melendez was in the middle of that rally. So was Marcus Semien. What’s that old saying about hitters you can wake up in the dead of winter and several months later they’ll finally get a base hit? Way to go, Marcus! And who is that coming through with a two-run single, but Tyrone Taylor? Taylor’s still here, despite my usually forgetting him when doing a quick roster head count, but he occasionally drives in runners. His attempt to stretch his single into a double was cut down at second, which was too bad yet not necessarily a serious setback, ’cause it was Wrigley on a breezy Friday afternoon. There’d be plenty more runs.
In the bottom of the second, there were indeed two more, via a Nico Hoerner homer. OK, being down, 6-3, isn’t the ideal next step when we’ve just closed to within 4-3, but this is merely more proof of concept. Man, what a story the Mets are going to write, breaking their eight-game losing streak by winning an old-fashioned North Side barnburner. Take that, Leo Durocher, wherever you are.
The Mets didn’t lack for the hitting to do it. They rapped out 14 hits in the course of the day. In ten different games, spanning 1969 to 2024, the Mets came to Wrigley Field and recorded exactly 14 hits. Their record on those occasions? A pristine 10-0, winning by classic Wrigley finals like 10-8, 10-9, and 9-8. Those kinds of scores were what I was calculating it would take once the Cubs stretched their lead to 7-3 in the fourth. Heckuva comeback gestating. I was willing to be sure of it.
Problem on Friday was the Mets created only four runs from their 14 hits. They hit OK with RISP (4-for-11) and didn’t leave a ton of runners on (7). The four DPs they hit kept those totals respectable, I guess. The bigger issue was Senga not lasting four innings. And the defense committing a couple of errors, first baseman Brett Baty’s with the bases loaded the most glaring. And Sean Manaea’s innings-eating not going down so smooth as the afternoon grew late. The Cubs totaled 12 runs. Giving up 12 runs while scoring four, in any ballpark, doesn’t break a losing streak.
The Mets have now lost nine in a row for the first time since 2004. They’d gone this long without losing so many consecutively that the last time they did it, there was no Blog for Mets Fans Who Like to Read. It’s still early. Teams have been known to turn around 7-13 starts and play viably when actual summer comes. A dismal stretch like this one doesn’t automatically doom the remainder of a season, though I’m not prepared to project that far ahead.
Right now, I’ll settle for one game won eventually. By the Mets, I mean.
by Greg Prince on 16 April 2026 3:13 pm “And it’s one more day up in the canyon,” Adam Duritz observed joylessly some thirty years ago, “and it’s one more night in Hollywood.” In that same chilly Southern California spirit, here’s to no more nights in Chavez Ravine.
The doubly defending world champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, extended their winning ways not once, not twice, but thrice by completing an inevitable three-game sweep over the New York Mets, 8-2, on Wednesday night. Shohei Ohtani pitched without bothering to hit. Like the Dodgers with World Series titles, Shohei Ohtani tends to grab every MVP award in sight. He is so honored because he can pitch and hit (though judging by the impact of his absence, is any player in the National League more valuable than Juan Soto?). Shohei Ohtani pitching might be enough to merit a trophy case expansion. The living legend went six, struck out ten, and allowed no hits, except to the newly recalled MJ Melendez, who can proudly tell anybody who asks that he became the 1,300th Met in franchise history when he started as our, if you’ll excuse the expression, designated hitter. Lefty reliever Josh Walker became our 1,200th Met less than three years ago, though we couldn’t tell you whether he still mentions that to any of his Oriole minor league teammates these days. MJ nicking Ohtani for an earned run with one of his two doubles will make for a less esoteric brag. Shohei came into Wednesday with an ERA of 0.00. Melendez raised it to 0.50. The rest of the Met offense kept it from rising any higher.
Instead of using Ohtani as their DH per usual, the Dodgers deployed their reserve catcher, Dalton Rushing. Rushing might not be the hitter Ohtani is, but we can’t say he was overshadowed at his quasi-position by Melendez. The Dodger DH doubled to set up L.A.’s first runs — which scored on Hyesong Kim’s subsequent two-run homer in the second — and cast off any appearances of a competitive contest when he walloped one of Devin Williams’s less effective deliveries for a grand slam in the eighth. Not a bad night for a backup.
What a bad night for the Mets. That can be said about almost any night in an eight-game losing streak. A little less so when the losing streak reached seven, as Nolan McLean’s excellence versus Yoshinobu Yamamoto almost made the final score (LA 2 NY 1) spiritually immaterial, but you can only silver-line so many clouds. Eight losses in a row will age a season, no matter how relatively young the math says it is.
The Mets were conceivably viable on the scoreboard through seven-and-a-half. Clay Holmes was no Ohtani, but he and his left hamstring were sound enough through five. Tobias Myers got touched for a Teoscar Hernandez homer to start the sixth, but otherwise tamed the champs for a two frames. It wasn’t until the eighth, at 3-1, that things totally fell apart, instigated by Francisco Lindor not charging Hernandez’s leadoff grounder. It became an infield single and the second wha…??? moment of the game committed by a Met named Francisco. Earlier, Francisco Alvarez, on first base, undermined a Met rally by misreading a fly ball that was trapped in left field. Alvy thought it was caught. It wasn’t, but he was — off of first, where he retreated toward despite Carson Benge standing on it after his single. You could almost excuse the blunder, based on Benge’s ball being hard to read; and the third rather than second base ump signaling it fell in; and the heavy night air at Dodger Stadium; and everybody wearing 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson, which has got to be confusing. There’s always an excuse.
In the inning of Alvarez’s infamy, the Marvelous Mr. Melendez, rescued the Mets from total situational futility by doubling home Benge. In the inning of Lindor’s iffy approach to the Hernandez grounder, the floodgates were just begging to open. Williams, presumably preserved to close out Met leads, whatever those are, was likely rusty after not pitching since his club’s previous victory. Of course somebody not properly fielding a ground ball was going to pave the way for the Dodgers to load the bases. Of course the Dodger DH who wasn’t Ohtani would slam grand when granted the opportunity. Of course Austin Warren, up for Joey Gerber, who was up for the since-released Luis Garcia until a blister got the best of Joey with the high leg-kick, would give up a homer as well, this one to Kyle Tucker, who over the winter was reportedly en route to signing with the Mets until he was sidetracked by a boatload of Dodger dollars.
Instead, we pivoted to Bo Bichette, and what a get, we were told. Same for the rest of the transformation that has transformed the Mets from a team that endured three losing streaks of at least seven games between June and September of 2025 to one that has built an eight-game losing streak in April of 2026. Nice transformation, everybody. Perhaps that will be how 2026 gets framed if a turnaround isn’t imminent. It was a year of necessary transformation fror the organization. Everybody had to get comfortable with one another. Better on-field results would have to follow in years to come. Then, give or take a lengthy lockout, we can be reminded that David Stearns is building something sustainable that can’t be measured in terms as grubby as immediate wins and losses. David Stearns was quite a get in his day, you might vaguely recall.
The season’s still young. It feels very old.
by Jason Fry on 15 April 2026 7:53 am Nolan McLean keeps getting better and better — but not even he can escape the Mets.
In just his 12th start as a big leaguer (!!!), McLean was nicked for a first-inning run but looked sparkling after that, making the best team in baseball look downright silly for the rest of a long night at Dodger Stadium. Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy, Teoscar Hernandez … they and their fellow Met tormenters all got undressed by McLean over seven superb innings. McLean — and again, let’s note he’s only made 12 starts as a big leaguer — is channeling peak Jacob deGrom or once-upon-a-time Dwight Gooden, with the first hit against him feeling like a surprise bordering on a betrayal.
Alas, the Mets looked downright silly with bats in their hands for most of the night too. Francisco Lindor, who’d been on the back of a milk carton as a hitter with nary a 2026 RBI to his name, started the night promisingly with a Daniel Murphyesque home run off Yoshinobu Yamamoto. But that was all the Mets would do to support McLean for the evening. A continuation of the team’s baffling, nauseating offensive blackout? Yes. Testament to Yamamoto being every bit as good as McLean? Also yes.
Maybe the Mets should take a page from Yamamoto’s mound mate Ohtani and let McLean be a two-way player again. He swung a bat in anger as a professional not so long ago, after all, and he can’t fare any worse as a hitter than the pacifist band sent out on his behalf.
I’m not entirely kidding. Hell, I’m not kidding at all. Remember the night Noah Syndergaard beat the Dodgers and hit two home runs? I miss stuff like that. (Good recap title too!)
With McLean not allowed to ride to his own rescue, the game wound up as a bullpen affair, and I waited grimly for the fatal mistake to come, which it did in the form of a little Kyle Tucker ducksnort against Brooks Raley in the eighth. The Mets were at least spared a reunion with old friend Edwin Diaz, whose velocity hasn’t been to the Dodgers’ liking; it didn’t matter, as Alex Vesia needed only one extra pitch to strike out the side in the ninth and seal a Dodger victory.
A Dodger victory, a seventh straight Met loss. If the Mets quietly disbanded rather than return to New York, would anyone notice? Would we not on some level be relieved?
by Jason Fry on 14 April 2026 8:13 am Not having grown up a Yankees fan, I always thought that as a broadcaster, well, Phil Rizzuto sure was a Yankee legend.
But Rizzuto had a bit of scorekeeping shorthand that I always loved for its combination of honesty and puckishness: WW, which stood for “Wasn’t Watching.”
I thought of the Scooter in the bottom of the sixth inning, as the Mets continued to do nothing with bats in their hands and the Dodgers kept the sportscar thrumming along in the left lane, several car lengths ahead of their theoretical pursuers.
It was late, I was tired, and the two-thirds of the ballgame I’d watched hadn’t exactly intensified my love for the 2026 Mets. What could the last third bring? An epic comeback that everyone would be talking about come Tuesday? Oh ha ha ha. Another look at the latest recidivist Met, Tommy Pham? I was familiar with his work. The possibility that Joey Gerber might become the 1,299th Met in the Holy Books? OK, actually I did kind of want to see that (and it came to pass), but that was more about my weirdo collector mindset than anything else.
So I decided to add a notation to my own mental scorebook, a variant of Rizzuto’s: WS. You can probably guess what that stands for.
I checked the scores as soon as morning came and my eyes opened, and let’s just say I wasn’t surprised. I’d made my decision, and looking back on it I RN.
by Greg Prince on 13 April 2026 2:57 pm A button at the end of one of my favorite Mad Men episodes has been circulating through my head ever since Opening Day. Don has come home to discover young Sally is still freaked out by the appearance of her new little brother Gene. Dad has to sell daughter on the notion that this infant is not the ghostly reincarnation of the recently deceased Grandpa Gene (despite having the same name and sleeping in what had been the late Gene’s room), so he makes the following pitch right before the end credits roll:
“He’s only a baby. We don’t know who he is yet, or who he’s going to be. And that is a wonderful thing.”
The Mets represented the spirit of that newborn as of March 26, more than they usually do when baseball gets going. All seasons start 0-0, clean slate, fresh outlook, the whole bit. But the 2026 Mets loomed as particularly mysterious given that so many of those who composed and defined the Mets of not just 2025 but the years directly prior had been replaced in a phalanx of key roles by an influx of near-total strangers. We may have been acquainted with individuals’ reputations from a distance, but distance is wide when you focus mostly on a single team summer after summer. Of course we knew the new Mets’ names. We might have known their stats and a few other things about them. We had never lived with them before. We had never leaned on them before. We had never asked them to be, in concert with select holdovers, the Mets.
We are sixteen games into the 2026 season. We still can’t say we know who this team — the strangers, the holdovers, the end product — is yet or what it’s going to be. How much of a wonderful thing that is depends on your tolerance for finding out.
Did you know the Mets once held the top spot in their division all by themselves? Not last June, not forty years ago. Practically just the other day. After this year’s first eleven games, an admittedly small sample size but one just large enough to enable the formation of impressions if so inclined, the 7-4 Mets sat alone in first place in the NL East. Five games later, the 7-9 Mets sit alone in last place in the NL East. The sample size has hardly grown. Nascent 2026 impressions have curdled.
The Mets have lost five in a row, including the three they just played versus the Nowheresville Athletics, getting shut out in the Citi series finale Sunday, 1-0. A sweet sliding catch from Carson Benge kept the score from becoming 3-0. Nothing any Met did with a bat came close to preventing a loss from becoming a loss. Losing five in a row in April grants a fan early access to frustration, aggravation, disgust, what have you. It’s never too early to be frustrated, aggravated, or disgusted by any Met sample size, Sotoless or otherwise. It’s almost certainly too early to determine that those will be your overriding emotions during the summer to come. They could be. Or they could very well not be.
We don’t know who this team is yet. That’s not letting them off the hook for a hollow baseball weekend. If anything, the lack of familiarity is what makes this latest on-field dip more disconcerting. When the Mets of the previous five seasons endured losing stretches, we could default to denial. From 2021 through 2025, intimate as we were with our core and unless thoroughly disabused of our innate optimism by overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we could convince ourselves in the first month of a season that “this team” is too good to drop five in a row; or too good to get swept by the A’s at home; or too good to go into a teamwide slump.
This team? The 2026 Mets? Damned if I know if they’re too good to have endured the indignities of the defeats they were handed by the Diamondbacks and Athletics. Damned if I knew if the Mets were a worthy first-place first team after eleven games, but I was willing to ride the high, especially after they frustrated, aggravated, and disgusted us in the days immediately preceding their upward blip.
The average US life expectancy is 79 years old. For convenience sake, let’s give the average American an extra year and call it 80. Thus, somebody in this country stands an average chance of living until the age of 80. Of course we don’t know what this person is or will be when born. How about by the time that person has lived eight years? You might see that kid and conclude great things are on the child’s horizon. You might gather the sense that this kid is, in one way or another, bad news. Or you might extend the grace of time to kids of that age. They’ve got their whole life in front of them. Let them be who they’re gonna be. Eight years amount to 10% of an average lifetime, with 90% very much in the to-be-determined column.
With sixteen games of a slated 162 in the books, the 2026 Mets have played approximately 10 percent of their schedule, making them the equivalent of an eight-year-old kid if we go by the actuarial tables. They are not, however, an eight-year-old kid in isolation. How the rest of their life, the next 72 years/146 games go will depend on how they interact with a whole lot of other kids/teams who are approximately 10% through their lifetimes, and how those other parties interact with each other. A glance at the National League indicates the fourteen teams who aren’t the Dodgers are bunched up within four games of one other. We would not be wrong to estimate that we don’t who anybody outside of L.A. — where the Mets have landed to play next — is or what they are going to be. Teams having their problems will solve some things. Teams on a hot streak will cool down. Teams lacking an identity will forge one. In the case of the Mets, hopefully a good one.
In the meantime, Craig Kimbrel has supplanted the regularly replaceable Dicky Lovelady, Joey Gerber has bumped Luis Garcia, and Recidivizing Tommy Pham is coming in, which means Ronny Mauricio is going down. Groping at the personnel margins figures to do only so much, but everything has that conditional feel to it. Juan Soto’s calf figures to heal. Jorge Polanco’s bursitis may flare up with less frequency. Freddy Peralta, whose usual grinding pitch count didn’t stop him from going six on Sunday, might begin to last a little longer. Luis Robert, Jr., who rested as a general precaution against overuse Sunday, might require fewer off days. Batting averages wallowing south of .200 might find a northbound exit. The 2026 Mets season will get a little older. How much life we can expect out of it…and how much expectation we can build for this team…that’s what the season’s for.
A slow start. A blah interlude. A sense that we have no idea what’s going on with this team we root for but will continue to dwell on in spite of our instincts to think about something else. Believe me, somewhere in this business, this has happened before.
On Monday night, April 20 (when the Mets are idle), I will be joining A.M. Gittlitz in conversation at the Barnes & Noble in Carle Place at the Country Glen Center, where Old Country Road meets Glen Cove Road, a few blocks west of Roosevelt Field. We will be discussing Mr. Gittlitz’s new New York Times bestseller, Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People’s Team, a pre-publication excerpt of which we ran here. The program begins at 6:30 PM. If you’re on Long Island or anywhere in the Metropolitan(s) Area, I hope you’ll drop by.
by Jason Fry on 11 April 2026 11:00 pm A hazard of the recapping trade is you spend the game field-testing narratives in your head while the bedrock story is still unfolding, trying on summations variously grand, tragic or farcical.
After Kodai Senga‘s disconsolate departure, this was my first draft for this entire recap, channeling Dean Wormer’s caustic advice to Flounder in Animal House:
Bad at pitching, bad at defense and bad at hitting is no way to go through life, son.
And that would have sufficed. Senga had pitched horribly; the Mets’ defense had done him no favors, with yet another mental mistake from Francisco Lindor more worrying than the physical gaffes; and the hitting had remained largely somnambulant. Plus Jeff McNeil continued to terrorize his old mates, with auxiliary getting even from once-upon-a-time Brooklyn Cyclone Carlos Cortes.
But after Senga departed the Mets seemed to rouse themselves. They got competent relief, they chipped away at the Athletics’ lead with home runs, which still counted even if they went over fences by inches or were actually helped over by West Sacramento defenders, and no Met wearing a glove stepped on a landmine or managed to garrote himself with his own sanitary socks, which counted as progress.
The Mets, in fact, drew within 7-6 with six outs left to play with, and you could feel Citi Field stirring, thinking there might actually be a reward for having endured the last few days of lousiness. I didn’t have a new narrative ready to trot out — the Mets’ recent play has made me more than a little wary of assumptions — but I was superstitious enough to stick to what I’d been doing, which was reading a novel on my couch and pretending not to watch the game.
And then, well, it turned out Luke Weaver decided to have some of whatever Senga had been having. Tyler Soderstrom had hit his second home run of the day, just like that the Mets were down five, and the remainder of the accounting was best left to masochists.
After the game, I watched Carlos Mendoza be oddly candid by Carlos Mendoza standards when asked about Lindor’s recent run of inattention: “It’s weird … it’s hard to explain.”
It is. Is it lingering effects from hamate surgery? Is it discombobulation at lining up with a new double-play partner? Is it something personal that shouldn’t be our business … except it’s showing up on the field, so it kinda is?
I’m sure wondering about that will be a cottage industry until Lindor looks a lot more like Lindor, which is only fair. As for what the Mets look like, well, last year taught me not to assume an ill-shaped team will magically take on a more pleasing form. And Saturday’s game taught me not to trust any evolving narrative.
In the end, I settled for this on Bluesky: a bit plaintive, a bit angry, more than a bit despairing. At least for now, I think it sums things up all too well:
by Greg Prince on 11 April 2026 12:57 pm We once had a Squirrel, or should I say, last night he had us.
I’ll cop to a touch of Jeff McNeil nostalgia after our longtime second baseman/first-rate handyman returned to Citi Field from the wilds of West Sacramento to take a bite out of his former workplace associates on Friday, getting hot at the plate and looking spry in the field. The Athletics from technically nowhere defeated the Mets who are currently going nowhere, 4-0. The day before, the same nomadic A’s dropped a shutout on the Yankees in the Bronx, making me wonder when was the last a time a team came into a town and blanked different teams on consecutive days.
Pondering such trivia was preferable to wondering when the Mets are going to start hitting again (hopefully before Juan Soto’s calf heals), when Clay Holmes’s tight left hamstring might loosen up (soon, believes the dependable righty who had to exit his latest effective start early), and when the Mets in general will play baseball with their heads free from their asses (ah, the eternal question). I didn’t have to wonder whether McNeil was going to break out of a nagging helmet-slamming slump as one tended to do when The Squirrel was our Squirrel. Whatever Jeff was or wasn’t hitting prior to Friday was no longer something we were compelled to track. Besides, we have known since the dawn of time — or at least the d’Parture of d’Arnaud — that the true Old Friend™ cure-all consists of facing the Mets and swinging away.
It’s April, so I can’t say I worked up instant Baderesque enmity for an ex-Met doing us in. Jeff stinging the ball for a pair of hits and an RBI earned a non-grudging atta Squirrel outta me. His teammates, even the one named Shea, were a different story, but it wasn’t ours to write for a night. This was Jeff McNeil’s homecoming. Friendly reporters lobbing softballs. Fraternization with those he loved playing alongside and those he likely tolerated (and vice-versa). A sentimental Citi Vision video that drew a smile and maybe a hint of a tear in the visitors’ dugout. A warm hand from a chilled crowd that didn’t forget a two-time All-Star and previous champion of batting.
The Mets without McNeil and without so many of his fellow high-profile alums were supposed to coalesce into something more sustainable than they revealed themselves in 2025. Maybe they still will. It’s April. They’re .500. Their best hitter is out for at least a couple more weeks. Their most consistent veteran starting pitcher is, for the moment, issuing provisional assurances rather than innings. Their bullpen is adding a new component, grand old closer Craig Kimbrel, about to commence his seventeenth major league campaign, joining his tenth major league club to do it. “We’ll see what he has left” doesn’t necessarily mesh with the stature of a career that has yielded 440 saves, fifth-most ever. But we’ll see what he has left.
McNeil had a good night. Good for him. On Twitter/X, I read Pete Alonso is having as tough a time driving in runs as Francisco Lindor. Not our problem anymore, I reminded myself, but nice of Pete to descend into a sympathy funk on our behalf. Hours after the Mets went down, I stayed up for the Dodgers and Texas taking it to the limit in Los Angeles. L.A. was ahead, but Edwin Diaz, himself 37th on the all-time saves list, was in the process of blowing the lead. Up stepped Brandon Nimmo with the tying run on base. Even the Dodger booth recognized the transcontinental storyline in the works, speculating whether anybody was still up in Flushing to take in Ex-Met vs. Ex-Met. I was close enough to Queens to qualify.
Brandon took a ball. The Ranger runner on first stole second. Dave Roberts ordered Nimmo walked intentionally. So much for East Coast drama unfolding in the Pacific Time Zone. Edwin completed blowing the lead, but the Dodgers are the Dodgers. Max Muncy came up in the bottom of the ninth to sock his third home run of the night to pull it out for the home team. They said it was Muncy’s second career three-homer game. Anecdotally, I’d guess every Dodger game I’ve ever watched has encompassed Max Muncy or some Dodger like him belting three homers, though hopefully not on the Mets’ upcoming road trip.
I’d love to tell you I felt as bad for Diaz as I’d felt good for McNeil, but no. I was more like poor you, go count your money while you get your ring finger sized, an uncharitable outburst of resentment probably touched off from having heard the Dodger Stadium A/V squad co-opt “Narco” for its own nefarious purposes. Nimmo looked happy — happier than Marcus Semien usually does, maybe not as happy as Jeff McNeil was to be part of a victory over the team that told him to go gather his nuts somewhere else.
What the hell, somebody we know oughta be enjoying himself.
by Jason Fry on 10 April 2026 12:16 pm April! Baseball’s back! Hope is dewy and seemingly inexhaustible! The calendar makes sense again!
All true, and thank goodness for that. But April isn’t just opportunity — it’s also necessity. Including relearning some hard baseball lessons.
On Thursday night the Mets took a 1-0 lead to the seventh behind Nolan McLean. That lone skinny run came courtesy of a first-inning bomb off Eduardo Rodriguez (McLean’s WBC mound opponent) by Luis Robert Jr. Would it actually be enough of a margin to support McLean and hold off the Diamondbacks?
Well … yes, until it wasn’t.
McLean might have been the best I’ve seen him, with his sweeper an expression of pure cruelty toward hitters. The Diamondbacks ran out of challenges, basically because they couldn’t believe what McLean’s pitches were doing. I wouldn’t be stunned to hear former Met James McCann woke up in a cold sweat reliving one or both of the breaking pitches that ended his two ABs, and McLean’s three-pitch dismissal of Ildemaro Vargas to end the sixth was museum-worthy.
Alas, it’s April. McLean came out for the seventh a little less crisp than he’d been; a walk and a single brought him to 100 pitches and sent him from the mound with one out, the tying run on second and the fall-behind run on first. (I know, I know: Jerry Koosman threw 5,312 pitches in a 972-inning no-decision while also storming an enemy-held beach during a lightning storm. Tell the guy in the row ahead of you next game.)
That was one problem; another was that Rodriguez had been very nearly as good, dotting pitches at the bottom of the strike zone and keeping the Mets looking as befuddled as their Arizona counterparts. (Though better attired: When I’m dictator, there will be an immediate ban on the use of gradients in athletic uniforms. Seriously, it would make everything so much less awful.)
In came Luke Weaver, mostly reliable so far, and out went the air from the balloon. Weaver didn’t pitch that badly, to my eyes: The Diamondbacks squared up some pitches on the edges of the strike zone, which brings us to one of those hard baseball lessons to be relearned, namely that the other guys are trying too. Believe it or not, every loss isn’t the product of profound character flaws in the guys we root for … just most of them.
The Mets were also undone by their defense, which I figured was going to happen one of these nights. A better right fielder might have caught Gabriel Moreno‘s drive, the one that wound up over Brett Baty‘s head, became a double, and tied the game. Heck, another month or two might turn Baty himself into that better right fielder. But this isn’t that month.
The same goes for the Alek Thomas roller to first that followed the double: Mark Vientos snatched it off the ground but shot-putted the throw, with Luis Torrens‘ spear, whirl and tag too late to stop the Diamondbacks from taking the lead. Vientos has been better than I’d feared at first, which isn’t to say he’s been good; at least he’s mostly outhit his defense so far. But as with Baty’s progression, the perspective wasn’t much comfort last night.
The Mets were behind and wound up further behind after Luis Garcia got treated like a pinata, making you wonder if the Luis Garcia Era is nearing its end, as he isn’t doing anything that the much-diminished Sean Manaea couldn’t do. (I like Sean Manaea; it’s painful to type that.)
The game finally came to a merciful conclusion, with Weaver admirably stoic in answering postgame questions that were basically variations of, “Is it painful to know that your failures let down your teammates, the children of the tri-state area, and our brave astronauts out there circling the moon?” Weaver’s stood in a nearby clubhouse enduring this delightful New York ritual, so at least it can’t have come as a shock to him.
Nor should any of what happened come as a shock to us, unpalatable outcome though it was. Six-plus innings of good work not enough to lock down a win? Bad luck and lousy pitching enough to see one slip away? The ball finds guys still learning new positions? Things go wrong when you put exactly one good swing on a ball all night? The other guys are trying too?
Hard baseball lessons. Here again, as we should have known they would be.
by Greg Prince on 9 April 2026 12:57 pm It would be kind of interesting to note Wednesday’s Mets-Diamondbacks game started three hours earlier than originally slated due to frigid conditions at Citi Field, but that happened the day before, so…no, not that interesting nor noteworthy.
It would be kind of interesting to note Wednesday’s Mets-Diamondbacks game got all nine tops of innings pitched by two ostensible starters, David Peterson, who was rocked, and Sean Manaea, who didn’t have great luck, but Manaea backed up Peterson similarly last week in San Francisco, and the game was lost then by the same score as it was lost this time, 7-2, so…no, also not that interesting nor noteworthy.
Did anything of interest or worth noting happen as the Mets went down to a dud of a pre-dusk defeat? Well, Mark Vientos caught a foul pop fly. And he did it after having dropped a foul pop fly a few pitches earlier, which had caused the crowd to audibly groan. And, when he did make a catch, he responded to the crowd’s less-than-sincere cheer by raising his arms to urge them on in their sarcastic appreciation. Because he was wearing one of those winter cowls to keep warm, I couldn’t make out the entirety of his facial expression when the cameras zoomed in, but I’m pretty sure he looked more miffed than amused, though our announcers on both radio and television hailed him for good-naturedly engaging the shivering fans on their own grumbly terms.
 “You try to catch every ball in this weather!” That was a little interesting, I guess, but what I really noted was Vientos was playing first base. In 2026 among Mets, he hasn’t been alone in being able to say that.
The Mets are through a dozen games thus far. They have started four different first basemen at least twice. Mark leads the pack with six starts. Jorge Polanco, Brett Baty, and Jared Young have each notched a pair. This might strike an attentive observer as an unremarkable teamwide tally if we had not just come through seven seasons when a Mets fan rarely had to wonder who’s on first.
Pete Alonso was the answer to that Costelloan inquiry almost without variation, especially these past couple of years. The Polar Age was singular for its power, but let’s not forget the constant presence in the field. In 2025, Pete started 160 games at first; in 2024, the Bear prowled about the bag 161 times from first pitch forward. The National League’s implementation of the DH (boo) allowed him whatever slight breather he needed. You had to think a lot about whether Alonso would sign to stick around, but as long as he was here, you eventually stopped thinking about who was on first.
Even before his Iron Bear phase, when our erstwhile #LFGMer appeared in the final 416 games that he was a Met, it was a matter of Alonso and cameos at first. Dom Smith had been an intermittent option. Mark Canha was invited in from the outfield now and then. James McCann received five starts in 2021. J.D. Davis, who never quite nailed down assignments in left or at third, got two starts at first in 2022. But these amounted to special guest appearances. Generally speaking, Pete would not be budged from his natural habitat until he was permitted to move on to Birdland.
So when was the last time we had this much first-base variation to start a season? In terms of starting four different first basemen in the first six games, or four different first basemen starting twice in the first eight games?
Never.
Never before, prior to the current campaign, had the Mets shuffled so many starting first basemen with the ink not yet dry on the proverbial pocket schedules. Vientos, foul pop unpredictability on a breezy afternoon notwithstanding, may yet bring some stability to the position, having taken the four most recent starts. Good news, presumably, for neophyte third baseman Bo Bichette, who might enjoy knowing who he’s throwing to on a daily basis from his totally new position.
You have to go back to 1963 to find the Mets starting four different first basemen even once apiece before playing double-digit games. The first-sackers after nine contests that April were Tim Harkness, Marv Throneberry, Gil Hodges, and Ed Kranepool. That’s three extremely different franchise legends plus the author of possibly the most dramatic walkoff home run the Polo Grounds ever saw after Jackie Robinson stood watch to make certain Bobby Thomson touched every base. The year before Tim went deep to quash the Cubs with a two-out, come-from-behind, fourteenth-inning grand slam (6/26/63, you could look it up), when Casey Stengel was inclined to try anything and anybody, the Ol’ Perfesser tried only three different first basemen — Hodges, Jim Marshall, and Ed Bouchee — by Original Game Seven. Marvelous Marv didn’t land within Stengel’s purview until Game 22 of 1962, at which tie Harkness was still a Dodger, and young Edward Emil was still in high school.
In only nine other seasons was there early churn comparable to 2026’s at the corner nobody ever describes as hot, especially in weather like Flushing’s been seeing of late.
1968: Steady Eddie, Art Shamsky, and Greg Goossen had all logged starts at first by Game Twelve.
1970: Sham, Krane, and Donn Clendenon had each taken a turn by Game Ten.
1975: Kranepool’s first base companions through ten games were John Milner and Joe Torre.
1977: Besides Ed (who had to wonder what he had to do to become an everyday first baseman after all these years), there were Torre and Dave Kingman in the books by Game Eleven.
2002: Newly acquired slugger Mo Vaughn was set to take over at first, but after a year of inactivity, his full-time status got a little partial quickly. After four starts, he yielded to John Valentin for a couple of games. Then Valentin gave way to Mark Johnson for four games. By Game Thirteen, the fourth first base starter of the year materialized. It was Joe McEwing, who played just about everywhere, anyway. Vaughn eventually resumed regular starting duties, totaling 131 starts at first by horrible year’s end.
2003: Mo was still on his feet when the season started, yet Jay Bell and Tony Clark also got starts at first before this also horrible year was six games old.
2004: Jason Phillips, usually a catcher, received the first five starts, before Mike Piazza, usually a catcher, received the sixth. As if determined to extend a trend, Art Howe started at first in the season’s seventh game former catcher Todd Zeile.
2010: Jerry Manuel’s final Mets squad shifted between Recidivist Mike Jacobs and the senior Fernando Tatis for the first eleven games, tried Long Island’s Own Frank Catalanotto in Game Twelve, then called up Ike Davis to start Game Thirteen. Ike basically owned the position from then clear to Closing Day, save for periodic dashes of minor league home run king Mike Hessman.
2014: This was the last time prior to 2026 the Mets started as many as three different first basemen while still chilling inside the shadows of a season’s own end zone. Terry Collins went with Ike in the first game, Josh Satin in the second, and Lucas Duda in the third. At that pace, we’d be listing 162 starting first baseman, but you know how it is with paces set at the beginning of the year. Duda emerged as the everyday starter after a couple more weeks. As the year progressed, only Eric Campbell jumped into the soup, and then for only five starts.
When occupation of a position that belonged almost exclusively to one player becomes impermanent, we are jarred enough to muse, “Say, when was the last time…?” and avail ourselves heavily of Baseball-Reference. But these things usually have a way of working themselves out. Maybe Polanco’s Achilles is pronounced A-OK soon, and he’s back playing the position he trained for all Spring. Maybe Baty makes himself indispensable and anchors first because you just can’t take his bat and glove out of the lineup. Maybe Young reveals himself a long-term asset of the first order. Maybe the winds die down and Vientos gets truly comfortable. Or maybe the trade winds kick up and we swap some modern incarnation of Neil Allen or Robert Person for a latter-day Keith Hernandez or John Olerud, and we revel in the production of a first baseman we didn’t see coming.
Anything can happen and often does. That’s never uninteresting or not noteworthy.
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