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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 June 2026 4:44 am Like Bob Seger so many summers ago, Bo Bichette woke last night to the sound of thunder. BOOM! before the game. Then he woke the rest of us up. BOOM! in the first inning. BOOM! like crazy in the second. Bo went BOOM! twice in a game that waited for a wicked storm to pass through the vicinity to get going, and drove in six runs before it was done. Talk about some night moves.
Led by an erstwhile Blue Jay who appeared lost once separated from his flock, Bo has found quite a Met groove of late. No doubt superfan/supercritic Gene Shalit would have given Bichette’s character arc a rave review. Bo stands as the main if not sole reason the Mets were 7-5 winners over the Braves on Friday. The Braves are in first place. The Mets are in last. For one sweaty night, the standings were irrelevant. We took a lead in the season series. We clinched the championship of June 12, 2026. We didn’t totally mind enduring a 1:16 delay to do it.
 “A plot to plotz from!” NBC’s Gene Shalit raves. We — a cohort that included my pal Kevin and me, attending our annual Mets-Braves tilt — were cautioned to take shelter as lightning descended over Citi Field as the originally scheduled first pitch time approached. At the moment word of weather danger went forth, we were in the smallest room the ballpark has to offer: the Mets Museum, waaaaay over in the right field corner. There’s enough in there to keep a Mets fan engaged for a good four or five minutes. We’d been in it for maybe two. Since it wasn’t known how long the impending precipitation would pelt Flushing, we were instructed to go wait it out somewhere else, presumably because the guard feared if we stuck around, he’d have to listen to us ask, “What in the name of Edward Emil Kranepool happened to all the stuff that used to be in the museum when the museum was a proper size and in the Rotunda?”
Up in the Promenade concourse, you could mostly avoid the rain if you stood at the appropriate angle. The thunder you couldn’t miss. BOOM! it went, presaging Bo. The loudest claps unleashed the most topical of local chants. “KNICKS IN FIVE! KNICKS IN FIVE!” Soon enough, perhaps.
When the baseball game got underway, Nolan McLean looked untouchable. It was a look we’d miss by the second, but it sure was tantalizing in the top of the first, as he retired the Braves in rapid succession. In the bottom of the first, Bichette offered his first sound of thunder, giving Spencer Strider’s slider a guided tour of the left-center field seats. They could put it in the Mets Museum, but then they’d have to move three other items out in order to accommodate the addition. Juan Soto followed directly with his fifteenth homer of the season. From our seats in 517, I’m pretty sure I saw a mask replace the hard hat for conveying dugout giddiness. Glad we’re hitting so many homers that we’re getting bored with the same old props.
In the top of the second, everything went wrong for McLean except the bottom line. Far too many pitches. Far too many baserunners (featuring Dom Smith in Old Friend™ mode). But only two runs. Nolan McLean may be the pitchin’ magician. We’d prefer that efficient fellow from the top of the first.
Fortunately for the Mets, Bichette enjoyed the sound of thunder so much, he decided to make more of it. BOOM!!!! Three men were on when Bo came up in the second. All of them scored after Bichette swung. Bo joined them. This second homer snuck over the fence in the right field corner, not as far as the first, yet it counted for four times as many runs. Baseball math — go figure.
Supported by that grand slam, McLean fended off the Braves off for a couple more innings. A Bichette sac fly gave Nolan a five-run lead and himself six RBIs. Margin for error had arrived. Cionel Perez could give up a solo homer to Matt Olson, and it wouldn’t hurt much. The Mets could stop scoring, and it didn’t have to be an omen. The Braves could scratch out a couple more runs in the eighth, and…well, that wasn’t ideal. At 7-5, the game was feeling tight enough to fit inside the Mets Museum. It was also late enough that fans who normally catch an eastbound train home from Woodside — which works fine before but not necessarily after midnight — had to scan the LIRR app for more reasonable options. Just like high starter pitch counts guarantees too much bullpen usage, lengthy delays play havoc with postgame commutation.
Devin Williams achieved a four-out save, which I assume means he won’t be available for the next two weeks. That can be sorted out later. It was imperative to get the win that was within reach, and it was attained. Ideally, the win would have occurred at a brisker pace. Instead, it didn’t go final until 11:35. I’d be staying on the 7 well past Woodside and going for the 12:35 out of Grand Central Madison, a sparkling rail hub where I am essentially a gaijin, relative to my lifelong familiarity with grimy Penn Station. Kevin, an East Sider recently back from sampling the wonders of baseball in the Far East, was kind enough to extend his Friday night journey a little longer in order to point me toward the correct escalator. I made my way down to my train. Bo Bichette made his way up in my esteem. Sayonara, Spencer Strider and the rest of you Braves.
by Greg Prince on 12 June 2026 9:28 am Between innings on Wednesday night, after a shared reluctance to shvitz our assorted body parts off on Thursday afternoon had pushed up by eighteen hours Stephanie’s and my vague plan to fulfill our even vaguer ambition to go to a game this week, I stared out at Citi Field’s well-manicured lawn with admiration. It had that freshly mowed mien it doesn’t always display. No indentations from a concert or soccer match. Smooth and serene. The grounds crew must be doing a heckuva job, I thought.
Then, when the game resumed, I realized coming to see the Mets play baseball is akin to watching grass grow. Given that the Mets were en route to losing to the Cardinals by seven runs for a second consecutive evening, the grass’s progress elicited greater satisfaction.
That was Wednesday. Interesting night to attend a sporting event in the city of New York, if not this sporting event. The Mets at least had the decency to efficiently get their loss over in time for people to make their desired train at Woodside, therefore allowing them to arrive home swiftly and take a gander at any other game going on in town. Grass, ironically, was not growing underneath the feet of those playing in a place known as the Garden.
Thursday, with my wife and I not in attendance, Christian Scott started his assignment on the mound looking like some combination of shrub and schlub, giving up a home run in the first, then another couple in the second, negating whatever momentum Met bats had gathered in the bottom of the first, when Bo Bichette and Jared Young each went deep. St. Louis led, 4-3, Sinatra’s fickle friend the summer wind and its cousin June Humidity doing what they do to make the afternoon uncomfortable from multiple perspectives.
 Killing time, watching the grass grow. As the Flushing grass continued to grow, the action settled down. The Cardinals stopped scoring. The Mets stopped scoring. A dog chased a cat and they were both walking. That kind of day, it appeared. Baseballs went from flying out of the park to not much bothering anybody. Good news for Scott. Less good news for his teammates permitted to hit. They were permitted to hit on Wednesday night. Most of them declined, as reflected by the lineup going a collective 3-for-30. Perhaps one through nine in the order were as enthralled by the grass’s growth as I was.
A television viewer couldn’t be blamed for believing Thursday’s bottom of the first, when Bichette and Young stirred, loomed as an aberration. In the bottom of the fifth, however, Juan Soto commenced doing Juan Soto things, upside edition. Juan stung a double into the right field gap with one out and decided to become a full-fledged baserunner when Young followed that with a single to center. Not content to stop at third, Soto chugged all the way home, where he was about to be out by if not a mile, then a couple of blocks. Fortunately the throw to the catcher took too much of a bounce to be handled cleanly. The Cardinals corral almost everything they get their mitts near, but not here. The Mets had tied the game at four.
Summertime sleepiness returned for a spell longer, thanks in part to the usual lack of Mets aptitude on offense, partly because Scott’s legion of successors induced the Redbirds into a good, solid nap. Enter Soto again, this time making his seventh-inning trip around the bases academic with a solo shot over the wall in right. Two very authoritative at-bats, two runs the Mets desperately needed. That is if one infers there is desperation to the Mets’ season rather than killing time, watching the grass grow.
From A.J. Minter and Brooks Raley deploying their veteran lefty wiles for two-and-a-third, to Luke Weaver crocheting yet another shutdown inning in the eighth, to Devin Williams closing matters out sans drama, the Mets came away 5-4 victors, hot enough on a day when temperatures soared and people who chose to go the loss night before instead of this matinee win didn’t much regret their decision. A win’s a win, whenever and wherever you take it in.
by Jason Fry on 11 June 2026 10:37 am Hey, from my perspective the Mets looked great Wednesday night.
Perhaps that’s because I was on the East River in a kayak for the opening innings, went out to get pizza once I got home, and then watched the Knicks given how things were going. End result: I watched the game for about six minutes and during that time I saw Francisco Alvarez connect for a homer and the Mets outscore the Cardinals by two.
If only baseball worked that way, right?
I’d be embarrassed, but given the outcome, my life choices were uncharacteristically good ones. Kayaking is good for body and soul. The Knicks … well, wow. Meanwhile, there are only so many pixels one can spill on what’s wrong with David Peterson this time and whether that should be the Mets’ problem to fix, and only so rhapsodic one can wax about not-bad garbage-time innings from Jonathan Pintaro or Alvarez looking like the hitter he can be between stints on the injured list.
The Mets simply aren’t very interesting right now; they’re like the doomed programming other networks put up against the Oscars … or the Knicks. Until the Mets are watchable again, hey, the world is full of wonders and there’s no shame in discovering them.
by Jason Fry on 9 June 2026 10:47 pm Just the other day the Mets rode some goodwill across the country from San Diego, goodwill that lingered through an off-day in which the Knicks took up all the city’s oxygen anyway, but was still ready to be tapped at Citi Field on a lovely Tuesday night.
Well, so much for that.
The Mets squandered all that goodwill early with a fallen souffle of a game in which they looked inert against a Cardinals team that played with verve and dash and an agreeable recklessness. The Cardinals made superb plays on defense, stole a run against a flat-footed Marcus Semien and Jared Young, and battered Freddy Peralta on an off-night. Going into this season, the rebuilding Cards looked like a lead-pipe cinch to record consecutive full-year losing seasons for the first time since Eisenhower was president, a pretty astonishing run. Instead they’re in the hunt, playing with the pinch-me confidence of a young team that’s arrived early and is betting with house money.
They’re fun to watch, where the Mets are too often unwatchable.
Games like this happen, and the wisest thing would be to advance one’s mental calendar to Wednesday and be done with it. Which I’m trying to do, except for one thing that keeps annoying me, and that’s Freddy Peralta.
Peralta has been … fine. His numbers are pretty good (though they weren’t tonight). He generally keeps the Mets in games (though he didn’t tonight). But I’m not that annoyed about tonight — again, games like this happen. What annoys me, and I now realize has been annoying me more and more all year, is that Peralta was billed as this great get and instead he’s been … just a guy. He’s felt interchangeable and replaceable, a No. 3 starter whose contract status should be on the Mets’ to-do list somewhere down around “touch up stadium paint.”
I don’t know why I have it in for Peralta. He’s personable enough and thoughtful about his craft, and God knows plenty of his fellow imports have been too fragile to take the field or less than impressive when they do. (Seriously, I have no need to ever see Jorge Polanco again.) But Peralta just leaves me cold, and makes me wish I was watching Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat try to figure things out alongside the rest of the Mets’ kiddie corps.
A look at the stats is a reminder to be careful what you wish for: Sproat has been battered as a Brewer and Williams isn’t exactly tearing it up in Nashville. Still, those two at least have futures one can imagine being excited about. When every fifth day rolls around and I realize Peralta’s pitching again, I think, “Him again?” I have questions about a lot of aspects of David Stearns’ offseason plan, but I’m pretty sure that reaction wasn’t what he had in mind.
by Jason Fry on 8 June 2026 10:05 pm Emily and I were up in Massachusetts for our high-school reunion and so missed both the good vibes of Friday night’s game and the disappointment of Saturday’s clunker. Plus we drove up Thursday night, which was an off-day, spent by the Mets in their usual posture of wandering the West Coast.
Even in a season that’s been lousy and threatens to become lost, I don’t like missing the Mets. And I never like a long car ride without a ballgame for company. Baseball is lots of things – a welcome diversion, a sporting event, an art form, a metaphor for far too many things – but perhaps above all other things, it’s good company.
So Sunday was a relief on multiple levels: The finale in San Diego (and the Mets’ last West Coast game of the season, though I suppose let’s add a “regular” qualifier there out of loyalty) began with us in the car making our way toward the city, along with what felt like the population of a fair-sized province in China. Which was OK, because there were the Mets, right where we’d left them.
Even better, there were the Mets doing things one actually wanted to witness. They got off to an early 1-0 lead. They escaped an early jam. They got another home run from Marcus Semien, who seems to quietly have had surgery to remove the large fork from his back that had hampered his early-season play. They got good bulk work from Sean Manaea, who’s little by little regaining the velocity and bite on his pitches. And they kept after it – after newly minted Padres annoyance Freddy Fermin cut the lead in half with a two-run homer, the Mets coolly riposted with solo shots from MJ Melendez and Carson Benge. In the end, they walked away with a fairly sweat-free 7-3 win.
Benge was all over this game: 5 for 5, missing only the double for a cycle. Benge was utterly lost in April, looking saucer-eyed and overmatched at the plate. Only injuries kept him from a demotion to the minors, and that didn’t feel like a kindness with the rest of the team at sea. There are tough lessons one has to learn to survive in the big leagues; there’s also being left to drown, and for a while it sure felt like Benge had been abandoned to that fate, with potentially dire effects on his development.
But at least on this score, the Mets knew what they were doing. Benge kept saying the right things and kept working and kept learning, and all of a sudden the kid who was drowning is hitting a very much above-water .265 and you can’t imagine the lineup without him. The same goes for the outfield, where he’s become a capable wingman to A.J. Ewing – another young player who’s quietly gone about his business and moved from question-mark prospect to lineup mainstay. Ewing was notable on Sunday too, streaking into deep left-center to pocket a drive ticketed for the alley and turn it into just another out.
Apologies to Tug McGraw, but I have trouble believing this Mets team will force me to keep my October calendar open – too many injuries, too many misfit mercenaries, too many misalignments and misfortunes. But I am thoroughly enjoying watching Benge and Ewing grow into themselves. Their tomorrows look bright – it’s easier and easier to imagine them as Mets mainstays – but their todays are enjoyable too. You can dream on what they’ll become, but they’re already good company.
by Greg Prince on 7 June 2026 11:42 am One final late night West Coast start for 2026 awaited. Its contents were a mystery at its beginning, but you couldn’t be blamed if you sensed in advance something would go awry. Escaping the Metsian temporal cul-de-sac is rarely a breeze.
Saturday. San Diego. After dark. You don’t have to be Joe Piscopo to report that trouble likely lurks. Petco Park houses Turner Field, Pac Bell Park, and Miller Park energy, cited for venues gone or since rechristened that unleashed recurring stretches of bad Metsian energy over long periods of time. Dodger Stadium has been like that in the past decade, though that may be more about the Dodgers being the home team. Petco has traditionally sheltered a walkoff doggo just out of sight ready to bite. Billy Wagner knew it. Francisco Rodriguez knew it. Edwin Diaz discovered it. Devin Williams didn’t have to, because Austin Warren got to the mound first. He didn’t even wait until the eighth, let alone the ninth. The game wasn’t over as Austin sought a third out in his first inning of work, but it might as well have been.
In the bottom of the seventh, with the Mets ahead by a slender run, Warren gave up a two-run homer that can be described as plump to Padres catcher Freddy Fermin. I know it can be described as plump, because I went to Merriam-Webster’s website and searched antonyms for slender. My whole life I’ve been hearing about slender one-run leads, yet no obvious opposite to “slender” that came to mind seemed appropriate. I don’t know that “plump” does, either. I do know that once Fermin, who is now batting .133, got hold of what Warren served up, the Mets’ lead had turned from slender to non-existent. Therefore, with Fermin taking Warren uncomfortably deep and no effective Met response in the offing, it was time to prepare our good nights.
Good night, Nolan McLean’s six gritty innings of one-run ball.
Good night, standoff with Old Friend™ Griffin Canning, who went five and gave up just one run.
Good night, highlight reel play from special teams All-Pro Luis Torrens, yet again executing one of his core backup catcher competencies, quashing a double-steal attempt by turning a runner (Sung Mun-Song) breaking for home back toward third, transforming the whole thing into a 2-5-1 putout to end the fifth.
Good night, Marcus Semien in the role of something approximating hero for the solo homer he delivered in the top of the seventh off Bradgley Rodriguez to make the score Mets 2 Padres 1. It was Semien’s seventh dinger of the season, which is many as his trade partner Brandon Nimmo has accumulated for Texas. Marcus outpoints Brandon in RBIs, 24 to 22. Brandon has scored one more run than Marcus, 26 to 25. So the trade to date is a draw, right? Nimmo’s WAR, per Baseball-Reference, is 1.5. Semien’s? Despite our being reminded regularly of his defensive wizardry (usually when he misses another ball he supposedly gets to 99 times out of 100), Marcus’s bWAR wallows at -0.3. Also, Nimmo’s Texas team has clawed its way into playoff position. The Mets’ participation in the postseason stakes remains purely hypothetical. Marcus Semien may not be the mature differencemaker he was portrayed as, but he does have seven home runs.
Incidentally, Marcus Semien used to play for a team in the American League West, which means he faced pitchers who pitched for teams in the American League West more often in the course of those seasons than he did pitchers who pitched for teams from other divisions. This seems to come up on TV and radio every time Marcus bats against a longstanding Mariner or former Angel. On Saturday night, Keith Raad mentioned Semien is no stranger to facing Canning the erstwhile Halo. I believe I heard something similar mentioned when Marcus stepped in versus George Kirby in Seattle. The same basic thing gets said regarding our myriad former Brewers vis-à-vis anybody who’s hung around the Cardinals or Pirates for a couple of years. I’ve decided to let this factoid invocation get on my baseball nerves if not my real ones, for it doesn’t really unlock untold insight about this player or that. Marcus Semien does not possess the key to eternal understanding of the universe because he is 10-for-31 lifetime versus Canning, nor is his inner morality suspect because he is 4-for-29 in his career when batting against Kirby. It all sounds revealing. I’m not convinced it shows much
Brandon Nimmo had more plate appearances (70) against Aaron Nola — a modern NL East mound stalwart if ever there was one — than any other pitcher he faced as a Met. Yet he was traded out of Nola’s division to face an array of Mariners, Angels, and So Forths. Semien left behind all that experience taking on Astros and Athletics. And?
And Freddy Fermin is 1-for-2 lifetime against Austin Warren. Warren got Fermin on a flyout in 2023 when Austin was an Angel and Fermin was a Royal. Had that outcome been a true template for their most recent encounter, the Mets might not have lost to the Padres, 3-2, on Saturday night in San Diego, and I wouldn’t have minded staying awake for one last late night West Coast start in 2026.
by Greg Prince on 6 June 2026 10:55 am The Mets are 3-0 in Friday night West Coast games in 2026. Maybe they should schedule some more of them. Or maybe we should just play every Friday night from 9:40 PM Eastern time forward, regardless of locale. The same team that toppled the Giants in San Francisco on a Friday night in April and edged the Angels in Los Angeles of Anaheim on a Friday night in May pounded the Padres in San Diego on a Friday night in June. If that’s not a trend, it’s at least a trendlet. Reserving one of these spots every month for the rest of the season would seem to loom as imperative.
What’s that? We’re out of Friday nights on the West Coast? Actually, that makes sense. It was bizarre and absurd — bizsurd, too — that we winged west over and over and over and over to get this season off the ground. Perhaps the surfeit of transcontinental travel contributed to the Mets falling on their collective face early and often, sprinkling of Friday night successes notwithstanding. The Mets have played 27 games on these four trips thus far. Not all of them have been in the Pacific Time Zone, but each has been wrapped up in the same hither-and-yon itinerary. Their record in (deep breath) St. Louis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Anaheim, Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, and San Diego (let it out) between March 30 and June 5 is 11-16, with two Petco dates remaining.
That feels somewhere between not as bad as one could have expected and emblematic of a team that can’t quite manufacture momentum. Unless the latter is what they’re beginning to do now, what with winning in Seattle on Wednesday afternoon before flying south. It’s hard to gauge, considering Friday nights in California seem to define the Mets’ small sample size sweet spot.
 On this particular Friday past dusk in the Golden State, Lesley Gore, having celebrated warm California nights nearly sixty years ago, might have been moved to sing some new verses to acknowledge all the Metsian wonders sprouting along The Coast. Jared Young belted a homer to lead off the second inning. Bo Bichette tripled in the Mets’ second run of the evening in the third. Luis Torrens earned his first donning of the home run hard hat with a two-run shot that highlighted the fifth. And Christian Scott is suddenly making a habit of notching Ws. The righty went five-and-two-thirds, pulled with two out and two on in the sixth, up 4-0. No doom followed his exit, as Huascar Brazobán informed the Padres in no uncertain terms, “It’s my party, and I’ll get out of this jam if I want to.”
HB mowed down SD in the seventh as well. I didn’t see that, nor the zeros wrought by Luke Weaver in the eighth and A.J. Minter in the ninth. I also missed Brett Baty driving in A.J. Ewing after Ewing singled and stole two bases versus the usually untouchable Mason Miller, because, well, live from California, it was Friday night. Nodding off comes with the territory, no matter that the territory became the land of a Mets 5 Padres 0 final once the wee hours arrived.
One more late-night start in San Diego tonight. One more long flight back to New York tomorrow. Then first pitches that don’t automatically augur yawns. I won’t miss the challenge of staying awake. I won’t mind more Friday night wins.
by Greg Prince on 4 June 2026 9:30 am Based on where the Seattle Mariners went last season and where the Seattle Mariners sit this season, it is fair to say that on Wednesday afternoon at T-Mobile Park, the New York Mets beat a playoff or at least playoff-caliber team. The Mariners made the postseason in 2025 and lead their division in 2026. The Mets missed the postseason in 2025 and linger in last place as 2026 goes along. Until further notice, the Mets’ only association with the concept of playoffs will come from interacting with teams in position to make them.
On days like Wednesday, you can tell yourself they are serving notice that they plan to strive toward being one of them. On Wednesday, it was they who looked like a team with which to be reckoned. Seattle couldn’t reckon with Freddy Peralta for six innings, or Bo Bichette getting four hits, or A.J. Ewing posting the first three-hit game of his nascent career. They couldn’t reckon with a double-steal attempt executed to a tee by Carson Benge, who swiped home, and Juan Soto, who slid into second safely. They were wrecked for good when Jared Young drove in Soto to build the Mets a 5-1 lead in the fourth. New York left town with a decisive 7-1 win.
What was so decisive about it? It compelled me to decide to look at the Mets’ record after 62 games and do a bit of baseball math. Baseball math recognizes 62 as 100 games distant from the completion of a regulation regular season. The Mets through 62 games have been, to put it kindly, unremarkable, having gone 27-35. Also unremarkable: the marine layer of National League teams above them, specifically the clubs that don’t lead a division.
Forget about the NL division leaders, except for when they are Met opponents. Atlanta is in another stratosphere right now. The Mets haven’t played the Braves once. Maybe that’s foreboding. Maybe that’s good timing. The Braves could hardly be any better than they’ve been to date (42-20). We’ll get them when they cool down. Yeah, that’s the ticket. We haven’t seen the first-place Brewers (37-22), and we still await the pleasure of a visit from the first-place Dodgers (40-22). That makes 22 games against teams I’ve just advised forgetting about. Precautionary selective amnesia will be helpful.
Back to that marine layer. It’s very foggy up there in the Wild Card standings. Who’s the powerhouse? Who’s the sure thing? Who’s ready to take command and make reservations for October? You can’t tell. It’s too foggy. At the moment, the three NL clubs that can claim Wild Card leadership are all in the same murky boat. The Padres (the Mets’ next opponent), Cardinals, and Pirates each paddle along four games above .500. On their heels or their hulls or whatever metaphor you choose, are the Diamondbacks and Phillies, each three games above .500; followed by the Cubs, two games above .500; the Reds, one game above .500; and the Nationals, one game below .500. That makes eight teams within two-and-a-half games of one another for three playoff spots.
Then come the Marlins, who have crept back ahead of us by a game-and-a-half despite our having swept the gills out of them a few days ago. Then there’s us. We — funny how the first-person plural gets trotted out after a decisive win — are six games behind those three leaders in the foggy regatta. Lotta nautical traffic ahead, but if any of the other vessels floating out there has a motor attached to it, they sure haven’t revved it up. The Phillies, another outfit we haven’t directly encountered yet, had to win like crazy to approach mediocre waters after a start that was even worse than ours. Maybe they’ve already played their best ball. Or maybe they haven’t, but that’s OK, because that’s why Rob Manfred sanctioned three Wild Cards. (The commissioner also blesses Interleague play, and we still have some challenging assignments left on the schedule where that’s concerned, if no further trips to far away outposts like Seattle after this weekend in San Diego).
Everybody in the NL who isn’t the Giants or Rockies has a better record than the Mets, and it’s not as if they are static actors here. If three of those above us take off, and the three division leaders don’t drastically fall apart, well, enjoy the view from down below. But the Mets, freshly minted 7-1 winners over a playoff-caliber team from the other league, are absolutely eligible to make a move upward. One-hundred games remain to do something in that direction.
History suggests that the 2026 Mets will win somewhere between 24 and 66 of their final 100 games. The most any Mets team has ever won of their last hundred was 66, which happened in 1969. The 1969 Mets were legendarily 100-to-1 long shots to win the pennant. Imagine the odds you could have gotten that they’d win nearly two of every three of last their 100 games. Bowie Kuhn would have looked askance at such gambling parlance. Rob Manfred will gladly take your parlay and blow on your dice for luck if you ask. Given that 1969 was a once-in-a-lifetime baseball experience, let’s bet the 2026 Mets won’t match the franchise record of 66-34 down the 100-game stretch.
Let’s also be optimistic that the 2026 Mets will better the franchise low of 24-76, established by the 1962 Mets. What, you were gonna bet somebody else lost more of their final 100? Sometimes the obvious wager is the right one.
So somewhere between 24 wins at the low end and 66 at the high end is what we can look forward to the 27-35 Mets adding between now and the end of the season, pending any rainout that doesn’t get made up. That doesn’t happen too often anymore, but it has in the past, thus when I looked at last 100 games of a Met season for every Met season, I took “last 100 games” literally. In 1962, the Mets played 160 games to a decision, so that 24-76 reflects games 61 through 160. In 1988, the Mets weren’t bothered to make up two rainouts, so ditto. Same for the handful of 161-game seasons, the two strike-impacted seasons (1972 and 1995) that can be said to have had full enough campaigns (156 and 144 games, respectively), and the 163-game epic that was 1999. For this exercise, I opted to ignore ties. Mostly, when we refer to last 100 games, it means Game 63 through Game 162.
Here are the thirteen best records compiled by Mets teams over their final 100 games of a season:
1969: 66-34
1986: 64-36
1999: 64-36
1985: 63-37
1988: 62-38
2024: 62-38
2022: 61-39
1987: 60-40
2000: 60-40
2008: 59-41
1990: 58-42
2006: 58-42
2015: 57-43
Notice an overwhelmingly common denominator? Nine of these thirteen Mets teams went to the playoffs. The other four made things interesting, if aggravating. The baseline here is a .570 winning percentage, or a 92-win pace when extrapolated for a 162-game season. Play at a 92-win pace all season in the three-Wild Card era, you don’t have to worry about keeping busy come early fall. It helps if you don’t completely fall apart during your first 62 games, though the presence of the 2024 Mets in this group indicates falling apart as the season is taking shape isn’t always a dealbreaker. The 2024 Mets had the same 27-35 record the 2026 Mets do currently. If the 2024 Mets may not have quite represented a once-in-a-lifetime baseball experience à la 1969, yet it might be a bit much to ask for a statistical replica of what they did a mere two years after the fact. Then again, 1973 happened only four years after 1969, and with inflation, two years may be the new four.
Usually, however, a team playing like the 2026 Mets have through 62 games is showing its true colors. The 1996 Mets, for example, also went 27-35, a pace that would work out to 71-91 over 162 games. When the 1996 Mets finished playing their 162nd game, their record was 71-91. Other Mets squads stuck in the same strain of mud — 1977, 1980, and 2003 — saw their overall winning percentage only dip over the long haul.
If you mess around a little early and don’t put on a 100-game surge for the ages, you can still get where you want to go. It doesn’t happen frequently, but it has happened twice. You do have to get blazingly hot eventually. The 2016 Mets built on a respectable but not otherworldly 32-28 start by going a respectable but not otherworldly 53-47 in their final 100, highlighted by a 27-12 run late. They wound up with one of the two National League Wild Cards. The patron saints of statistical outliers, the 1973 Mets, were 28-33 after 61 games, the exact same mark held by their successors in 1978, 1994, 2004, 2014, and 2017. The 1994 Mets went on strike after 113 games. Nobody in this cohort finished with a winning record. The 1973 Mets? They didn’t exactly catch fire as of Game 62 and keep burning clear to Game 161. They went 54-46, good for an 87-win pace over 162 games. Eighty-seven wins was sufficient to make the playoffs in 2016. Eighty-two wins, boosted by a very timely 21-8 step up, was sufficient to win the division in 1973. That’s what the Mets had after adding 54-46 to 28-33 and totaling 82-79 in an NL East where nobody else put together enough successful season segments in the correct proportions to top them. The 161-game math worked so well that Game 162, when the grounds at Wrigley were suddenly judged soggy, was deemed unnecessary.
Some Mets teams that finished fairly strong, including the 1976 Mets (56-44), the 2001 Mets (56-44), and 2019 Mets (56-44), can only look back and rue that they didn’t start a little better or benefit from a more generous dispersal of playoff spots. I doubt the 1976 Mets, 2001 Mets, or 2019 Mets gather specifically to look back and rue, but I do like the image, provided they eventually brush aside their shortcomings and instead relish that they put together pretty nice stretches of baseball. Actually, I think it would be nice if each individual Met team got together.
Hey, Flynnie!
Hey, Swannie!
Have you seen Bomback?
He’s right over there by the crab puffs with Pacella.
Oh, man, his hat fell right onto the tray. Same old Johnny! Oh wait, he’s coming right here.
Hey Doug! Hey Craig! What are you guys giggling about?
Nothing, John. Nothing at all.
More relevantly, the only Mets team still in action can’t do anything about their tepid launch. The 2026 Mets are 27-35. History hasn’t shunted them aside, but history isn’t doing them any favors. Fortunately, history won’t matter if they can make great hay from their next 100 games…and not too many NL competitors do the same.
Baseball math can be complex, but it’s simple enough if you just start winning and basically don’t stop.
by Greg Prince on 3 June 2026 11:04 am “Give me the name of a baseball player.”
“Darryl Strawberry.”
“No, a real one!”
—Frasier and Martin Crane, Frasier, “A Cranes’ Critique,” Season 4, Episode 4, October 22, 1996
Dr. Frasier Crane and his brother Dr. Niles Crane, haughty denizens of Cafe Nervosa that they are, would probably shudder if the jingle for what they’d likely consider a pedestrian consumer product morphed into their private earworm (Frasier leaned more toward orchestral arrangements, certainly when it came to the theme for his own radio show). Yet after spending late Tuesday night with several of my senses focused on the Mets’ visit to their Pacific Northwest hometown, all I can hear in my head is the theme for a very unchic coffee, albeit with lyrics reflecting what I’d been watching with my own eyes.
The best part of stayin’ up
Is fly balls in their gloves!
Unlike the Crane Boys, I’m no connoisseur of coffee — never touch the stuff — but I have been beset by the recently revived Folgers tune. Saw a commercial featuring it, been humming it yet not regretting it, because I have repurposed it into an appreciation for the only element keeping me awake as the Mets otherwise continue to snooze in Seattle.
 “No, Niles, not the Met. The Mets. I don’t know what they are, either, but Dad seemed agitated by their presence.” It’s the fly balls and line drives hit to center and right, the fly balls and line drives that stay in the air just long enough to stoke dread, the fly balls and line drives ultimately chased down by A.J. Ewing in center and Carson Benge in right. I’m getting to the point where I’m stimulated as if by a burst of caffeine following those youngsters as they rush after them; home in on them; and place them in the out column. I count five such episodes from the Mets’ 8-3 defeat at the hands of the Mariners Tuesday. Three Ewing caught. Two were reeled in by Benge. Five vignettes of Whoa, that could be trouble, but wait, here comes a dashing, heroic figure determined to thwart impending doom. Suspense. Climax. Denouement. Prosaic on the scorecard, poetry in motion.
That’s for the balls that demonstrated the good graces to remain with the unfamiliar confines of T-Mobile Park. The fly balls that impolitely soared over its fences, ones that none among Ewing or Benge or, for that matter, Juan Soto could do anything about…well, they were a problem. Three problems altogether, accounting for six runs. And sublime outfield defense was of no use when, on the infield, a throw from Marcus Semien at first went “KABLOOEY!” and a stab by Mark Vientos at first went “CLANK!”, and Randy Arozarena went “CLOMP!” as his feet crossed home plate shortly thereafter.
The sound effects were not working in the Mets’ favor. The pitching was not working in the Mets’ favor. Benge’s two homers, each a solo blast, weren’t enough to overcome those definitive shots produced by Patrick Wisdom, Jhonny Pereda, and Julio Rodriguez. The worst part of stayin’ up was most of the game, actually.
Still, those kids and their fielding. Some nights that’s enough to keep ya dreamin’.
by Jason Fry on 2 June 2026 12:28 am What the Mets did to anger the baseball gods is an interesting question. So is what they did to MLB’s schedule makers.
There they were playing in the middle of the night on the other side of the country, starting their fourth West Coast trip of what’s still a young season, and given all that I’m surprised it went as well as it did.
The Mets got solid pitching from Sean Manaea and a pack of relievers, more superb defense from Brett Baty and A.J. Ewing, and solo homers from Jared Young and Marcus Semien. Unfortunately they got nothing else — those two solo shots were their only hits of the evening. Meanwhile, the Mariners countered with two solo homers of their own (plus two other hits, the showoffs), meaning the game went to the 10th tied.
I was watching blearily as Juan Soto failed to advance the Manfred Man, AKA Bo Bichette, and Gabe Speier ate Mark Vientos and Ewing alive. That brought A.J. Minter to the hill to try and contain the Mariners, and you could feel doom descend even before it arrived. Stolen base, little single to left, and the ballgame was over.
Honestly, I’d have forgiven the Mets a far worse showing. Fourth West Coast trip of the year on the first day of June? The Mets have spent a lot of nights in 2026 digging their own graves, but what did they do to deserve that?
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