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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 13 May 2026 1:23 am On my position player callup anticipation scale that ranges from Who? to Strawberry, I’d estimate A.J. Ewing ranked somewhere north of Nick Evans, somewhere south of Wilmer Flores. I’d heard of A.J. Ewing. I knew he was valued by those who pay attention to every prospect. I hadn’t banged any drums on his behalf, not even theoretically. I was too depressed by what had been going wrong in New York to think deeply about who was doing what in Syracuse. Yet when the word went forth that A.J. Ewing was en route to the majors, I was excited like I’d been excited to get a look at Gregg Jefferies.
Here’s what stoked my enthusiasm for A.J. Ewing directly in advance of his big league debut on Tuesday: he wasn’t Andy Ibañez, and he wasn’t another Andy Ibañez. No shade intended toward the journeyman OF-3B DFA’d to create space for the first Met born in 2004, a mere six months before this blog came into existence. Somebody had to go. Something had to change.
The appeal of the decision to elevate a quintessential fast riser instead of claiming from waivers a proverbial Quincy Quadruplé was simple. We’d get to witness a fresh face at the outset of his baseball journey, not the next retread who plops his voluminously stickered bags down in the clubhouse for two weeks before moving on in favor of a doppelgänger destined to act out the same role. Enough with the Andy Ibañez Mets.
Let’s Go A.J. Ewing Mets.
The A.J. Ewing Mets didn’t have to beat the Tigers on Tuesday night at Citi Field for refresh to be successfully hit on this sullen season, though they did, handily. The Tigers were frighteningly Metsian in their approach to basically everything in the 10-2 defeat they were dealt. Do you realize the implications of this victory? We’re now 16-25, whereas entering Tuesday we were 15-25. The won-lost column remains wallpaper for now.
 What’s not to approve? The standings will have to slouch in the corner until they develop proper posture. Win or lose, Ewing is the show. Ewing and Carson Benge and whoever they rub off on. The team looked alive in Ewing’s debut. I daresay they were alive. Nobody once had to hold a mirror under the Mets’ nose to determine if there was breathing. The signs of life were as reassuring as Ewing was sensational. The new No. 9 in town walked three times; tripled; stole a base; drove in two runs; scored two runs; ran like the wind off Flushing Bay; and referred in his postgame interview to a feeling that was “undescribable”. We’ll take an innate ability to read the strike zone over perfect grammar every time.
Exactly one game of the A.J. Ewing Era has been completed. Benge commenced his epoch in a similar fashion on Opening Day, pretty much the last time the Mets emitted élan rather than ennui. Then he sank into a big ol’ slump. He’s since emerged. He’s fun to watch. Ewing, pending whatever wall a 21-year-old with limited Triple-A experience might hit once the adrenaline levels off, profiles as fun to watch. A.J. in center, Carson in right. That’s 22.2% of the lineup not making a fan brace for boredom. Other Mets are bound to pick up their pace. They can’t drop it much further.
Ten runs will make every starting pitcher an ace, including the stray openers. Hopefully, Freddy Peralta discovers the seventh inning at some point, but on a night like this one, you’ll accept the six he gritted his way through over 100 pitches. Extra credit is awarded Freddy’s way for backing up third and throwing out a rumbling Colt Keith at the plate at a juncture of the game when the Mets threatened to look as much like the Tigers were already looking like the Mets. Francisco Alvarez made a forceful tag, a little before Alvy hurt his knee swinging and had to exit. He didn’t foul a ball off it or anything. He was just being a 2026 Met in the pre-Ewing sense.
A.J. Ewing looms as a dividing line between what has bummed us out and what might pump us up. His promise and potential have been injected into the Metstream, taking effect with the first dose. If it isn’t a whole new season, it’s definitely a whole new feeling. A few more games of this nature, and it, too, will be…well, undescribable.
by Greg Prince on 11 May 2026 12:05 pm The games themselves lack intrigue, so I stick around for the autopsies that follow the games. They’re deadly, too, but I figure maybe I can learn a little more about what just went wrong.
On Sunday in Phoenix what went wrong was obvious enough. The Mets didn’t make a couple of plays and they got only a couple of hits. Call off the coroner, we know the cause of death, a.k.a. the 5-1 loss to the Diamondbacks. If you wish to refer to the nine-game road trip they just completed as successful, the math won’t dispute you, as the wins (5) outnumbered the losses (4). If you watched this team against the one opponent among the three faced that wasn’t as dreggy as the Mets, you wouldn’t claim much momentum.
The Mets won two of three from Los Angeles of the American League, then two of three from Colorado, then withstood a drowse-off until the tenth inning of their opener versus Arizona. That 5-2 stretch, even in those pockets bereft of clutch hitting, indicated something of a revival might be underway. At the very least, the Angels and the Rockies seemed worse than the Mets. After the weekend in the desert was complete, nobody in either league was worse than the Mets. There are standings to prove it.
Sunday you could trust your eyes as you saw the Mets total four hits over nine innings, which made for one more Met hit than the sum of Met errors. Andy Ibañez, the 193rd third baseman in New York Mets history, committed two of them. Andy Ibañez’s shortcomings as third baseman were a surprise, given that we’d seen him only try the outfield to date. But the man did play third (and second) on a going basis for Texas, Detroit and West Sacramento, so why not try him at the hot corner?
Maybe because there were at least two better options on the roster? But then you’d have to play another Met or two who weren’t considered likely to produce offensively versus a lefty, in this case Eduardo Rodriguez, who used Sunday afternoon (8.1 IP, 1 ER) to elevate his Cy Young candidacy. Isn’t that what most starting pitchers opposing the Mets do?
If Ibañez wasn’t in there for his glove, he wasn’t in there for his bat, either. To be fair, the only Met who used one of the latter effectively and repeatedly was Backup Catcher For Life Luis Torrens, in there for his general adeptness. Torrens drove in Carson Benge with the Mets’ only run of the day, in the sixth, and produced another hit besides. All that action was at the bottom of the order. The top featured Juan Soto and Bo Bichette each going 0-for-3 and Austin Slater going 0-for-4. That’s three-hole hitter Austin Slater, occupying space previously filled on Met lineup cards by the likes of Keith Hernandez and John Olerud. Hernandez and Olerud came to the Mets with reputations as RBI men and enhanced them further once here. Lineups today apparently emerge from a digital hat.
The game itself was a lengthy 2:16. It went on and on despite not taking that much actual time. The Mets fell behind in the second, fell behind by more in the sixth, and never hinted they’d catch up. The mish-mash of pitching — two openers succeeded by yeoman bulk guy David Peterson — could have been adequate on a team displaying airtight fielding and any hitting. That would have had to been another team. The Mets of the moment, 15-25 after roughly a quarter of a season (and 8-9 since their presumably anomalous twelve-game losing streak), are not a team flashing multiple adequacies.
So I stay tuned for the autopsy, and listen not to just the analyst detail to the host how this particular inadequacy led to that particular inflection point, but the players speak for themselves. On Sunday, the two players who stood in front of reporters and attempted to answer questions were Soto and Ibañez. Soto is the Mets’ marquee star. Ibañez is a journeyman. Soto’s slump and Ibañez’s misfires brought them to the spotlight. They were each asked, in so many words, what the bleep was wrong today? It’s not an easy question for anybody coming off an unsatisfying day of work, but it is a reasonable one within the context of a 5-1 loss.
Each Met included some version of “that’s baseball” as part of his personal analysis. I’ve heard Mets say that or something very close to it quite a bit over the past days and weeks. I don’t think it’s a John Sterling tribute. I didn’t get a hit? That’s baseball. I didn’t make the throw? That’s baseball. To those who are professionals, one episode inside one game inside a year full of them isn’t telling. You take swings in the cage. You take ground balls on the field. You concentrate. You develop a routine. You rise to the highest level there is, competing against others who have done the same. Then you don’t come through as runs are scored against you or not for you.
“That’s baseball,” is as reasonable an answer as it is a question. Of course sometimes your throw will go wide. Of course sometimes a pitcher will get the best of you. Of course you can prepare yourself to a tee and still be left looking like you have no idea what you’re doing. Everybody in the box score, by dint of making it into a major league box score, is in the same vicinity of basic ability as you. There are going to be days when they prevail instead of you. There are going to be weeks when the whole bunch of them prevails over the whole bunch of you.
That may be baseball and a sound explanation of it from the inside — and it may speak to the steadiness (not too high, not too low) that everybody around the game traditionally preaches — but it also seems to indicate a certain helplessness. We try, they try, somebody’s gonna be disappointed. Tomorrow’s a new day and another game. A fan would love to hear something about determination or grabbing the figurative bull by the horns, even if it is in lieu of literal grabbing. When you watch the autopsy, you are left to believe this unfortunate result couldn’t be avoided. It was going to happen to one team or another. It happened to our team, just like it so often does. Maybe it won’t the next time.
Then they air a commercial to urge you to bet that it will.
by Jason Fry on 9 May 2026 11:36 pm I hated the fact that on Saturday night the Mets lost to the Diamondbacks, 2-1.
I hated that the Mets lost largely because they’ve once again forgotten how to hit. Brett Baty drove in Marcus Semien with a double in the second inning, and if you reached back to Friday night’s 10th inning uprising you might have imagined the Mets had turned some kind of corner offensively. But no, they did nothing else against Merrill Kelly, who’d been pinata’ed by pretty much all comers in 2026, or against the relievers that followed him.
I hated the fact that the Diamondbacks collected their two runs off a very good Clay Holmes on a two-out single by Ildemaro Vargas, one assisted by Geraldo Perdomo, who was on second and very clearly, one even might say blatantly, looking into Holmes’ glove and giving Vargas the pitches. Once upon a time that would have led to Perdomo wearing one between the numbers, and when Perdomo came up with two out and none on in the fifth, Francisco Alvarez went out to the mound for a conversation with Holmes and I figured we were about to see some honest-to-goodness old-fashioned baseball justice. But no, there was no such thing — at least not tonight, and maybe not ever. I would have loved to hear what Keith Hernandez thought of that.
(One of the only things I did love Saturday night? Lourdes Gurriel Jr. getting erased by a Holmes sweeper, challenging it in disbelief, and having to watch as ABS showed that the ball was not only a strike but in fact completely inside the strike zone. New rule: Face-plant that badly on a challenge and you get an 0-1 count for the rest of the night’s plate appearances.)
I hated the fact that the Mets were put down in the ninth by Paul Sewald, who thoroughly demoralized us during his years as a Mets Jonah and yet has a chip on his shoulder about it. Look, I’m sure Sewald was indeed ill-served by Mets instructors back in the day, as too many of that era’s young Mets pitchers were. But his beef is with some long-gone coach, not us. It’s not like we were in the stands holding up Bill Veeck-style placards ordering Sewald to throw his third-best pitch or hang another slider — we were just the ones throwing up our hands after that happened yet again.
To be clear, I hated all of that. But it’s not what I hated most about this latest dishpan-dull loss.
What I hated most is that I’m this upset about it. This misfiring ragamuffin team has give me ample evidence that it’s not to be trusted with even the smallest part of my heart, and yet here I am muttering and fuming and trying to fan new grudges while disinterring old ones. I hate that I care, and I hate that I’m apparently powerless not to.
* * *
Bobby Cox is dead at 84.
Man did I ever hate Bobby Cox.
I hated the way he always looked like he was sitting in a puddle, even when his team was in first place with no credible pursuer. I hated his endless showoffy maneuvering. I hated his cranky chiseling for the smallest edge with umpires.
Most of all, I hated that most everything he did worked. His quarter-century as manager of the Braves (plus a brief interlude managing Toronto) was marked by 14 straight division crowns, five National League pennants, one World Series title, and a record 162 ejections. In too many of those years, the non-credible pursuer of Cox’s Braves was the Mets. His Braves were the car we never could catch, and my visceral loathing and fear of Atlanta — pierced by Francisco Lindor‘s heroics but not truly slain — largely exists because of getting our heads handed to us by Bobby Cox’s charges year after year after year.
I was talking with a friend the other day about how baseball hatreds are the best hatreds, because they’re simultaneously harmless — part of the kabuki of sport and not the real world, unless you’ve lost the plot — and yet so deeply pure.
So yes, I hated Bobby Cox, in a baseball way. Not being a psychopath, I never would have told him that. But if for some reason I had, I suspect he would have been pleased. Because that would have been another sign of how well he’d done his job.
by Greg Prince on 9 May 2026 11:13 am NOTE: This post was written by Jason, who was experiencing some technical difficulties this morning.
On Friday night, the Mets and Diamondbacks played one of those games that settles into a stalemate and then grinds along, waiting to decide what kind of ballgame it’s to become.
With the roof open – a rare occurrence that makes Chase Field a far more pleasant place to see baseball – Nolan McLean held Arizona to just a Nolan Arenado home run over six. McLean’s night could be described as impressively unimpressive: He couldn’t get his pitches to behave, with his sweeper particularly disobedient, but mixed and matched and called audibles and figured out a way to get through the enemy lineup. That’s a hallmark of a frontline starter who’ll beat you with his mind as much as with his arm, accolades McLean has earned despite still having rookie status.
Which isn’t to say it wasn’t also nerve-wracking to witness: McLean had a somewhat similar game his last time out against the Angels, an outing in which he made it work until the one inning when he couldn’t. And this time around, after a second-inning Mark Vientos homer the Mets had forgotten how to hit again, doing absolutely nothing against the unprepossessing Ryne Nelson. (Alternate narrative: Nelson figured it out as well. Always worth remembering the other guys are trying to win, too.)
And so the game came down to bullpen roulette: Some reliever was going to screw up, and the question was whose uniform he’d wear.
Would it be the Mets’ road grays, as happened on Thursday’s non-off day when Craig Kimbrel once again looked like his reasons for being on a roster have dwindled to the nebulous Veteran PresenceTM? Or would it be Arizona’s home … gradients?
(I could spend two paragraphs deriding the Serpientes City Connects, but why bother? This is a franchise that’s never had a non-ridiculous uniform in the first place.)
Juan Morillo? Mets couldn’t do anything with him, click, empty chamber.
Luke Weaver? Click. Got in trouble but no, not him.
Brooks Raley? Click. Gave up a single to Arizona prospect Ryan Waldschmidt in his first big-league AB (congrats kid, those are always fun to see) but otherwise unscathed.
Brandyn Garcia? Click. Though points off for that ridiculous spelling. Parents of the 2000s, sheesh.
Devin Williams? Click. The airbender was particularly good, even – Jose Fernandez probably woke up in a cold sweat remembering the three that erased him.
Kevin Ginkel? BANG.
Brett Baty started the tenth on second as the Manfred Man, thereby becoming the first Met wearing a batting helmet to stand on second without touching it in transit, as Vientos had done approximately a year earlier when the world felt like it might not be wholly bereft of hope. Vientos, at the plate again, hooked Ginkel’s first pitch down the left-field line to give the Mets the lead; five pitches later, Carson Benge thumped another Ginkel offering over the fence on a bounce to chase home Vientos replacement Vidal Bruján. Marcus Semien then executed a perfect bunt with Arenado playing back, giving the Mets first and third with nobody out.
This relative offensive explosion seemed to frighten the Mets back into nonviolence: Ginkel and replacement Jonathan Loaisigia coaxed MJ Melendez into fanning and Francisco Alvarez into tapping back to the pitcher, forgoing a gimme run, and then Luis Torrens – possibly concussed after a scary-looking foul ball to the jaw while catching – grounded out.
Hey, why not one last round of reliever roulette?
Tobias Myers? Click. In fact, Myers yawned at the peril of the Manfred Man.
Myers – whose last outing was marred, you may recall, by Denver vacuum robbing his pitches of the ability to do much of anything – started by striking out Jorge Barrosa, who then volunteered for further humiliation, challenging strike three and standing there in chumpy dejection as ABS revealed that the ball had been about 95% in the strike zone, which I think ought to mean Barrosa begins his next AB with an 0-1 count. Myers then got Geraldo Perdomo to pop up and erased Ildemaro Vargas on another strikeout. Fernandez never so much as moved from his Manfred-awarded occupancy of second, Myers accepted his well-earned handshakes, and the Mets had won.
It’s been a not-so-bad road trip, though there’s no way I trust this misfit bunch not to pratfall their way to a less happy reckoning before returning to New York. Maybe they should just stay away, appearing in random cities on random networks at random times of day and night to hit minimally and play reliever roulette with a side of commissioner-ordered extra-innings shenanigans.
Whatever works, right?
by Greg Prince on 8 May 2026 11:34 am I liked the part where Juan Soto tripled. The ball he walloped to deep right at Coors Field in the top of the third Thursday afternoon would have been out of every other park, including the one with the Grand Canyon in it, but triples are fun. We’re here for the fun of baseball, aren’t we? Watch Juan chug! Watch Juan round second! Watch Juan go for it!
Juan Soto indeed tripled. It was fun. Besides, there was one out and the Mets were ahead by two runs. Somebody’ll knock him in soon enough and the rout will be on.
Where did I get the idea it would be that easy? Two batters later, after Bo Bichette walked, Mark Vientos rapped into a 4-6-3 DP to end the inning. The Mets still led. Christian Scott was still on the mound, continuing to look hale, hearty, and effective. So what if it was only 2-0? We’d gotten to Jose Quintana twice in the second, and we’d probably take care of him in due order. Scott was cooking, Soto was tripling, snows were melted, it was a fine day for a sweep.
The Mets never had another runner reach third, let alone home. Quintana, my favorite Met of 2023 and 2024, battened down his hatches until there were two out in the sixth. Scott, embodiment of my fondest Met hopes in pre-OMG 2024, before Tommy John surgery removed him from the radar, was allowed to pitch with a 2-1 lead only as far as two outs in the fifth. He’d struck out six, walked two (including his final batter), and had thrown 82 pitches. During the postgame scrum, he told reporters he “respected” his manager’s decision, pitcherspeak for why the eff is he taking me out? I respect that attitude. Still, can’t be too careful with an embodiment of renewed hopes in 2026. There’s been so little basis for hope to begin with.
Our two runs were the product of people in whom no Met hope was ever invested. A righty-heavy lineup was unleashed to go after lefty Quintana. It worked, for a spell. An Austin Slater single in the second turned into a run because of Andy Ibañez sac fly. Put those names in your Met-Libs and smoke them. Another run scored when Tyrone Taylor singled, though Taylor was thrown out trying to stretch for a double. Taylor is speedy and gets erased on the basepaths. Soto lumbers but makes it to third. Vidal Bruján — he was the starting shortstop for whom the Mendoza Line remains aspirational — swings for the fences and comes up a little shy. So much to process. Not that much to etch in the runs column.
Balls just missed going out. Balls just missed staying fair. Calls just missed going the Mets’ way. Huascar Brazobán stranded Scott’s baserunner in the fifth, but not one of his own in the sixth. Tie game. Austin Warren set things right. Austin Warren sets himself to be sent down by his episodic success, option-laden as he is. Carlos Mendoza (not to be confused with Mario Mendoza of Mendoza Line infamy) could use only so many relievers on Thursday because he had to use too many relievers on Wednesday during a game that was seemingly in hand. Is anything in hand except your forehead when it comes to the 2026 Mets? On the radio, Keith Raad foreshadowed how badly this was gonna go by pre-rationalizing how splendid it was that the 14-22 Mets had already won this series, even if this Getaway Day contest got away today because of the short pen. Is this industrywide reasoning or just the brand of analytical thinking that’s been spread internally by David Stearns? “Just win series” is something you lean on for long-term perspective — I defaulted to it plenty when the Mets were postseason-bound in 2022 — not when you’ve taken two of two, and a third remains within reach…and you’re 14-22.
Craig Kimbrel came into a tie game in the eighth and batted a series sweep out of reach. I’m not usually prone to “well, that’s it,” the instant a pitcher appears, but I was very much well, that’s it the instant this pitcher appeared. I likely would have responded differently during Craig’s prime, helluva prime that it was. I’m sorry Kimbrel didn’t get a check-swing call in his favor amid his loading of bases. I’m sorry the Rocky Mountain High grand slam he was bound to give up, the one that apparently soared directly above the right field foul pole, couldn’t be nudged into foul territory via chief review. It was close. It was blasted by Jake McCarthy. Jake McCarthy’s walkup music is the segment of “Stairway to Heaven” in which Robert Plant wails, “And as we wind on down the road…” which, until I looked it up, I swore for the last 55 years was, “And there’s a wino down the road.” It’s a song that has a piper who will lead us to reason; a bustle in your hedgerow; and something about a May queen. Why wouldn’t a wino wander into all that? This has nothing to do with the grand slam Kimbrel may or may not have permitted, but McCarthy’s use of Led Zeppelin certainly caught my attention.
Certainly, nobody was catching McCarthy’s deep fly ball, unless it was fan in the far right field stands, right of the pole. Now down, 6-2, the Mets wouldn’t be catching the Rockies, either. They’d get a couple of men on in the top of the ninth, but, as we’ve already established, third base became the unreachable star after Soto got stranded there. You can’t touch home if you don’t touch third. I forget if that’s from Led Zeppelin or Casey Stengel. Either way, the Mets are now 14-23.
I really did enjoy that triple, though. I’ll close my eyes, think about it a little longer, and then try to forget most everything else about the Met loss that surrounded it. I mean the Met series win that was already achieved.
by Jason Fry on 7 May 2026 12:27 am It’s a baseball rule: Things get weird in Denver.
Imagine you were a Rockies fan who followed the schedule and dutifully showed up at the start time indicated for each game of your team’s three-game set against the Mets. (And why wouldn’t you, after seeing the Rockies whoop up on the Mets back in Queens?)
Monday? Guess what, they changed the start time on you. Tuesday? No game — it’s snowing. Wednesday? Changed the start time on you again. Thursday? You weren’t planning on showing up then, as the schedule shows it’s an off-day, but the Rockies and Mets will have to.
That’s without the baseline strangeness of Denver, such as the temperature being capable of swinging 40 degrees day to day and the fact that there simply isn’t a sensible amount of air here, which is highly relevant if you have to run around the bases, pursue a ball taking a hard hop off the infield dirt, or try and make a splitter split.
The Mets did pretty good at the running around the bases part, with crooked numbers in the H column up and down the box score. (Particularly Marcus Semien, who emerged from his offensive slumber to torment the Rockies, capping his night with a blast into the left-field seats.) Ditto for the pursuing balls part — and once again Semien was front and center, though that part of his game has been solid all year. Making splitters split? Tobias Myers found that not to his liking, with an inning blowing up in his face that cut the Mets’ 8-0 lead in half, which in other parks would be a cosmetic imperfection but in Denver sounds like the drums of doom.
But Freddy Peralta had handled the Rockies before Myers’ arrival, Brooks Raley inherited a little brushfire but snuffed it without undue fuss and Luke Weaver did his job. Sean Manaea didn’t, getting just one out in the latest misfire of his disconcerting, discombobulated season, but Devin Williams rode to the rescue to secure the win.
So the Mets took their revenge on Michael Lorenzen, continued what’s been a pretty good road trip, and won their second straight against the Rockies — even if it’s possible they’d fail a quiz about what day that happened or what time their next game is. It’s OK, there are people who’ll take care of that part.
Honestly, it was the perfect setting for Steve Gelbs continuing his hot dog travelogue by whipping out two feet of tubesteak in front of a stricken-looking Gary Cohen and a thoroughly baffled Keith Hernandez. I wasn’t surprised in the least that Keith drew a blank when Gelbs invoked “Lady and the Tramp” — Keith is a Civil War autodidact and has forgotten more about baseball than I’ll ever know, but his pop-culture knowledge seems limited to George Carlin routines and mid-70s AM radio.
It was just the latest reminder that I’d love to spend 30 seconds inside Keith Hernandez’s brain, just to marvel at my surroundings.
I dunno, maybe it’s a lot like Denver in there.
by Greg Prince on 5 May 2026 12:52 am What is that baseball club that appears to know what it’s doing and then goes about doing it? Why, I do believe that’s the New York Mets.
The New York Mets visited Colorado on Monday and started playing three hours before they were originally supposed to. That was very competent thinking, given the weather forecast for later in the evening. True, the change in timing wasn’t a product of Met decisionmaking, but they knew enough to show up for a first pitch at 3:40 PM Mountain Daylight. Rain was coming. Snow was to follow. Great job carving out a window.
The Mets also knew enough to schedule the Rockies just as the Rockies have begun tumbling, losing their previous four games. Scheduling is done by MLB, but, again, the Mets opted to show up and not be discouraged by the sweep inflicted on them by the very same Rox in the land of bagels and lox the weekend before last. Good attitude there.
OK, we’ve got playable conditions and a pliable opponent. Did we have a starting pitcher? Does an opener count? Innings are innings. We used a reliever (Huascar Brazoban) for the first, then another (Austin Warren) for the second and third. So if I’ve got this straight, you show up early and then use pitchers you usually use later right away — and you play the Rockies after playing the Angels. Staying within your weight class is a good tip.
For the first several innings, regardless of who was pitching for the Mets, the Mets weren’t hitting off the Rockies and their traditional starter Tomoyuki Sugano. That changed in the sixth when defensive wiz Carson Benge did something his teammate Mark Vientos couldn’t do no matter how hard Vientos tried. No, not catch a ball, wise guy, but hit one over the fence. Vientos launched two spheres very far, but not far enough to elude Denver leather, never mind leave Coors Field. Benge, who made another catch of beauty Monday, belted one good and high to put the Mets on the board. Then our patented two-catcher attack came to the fore. Francisco Alvarez, in a hitting-only role, doubled; Luis Torrens, recently inked to remain Backup Catcher For Life, doubled directly thereafter. That was another run.
Vientos? He stopped hitting long outs and instead lined a single that brought home two runs, carried by Torrens and Juan Soto. Soto, in a bit of a slump, was moved up to the leadoff spot Monday. Another part of our hypercompetent strategy of doing what’s not expected. Soto didn’t hit, but he had walked somewhere between Torrens and Vientos, and in this case, a hit was as good as a walk.
In that spirit, a starter was as good as a reliever once David Peterson, who’s almost as from Colorado as Neil Walker was from Pittsburgh, took to the mound. Presumably pitching before some people who came specifically to see him, David entered in the fourth and stuck around through the seventh. The seventh was a little dicey, as the Rockies halved the Mets lead to 4-2, but Petey was left in to finish his job. Four innings out of the bullpen seems so much more impressive than a four-inning start. Hey, whatever works.
Craig Kimbrel, who used to be a big-deal closer, took care of the eighth. Devin Williams, who may or may not still be a big-deal closer, took care of the ninth. The game I expected to be tuning in for at 8:40 PM EDT was in the books as a 4-2 win before 8 o’clock. The game I suspected might be a fiasco (not scheduled as such, just the way things have been too often) was smooth as slightly wrinkled silk. There were those two Vientos flyouts, and Benge falling down when not making one of his gorgeous grabs, and a triple Kimbrel had to tiptoe around, but what do you want from these Mets — perfection?
Competence will do.
by Jason Fry on 4 May 2026 8:10 am The Mets beat the Angels (!) Sunday afternoon to take the series (!!), looking impressive in all aspects of the game in doing so. And, as is usually the case when a team that’s been struggling unstruggles, the reaction was, “Gee, was that so hard?”
(Well, my other reaction was “Fuck you, Kurt Suzuki,” but I don’t say that after every Mets win. Though perhaps I’ll start.)
The answer, of course, is that everything is hard when you’re lost in the baseball woods, followed by a reminder to a fan base sighing with relief that not every little run of competence is the start of a renaissance. After all, the Mets’ last series win, against another Why Are We Playing These Guys Again? AL team in the Twins, was followed by the horrors of having to face the big, bad Colorado Rockies. And well look at that, hostilities recommence against the Rockies this afternoon in the vaguely existent air of Denver. (PSA that game time has been moved up to 5:40 pm on account of, yes, snow.)
So that’s a lot of caveats. But still: The Mets pitched, with Clay Holmes as solid as we’ve come to expect and Luke Weaver and Brooks Raley capable behind him. The Mets hit, with two home runs from Mark Vientos, an RBI double from Carson Benge and some solid ABs from Bo Bichette and Brett Baty. And the Mets played defense, with outfield sparklers from Benge and MJ Melendez alongside solid infield work from Baty and Bichette.
(OK, Vientos still plays first like he’s fighting off a swarm of bees, and it would take a committed optimist to imagine there’s an achievable ceiling one wouldn’t have to knee-walk beneath, but in situations like that the formula is for a guy to outhit his mistakes, and on Sunday Vientos did.)
It all worked out. For one day. But enough caveats. Because what’s a season — or a life, for that matter — but a succession of days?
by Greg Prince on 3 May 2026 2:22 pm In The Year The Mets Lost Last Place, Ron Santo is spotted in the visitors’ dugout at Shea Stadium, prior to the afternoon game of July 8, 1969, examining the Mets’ starting lineup, one whose components had helped elevate the home team a surprising eleven games over .500 and an even more shocking five games from Santo’s first-place Cubs. “He walks over to it,” the tick-tock reports, “looks it over carefully, then shakes his head.
“‘I know Los Angeles won with pitching,’” Santo says. “‘But this is ridiculous.’”
A few hours later, Chicago center fielder Don Young would be befuddled by a couple of fly balls, and the Mets who started the likes Bobby Pfeil, Al Weis, and J.C. Martin, would top the Cubs, 4-3 and inch ever closer to top of the division. They won with Jerry Koosman pitching and enough of everybody else hitting. Come playoff time, Santo’s opinions on what constituted a ridiculous lineup would not be written down, as Ron was nowhere near an active big league dugout.
If Ron Santo were around and at Angel Stadium on Saturday night, one can only imagine what the master heel-clicker would have to say about Andy Ibañez starting in left and Austin Slater starting in right for his old National League East rivals. I’m sure it would have been nothing worse than any Mets fan was thinking.
Ibañez? Slater? How about they work Vidal Bruján into this mix?
Oh, just wait.
The inclusion of two journeyman outfielders with the starting lineup of what was widely considered as a serious contender no more than six weeks ago constitutes an early-edition angle. You didn’t have to know how Saturday night’s game turned out to be if not surprised or shocked then stunned that this is who the Mets are now. They’re a team that not only is down to Andy Ibañez (a fella the A’s didn’t need anymore) and Austin Slater (discarded recently by the Marlins), but decided for strategy’s sake that as righthanded batters it was imperative they flank Tyrone Taylor and take their swings against the Angels’ lefty starter Reid Detmers.
This would be a great spot for the story to pivot. “As it turned out, Ibañez and Slater were exactly the right men for the Mets on Saturday night” would be fun to write right here, detailing how two discards rose up to contribute to a Mets win. But this isn’t a season filled with great spots. Let’s just say that neither Ibañez nor Slater was the reason the Mets lost, 4-3 in ten innings. They actually did OK in their roles. Andy delivered a sacrifice fly in the seventh. Austin followed in the same inning with an infield single. Earlier, in the first, Slater made a very nice two-out throw from right that nailed Jorge Soler sliding into third just before Nolan Schanuel was about to step on home plate. Replay saw it pretty clearly. The home plate ump didn’t. The Mets manager didn’t. The Mets’ designated video reviewer didn’t. The official call — that the Angels had just scored a run off Nolan McLean — was ripe for a challenge. None was made.
Can’t blame that on Austin Slater or Andy Ibañez. McLean should have been out of that inning unscathed, but it wasn’t really a night for bemoaning our young ace’s lack of luck or support. Pitching where Nolan Ryan made the Mets regret not properly valuing the promise of a live right arm, Nolan McLean struggled more than he ever had previously. A glitch in the replay process can be blamed for one first-inning run. The fourth inning, full of full counts; complicated by a corralable wild pitch; and undone by a two-run Vaughn Grissom single, was ultimately on the pitcher. McLean didn’t see the fifth.
The Met bullpen was set up to fail, yet didn’t. None of its main men were available, having pitched in consecutive games lately. Leaning on Tobias Myers, Huascar Brazobán, and Craig Kimbrel became paramount. The trio didn’t collapse. It helps that the Angels might as well be the Mets but with better weather, but you play who you play, and the Mets had played the Angels dead even through nine. The top of the seventh probably should have been more productive for New York, what with two runs in, the bases loaded, and massively reputationed Bo Bichette and Juan Soto coming up. Alas, Bichette (who had singled in the stealthily productive Slater for the first Met run in the third) grounded out, and Soto couldn’t fully check a two-strike swing.
The top of the tenth continued the theme of coulda/didn’t. MJ Melendez, who is practically a stalwart in the current Met universe, materialized as if out of thin air on second to begin the inning (funny how that keeps happening in every extra inning). Brett Baty reached via catcher’s interference, which would seem to be something as likely as to happen to the Mets as for them. Two on, nobody out, beautifully set up for Bichette, as if a big hit were meant to be. But the situation wasn’t Bo beshert, as the shortstop turned third baseman for this year turned shortstop for the duration of Saturday grounded into a 5-4-3 double play. With first base open, nobody was pitching to Juan Soto next, so it was all up to Francisco Alvarez. Alvarez flied out.
The bottom of the tenth ended with Austin Warren not quite getting the job done, and the Angels bringing home the winning run on Oswald Peraza’s two-out bases-loaded single. The dour conclusion was followed by more wonderful news: Friday night slugger Ronny Mauricio, who had exited this game after sliding safely into first base to avoid a tag during the frenetic top of the seventh inning, had fractured his left thumb on the play and was therefore IL-bound. That’s why Bichette had moved from third to short. That’s why infielder Brujàn, the lifetime .199 batter who has bounced among five clubs the past five seasons, is en route to join Ibañez, Slater, Melendez, and the rest of the anonymati comprising a significant portion of the 2026 Mets (one-day callup Eric Wagaman has somehow rated a DFA or we maybe we could get to know another veritable unknown). The briefly esteemed Bench Mob of 2021 would have a hard time recognizing these guys.
Not that the guys we know by sight are accomplishing a whole lot, either.
by Jason Fry on 2 May 2026 10:16 am Through five innings Friday night, the Mets were in a familiar place in Anaheim, one that seemed straightforward to write about even though I really, really didn’t want to.
They were down 3-0 to the Angels and the relatively unheralded Walbert Urena, and they looked like a team in the grip of a collective nervous breakdown. I was particularly worried about Francisco Alvarez, whose ABs had been best characterized as “frantic” and had turned a 2-0 deficit into a 3-0 one when he airmailed Bo Bichette on a stolen base attempt. Forget a demotion; Alvarez looked like he needed a rest cure.
The highlights, such as they were? Christian Scott looked a lot better than he did in his raw-nerves debut, with his stuff getting better and better as the night progressed, and David Wright had merrily hijacked a Steve Gelbs skit in the stands, walking away with it in his pocket. But so what? Scott was still in line for the L, thanks primarily to a first-inning sweeper to Jorge Soler that hadn’t swept, and my pleasure at seeing Wright brought to mind the Don DeLillo warning about nostalgia being a product of dissatisfaction and rage.
And then all of a sudden the Mets had had enough. Or, after a month and a little more, the baseball gods had had enough of pulling wings off helpless Mets. Whatever it was, something changed, and in a hurry.
Bichette drove Urena from the game with a line-drive shot off his knee, not the way you want to dispense with an enemy starter but all’s fair in love and baseball teams trying to stave off relegation. Juan Soto singled, because no part of the current collective malady can be laid at his feet. But then Austin Slater struck out swinging (“already fitting in,” I mused sourly), up came Alvarez, and up on the scoreboard went two quick strikes from Brent Suter. Maybe striking out wasn’t going to keep Alvarez out of a padded cell, but it would be marginally better than hitting into a double play, an outcome that’s been all too predictable for him in the most recent stages of this team death march.
Suter threw a changeup as bait, off the corner and meant to get Alvarez to chase, but it wasn’t off the corner enough and became a single up the middle. Brett Baty — another Met who looks like he has the men with butterfly nets on speed dial — bounced out to first, moving the runners to second and third for quite possibly no reason. That left it up to Marcus Semien, whose ABs have not inspired confidence so far in his Mets career.
Semien swatted a single off Chase Silseth (navigate those sibilants 10 times fast, I double-dog dare you) and the game was tied.
“Tied” isn’t the same as “won” — there are no moral victories when .500 is so far above your head that the bends are a hazard — but, hey, Scott had cooled the Angels’ bats by retiring the last nine in a row. He gave way to Huascar Brazoban, who worked a scoreless sixth, and Jose Fermin took the halo’ed mound (I’d never noticed it before either) for the Whatever Whatevers of Whatever.
(Seriously, the Angels drive me crazy. I’m inclined to be sympathetic given that they’re another Little Brother in a Big Town franchise and stuck with a dreadful owner, but they do themselves zero favors by not being able decide on a franchise name or a uniform, careening between various terrible ideas every few years. Their City Connects have been a rare bright spot — a perfect surfer-style tweak for what was already their best ensemble — and they should just make those the default. Needless to say they won’t.)
With one out in the seventh, Ronny Mauricio dug in against Fermin, and had one of those ABs that reminds you why no one will ever give up on Ronny Mauricio. Mauricio has trouble with anything thrown with a wrinkle, to put it diplomatically, but when he squares up a fastball it’s a moment to remember.
And he squares up fastballs that shouldn’t be square-uppable. Fermin’s third pitch had too much plate but was up at the top of the zone and running toward the corner. Mauricio’s connection point was near the end of the bat. None of that mattered: Mauricio made contact and it was as if the ball had made the jump to hyperspace, delivered about a second later into the hands of a startled Angels fan 420 feet away in right-center. Mauricio had pulled it. Fermin looked bewildered; even Mike Trout looked a bit impressed; I opted for a bit from columns A and B.
The Mets had the lead, and for once they held it. Held it flawlessly, in fact: a 1-2-3 inning from Brooks Raley; a 1-2-3 inning from Luke Weaver, known more for oratory than mound craft of late; and finally a 1-2-3 inning from the beleaguered Devin Williams.
No Angel threats. No Angel baserunner since Alvarez’s errant throw, in fact. The Mets — these Mets, the collective nervous-breakdown Mets — had flipped the script. They’d been headed back to the Bad Place but then taken a detour, and I was surprised and ecstatic to find myself, at least for one night, somewhere not so familiar.
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