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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 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.
by Jason Fry on 8 April 2026 8:26 am So there had to be a few Mets fans who popped up from the couch Tuesday afternoon, with the top of the fifth inning just concluded, to hit the loo, walk the dog or perform some other mundane task. Perhaps they did so with a certain spring in their step: Huascar Brazoban had just rescued Freddy Peralta from harm, erasing Adrian Del Castillo with a pitch that ticked the inside corner to strand the bases full and preserve the Mets’ two-run lead.
Hey you … guess what?
It’s 2026, and the era of ABS is upon us. Del Castillo challenged the strike call, and on further review strike three was rechristened a ball.
I wasn’t in the loo, walking a dog or trying to both at the same time. (You do you, but not advisable.) I was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, following the game via Howie Rose and my airpods, part of a by-hook-or-by-crook regimen that had taken me from semi-clandestine video window at work to MLB Audio while walking across lower Manhattan, with my TV waiting for me at home, to be followed by another semi-clandestine video window during a Zoom meeting. Hey, move a game up to 4 pm on account of winds and general yuckiness and your recapper must adapt.
With ABS having dropped Brazoban back in the soup, I sighed and hoped for the best: Brazoban has come a long way in terms of reliability, but still gets saucer-eyed when extra obstacles appear in his path. And, indeed, he left a ball in the middle of the plate to Del Castillo, who turned it into a two-run single. That was followed by a little parachute that became an unlikely Nolan Arenado RBI double, and suddenly the Mets were looking uphill.
The game became a battle of the bullpens, with the Mets looking for a hole in Arizona’s. And enter a new storyline: Carlos Mendoza pulls the right levers.
I mean, seriously. If you asked me for an assessment of Mendoza’s time in Flushing, I’d give him high marks for handling his clubhouse and then look a little pained when it came to grade him on in-game tactics. But starting in San Francisco, everything’s been coming up Mendy. (Managerial leveling up? Better advice from lieutenants? Just lucky? Show your work, kids.)
In the eighth, Jorge Polanco singled off Jonathan Loaisiga (boy did I not spell that one right the first time around) and Brett Baty moved pinch-runner Tyrone Taylor to third with one out. That brought up Mark Vientos, the just-concluded road trip’s newly minted hero, but Mendy considered Vientos’s wheels and Loaisiga’s groundball rate and opted for lefty Jared Young instead. Young connected, and while it was too cold and nasty for a home run, his sac fly brought in Taylor to tie the game.
The Mets came within a whisker of winning conventionally in the ninth, but Jorge Barrosa made a circus catch to rob Carson Benge of what would have been a leadoff double, triple or possibly even a Little League home run. It was time for free baseball, and when Luke Weaver kept the Manfred Man from scoring in the top of the 10th the Mets had their chance.
In came Arizona’s Paul Sewald, and I admit to cackling nastily. I never had anything personally against Sewald during his Mets tenure, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to see him, perhaps because he was — at least among relievers — the Jonah-est Jonah ever to Jonah. (I explored this star-crossed status a few years ago in our A Met for All Seasons series, and c’mon, aren’t you dying to relive the 2017 Mets?)
Sewald eventually escaped the Mets and seemed to escape Jonahdom as well, becoming at least semi-reliable in Seattle and then in Arizona and then returning to Citi Field and further endearing himself to us by trying to settle old scores. (Not that I blame him, completely: He was one of many Mets of this baffling, dispiriting era who was encouraged to pitch against his strengths.)
Not to get all Brian McCann, but there’s a reason you don’t egg on the fans, and in the 10th that reason presented itself to Sewald in the form of Francisco Lindor on third, one out, and the just-recalled Ronny Mauricio — another all-but-forgotten Met — summoned to the plate to pinch-hit for Tyrone Taylor.
Sewald threw a four-seamer at the top of the zone that Mauricio swung through, got a foul ball to go up in the count 0-2, and then put his ear to the pitch com to plot his next move. Slider in the dirt, right? I mean, Sewald’s gotten a lot of mileage out of that pitch since leaving New York. But Sewald shook his head twice. Catcher Gabriel Moreno rose partially out of his crouch, mitt held way above the top of the strike zone: a high fastball, meant to bait Mauricio into swinging under it.
Well, maybe, except Sewald missed his location by a foot, leaving a pitch in the middle of the plate for Mauricio to send over the right-fielder’s head, one bounce to the periphery of the Cadillac Club.
Welcome back, Ronny.
Take that, Paul.
And as for the game, well, in hindsight we ABSolutely had it all the way, didn’t we?
by Greg Prince on 6 April 2026 2:44 pm “This is Ellis Island here, people. I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, whether your relatives came over on the fucking Mayflower or on an inner tube from Haiti. This right here is the land of opportunity.”
—Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street
Tom Seaver was from Fresno, California. Bud Harrelson and Tug McGraw were from somewhere in the same state. Jerry Koosman hailed from Minnesota. Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee were The Mets from Mobile. Ron Swoboda was, ironically, from Baltimore. Jim McAndrew was a product of Lost Nation, Iowa. Ed Kranepool graduated from James Monroe High School in the Bronx. Alvin, Texas, gave us Nolan Ryan.
With the exception of absorbing from the back of a baseball card that Ron Taylor called Toronto home, every Met when I was first a Mets fan was from one of the United States of America. It was information about the Mets, so I welcomed having it, but I otherwise gave any individual Met’s background little thought. They were in New York and they were Mets. That was all I needed to know.
That stance has stood mostly unchanged, even as Mets have come to New York from an array of other countries. Once they’re Mets, they’re Mets, and are therefore Metropolitan-Americans to me. If I didn’t embrace the World Baseball Classic upon its introduction in 2006, it was because I couldn’t grasp as anything but deleterious to our greater good the idea of Mets leaving the Mets, even during the extended meaninglessness of the Spring Training schedule, and taking on an alternate identity. They’d be playing for their countries, which I translated as playing for assorted teams that weren’t the Mets and playing against assorted teams that weren’t the Mets but that also had Mets on them.
Wright of Team USA might be sliding hard into Reyes of Team Dominicana? Or vice-versa? Beltran or Delgado playing for Team Puerto Rico might not hesitate to take out either one of them?
Guys, stop it! You’re Mets! Slide hard into Braves!
 A month later, the WBC enters the thought process. My particular parochial aversion to the so-called Classic has mostly melted. When the WBC came around this Spring, I didn’t worry about pitting Met against Met. Pitting Met against injury was a thought that continued to haunt from 2023, but nobody in the Mets’ immediate plans went down celebrating his temporary team’s good fortune this time around, yippee. I also instinctively wondered about pitting Met against diverted focus, though baseball players seem to be nimble enough of mind to exchange uniforms for a couple of weeks before again donning the orange and blue and remembering, no matter which flag they salute, they’re Mets.
I watched a bunch of the WBC in March when it was as big a story as any going in sports. I watched crowds everywhere wave flags and make noise. I watched Team Italia down shots of espresso after taking opposing pitchers downtown. I watched Team USA manager Mark DeRosa lose track of the standings. I watched Nolan McLean acquit himself decently if not dominantly twice. I watched Team Venezuela win it all. Then I pretty much forgot about the whole thing once the swallows returned to Port St. Lucie. Spring Training resumed in earnest. Its meaningless schedule concluded. And, before we knew it, we were ten games deep inside the regular season, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on a month earlier.
Yet during the tenth game of the current campaign that counts, the World Baseball Classic re-entered my thought process, as I noticed what an international flavor the Mets-Giants contest from San Francisco carried. I guess every game in the major leagues these days carries an international flavor, but because of the recency of the WBC, the accents in action really grabbed my attention.
The Mets were led to an Easter Sunday victory by, among others, Mark Vientos, who was born in Connecticut and raised in Florida but represented Team Nicaragua in March (WBC parameters regarding heritage being what they are); Jared Young, a part of Team Canada in the global tournament; and Kodai Senga, a Team Japan veteran from 2017. Vientos has been on a heater that could warm all of North and Central America. Young has been an offensive and defensive revelation. Senga is Senga again, going toe to toe for five-and-two-thirds with Team USA’s lead starter Logan Webb until the sixth. Young was 3-for-3 with a circus catch in and a brilliant throw from left; Vientos drove in the first and fourth runs of an eventual 5-2 win.
Let us not overlook the contributions of Jorge Polanco of the Dominican Republic, who overcame his Achilles issues to leg out a key double to start the Mets’ pivotal seventh-inning rally; Luis Robert, Jr., born in Cuba and sliding around a tag at second base to keep Met momentum going on a gutsy steal attempt; and the enormous pinch-double from Venezuelan Luis Torrens that drove in both Robert and Polanco’s pinch-runner Tyrone Taylor, giving the Mets a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. Marcus Semien, from the same neck of the Northern California woods as Harrelson and McGraw way back when, drove home Luis to top off the most satisfying inning the 2026 Mets have played to date.
Let it be noted that Taylor ran for Polanco the DH and Torrens hit for Young the left fielder in a righty-lefty switch. With Juan Soto and Brett Baty sitting out hopefully slight injuries, Taylor and Torrens were the entirety of Carlos Mendoza’s bench. Mendy’s machinations meant Taylor would have to replace Young on defense, and Torrens would have to take over for Francisco Alvarez behind the plate, meaning there’d be no designated hitter should Polanco’s spot in the order come around, no recourse if something happened to Torrens, and nobody other than a pitcher to back up anybody.
But Mendoza, who didn’t mind admitting he turned emotional when his native Venezuela captured the World Baseball Classic, managed the seventh inning of the season’s tenth game like it was the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series, and went for it. He made the changes that needed to be made, and they paid off. The same could be said on the pitching end of things, as he successfully deployed Huascar Brazoban of the Dominican Republic for an inning-and-a-third, followed by Floridian Luke Weaver and Missourian Devin Williams for a frame apiece. Williams, aided immeasurably by a torrid Torrens dart to second when Matt Chapman tried stealing second, got Jung Hoo Lee — born in Japan to a Korean baseball family before going on to star in the KBO — swinging for the final out.
I recently watched a documentary called When Soccer Came to America, which revisited the influx of international stars who elevated the NASL in the 1970s, which in turn seeded the sport’s growth in the decades ahead. I’m not a soccer fan, but I can say Pelé, Giorgio Chinaglia, and Franz Beckenbauer made me perk up to the Cosmos during my adolescence. Baseball can’t tell that kind of story, exactly, but a game like Sunday’s between the Mets and Giants indicates the sport we love flourishes these days because players from other places come here and continually help shape it anew. The WBC being a part of that process, no matter what happened to Edwin Diaz three years ago, means the WBC is probably more of a net-positive than I usually care to admit.
The Mets have fifteen US-born players on their 26-man roster. They also have one born in the United States commonwealth of Puerto Rico, one born in Canada, one born in Cuba, one born in Japan, two born in Venezuela, and five born in the Dominican Republic. All told, you know what that makes them?
The 2026 Mets who have won three in a row.
by Jason Fry on 5 April 2026 11:18 am You probably know by now, but if not, here’s a bedrock principle: Baseball makes no sense.
If you were going to draw up a blueprint for success, odds are you wouldn’t opt for, “Let’s play terrible baseball and then excise Juan Soto from the lineup.” But that blueprint worked pretty well on Saturday night, as the Mets pummeled the Giants 9-0. It felt like they scored all night, but actually the final tally was built via a pair of eruptive innings against the Gigantes, to use the nomenclature from the hosts’ alt-uniforms.
Leading the way were a pair of forgotten men: The all-but-discarded Mark Vientos kicked things off in the second with a double, the first of his three hits, and the Mets capitalized on some Gigantes defensive tomfoolery to put up a three-spot. (Maybe Matt Chapman should catch the fuckin’ ball.) In the fifth, Bo Bichette and Vientos notched RBI hits before outfield afterthought Tyrone Taylor launched a three-run homer to make further hostilities rather cosmetic. (The Mets ended their night by going down one two three against second baseman Christian Koss, which was actually pretty entertaining.)
Not that Clay Holmes needed much help: He was about as good as he’s looked in a Met uniform, backed up by Tobias Myers. Holmes feels somewhat overlooked in discussing the starting rotation’s travails, but he’s quietly been very good for a season-plus, adjusting from the bullpen to starting duties ably and then making strides this spring in pursuing greater efficiency, which one hopes will translate into more gas in the tank come summer and fall.
The Mets will finish up their first of too many West Coast trips today, with Kodai Senga facing off against Logan Webb, and then return home for an MDs-and-executives skull session about Soto and his balky calf. How will they fare on Sunday? Will Soto play Tuesday? How would I know? We’ve already established that baseball makes no sense.
by Greg Prince on 4 April 2026 1:27 pm Met victories were so plentiful Friday night in San Francisco — for the club as a whole, for Nolan McLean, for power hitting, for clutch hitting, for remaining awake — that one is tempted to relegate to footnote status the little matter of Juan Soto exiting the game early with tightness in his right calf and requiring imaging to know more.
We don’t want to know anything at all when it comes to anything that could keep Juan Soto out of the lineup for more than the eight innings he missed after feeling something on his first-inning trip from first base to third. All we want to know is Juan Soto is inked into the two-spot every single day, unless Juan Soto needs to be moved to the three-hole. The Mets have played eight games this year. Juan has hit in all eight of them, including the one he had to leave. Whatever shortfalls the Met offense has experienced haven’t been because Soto hasn’t been slashing. Juan’s line is .355/.412/.516. Let’s hope those numbers don’t stay static for very long.
That anxiety addressed, what swell ways the Mets found to stop sucking! What a flirtation with perfection McLean gave us! He was through two when I began to think about it. He wasn’t in the fifth before I began to monitor my own behavior for impact on his performance 3,000 miles west. I noticed the full counts and the rising number of pitches, but I was nonetheless internally admonishing Carlos Mendoza that he better not be thinking of taking out a pitcher with a perfect game in progress, not when I’m doing my best to help the pitcher along by standing over here rather than over there.
On a surface level, I was buying into the kid’s chances. Deep down, I suspected I was mostly going through the no-jinx motions, and, sure enough, the sixth inning ended the late-night dream. After fifteen Giants came and went with none reaching base, Nolie walked a guy, then another guy, then, after one out, gave up a hit and a run, and I permitted Mendy to go ahead do what he had to do. McLean was removed after 93 pitches, having given it his all for five-and-a-third mostly sparkling innings. Few pitchers who struggled for command within individual at-bats ever looked so commanding taking care of every at-bat. Francisco Alvarez eschewed the services of interpreter Alan Suriel to describe for Steve Gelbs the quality of his pitcher’s stuff. “Nasty,” he said in fluent baseballese. Sounds right. We’ll try this again soon, Nasty Nolan. You’re worth toothpicking the eyelids for in any time zone.
Also worthy of eschewing z’s for was the catcher as he belted not one but two home runs, part of the onslaught that supported McLean and his relief successors in a desperately needed 10-3 triumph. Desperation comes early when first pitch is at 10:15 back East and your team has been trying your patience at decent hours. The Mets who departed St. Louis with hardly any runs on their ledger got going quickly and kept going incessantly. Alvy was joined in the dinger column by Marcus Semien, who it turns out still owns a bat. The veteran delivered three hits and three runs batted in. Mark Vientos continued to be viable, going 2-for-3. Bo Bichette went 3-for-5. Fifteen hits in all, six of them with runners in scoring position. Oracle Park’s circling gulls had little left to pick over once the Mets got through with Giants pitchers.
We’ll stay up all night for a result like this one. We’d rather not have to watch what an MRI machine reveals regarding Juan’s right calf, but maybe we’ll get lucky on that outcome, too. Just to be safe, I’m gonna stand over there rather than over here while hoping for the best.
by Jason Fry on 3 April 2026 2:11 pm Annnnd we’ve reached another milestone a lot earlier than we might have hoped: the season’s first game that I recap belatedly because I can’t stand the thought of reliving it.
If you didn’t see Thursday night’s game, well, good on you for making better life choices than I did. The Mets largely didn’t hit, yet again — and one of their offensive stars (to bend a phrase nearly to breaking) was Mark Vientos, whom this front office has treated increasingly callously since he stumbled trying to build on what looked like a breakout year.
David Peterson‘s location was abysmal and he got strafed; Sean Manaea showed few indications that he’s due for a resurrection, perhaps not a surprise since there’s been no credible theory for how this miracle is to unfold. The defense was terrible again, with this night’s chief offenders Peterson and Marcus Semien, who have a reputation as sound gloves and aren’t even being asked to play out of position. And yet again there was a dispiriting air of general heads-up-the-assness to everything the Mets did. The final indignity? The Mets went down meekly against former mate Blade Tidwell, whom they discarded with barely concealed disdain last summer and who was returning to the big leagues for the first time since being shipped away.
The Mets’ season has gone from “wooo that was great” to “well that’s a little disappointing” to “ugh they look flat” to “WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKERS” with head-snapping speed. Baseball teams are never as bad as they look when they’re playing like this, but right now that old adage isn’t bringing much solace. I suspect that’s because we all watched this team be every bit as bad as they looked for more than three months last year, and it still rankles.
That’s unfair in a lot of ways — new year, new personnel — but until the Mets show us something convincingly different, it’s an assessment they’ll be stuck with, and one they’ll thoroughly deserve.
by Greg Prince on 2 April 2026 11:02 am When the Mets aren’t winning every day, everything they are doing badly glares, while everything they are doing well hardly matters to us. The Mets aren’t winning every day. Everything, therefore, feels terrible.
The starting pitchers are doing well, doing the most you could reasonably ask for, at any rate. None of them hasn’t lasted less than five innings, which after 2025 translates experientially to going at least eight and handing the ball to John Franco on a daily basis. So huzzah for adequate length out of the gate and nobody within our rotation singlehandedly shoving the Mets in a hole early. Freddy Peralta’s second start, in St. Louis on Wednesday, kept up a pace similar to the one he set on Opening Day. Freddy went five, bore down when he had to, and persevered into the sixth. Ace enough for now.
Juan Soto is batting .346, buoyed by his first homer of the season in the Busch Stadium finale. Luis Robert, Jr., who already won the Mets a game, has his average above .300. It’s a small sample size, but Mark Vientos has reached .400. Those digits look mighty good.
When closer Devin Williams has had something to close, he’s shut it effectively. Brooks Raley gives up big hits only in strange dreams. Most of the bullpen has pitched capably in innings that don’t begin with a phantom runner on second. If you’re not automatically shuddering when a Met reliever makes an appearance, you can infer Met relief isn’t necessarily lethal to the Mets cause.
Good stuff in several places. But the Mets aren’t winning every day. In fact, they’ve lost three of their past four games, including the most recent one, a 2-1 defeat that took ten innings to wind down to its inevitable conclusion.
Everything, therefore, feels and looks terrible.
There isn’t just one elephant in the room. There have been 53 of them in scoring position since Saturday. Only six of them have scored. The Mets’ RISP output Wednesday was 0-for-11. That’s eleven baserunners situated to score on a base hit, and no base hits delivered. That’s a lot of elephant mess left behind. Can’t get runs in during regulation, suddenly you’re playing extra innings practically every day. It’s a strain on the bullpen. It’s more pressure to do what isn’t being done, which is driving a runner in from a base like second…which they give you just for showing up in the tenth and eleventh innings.
After six games, most Mets aren’t hitting, and even the Mets who are hitting aren’t driving in runs consistently. Maybe six games shouldn’t be played before the second day of April. Blaming the calendar probably amounts to misplaced frustration, but on this day in 1984, the Mets opened their season on what was then the earliest date in their history. It took being the opponent in Cincinnati, the site granted the Baseball-wide Opener annually, for the Mets to be compelled to strap it on so soon. In the past decade, when COVID and lockouts haven’t lurked, March has emerged as the new April. It’s instinctually too soon to be this dismayed by how the Mets are playing. Honestly, last week’s Opening Day romp notwithstanding, it’s too soon for the Mets to be playing.
But they are, kind of. They’re not necessarily keeping track out of outs while in the field (Lindor) and not necessarily taking care as they wander off first base (Lindor again), though you understand such lapses are the aberration and will not be the norm. You force yourself to go through the self-evident exercise of reminding yourself that six games, let alone the first six games of a loooooong season, are only six games. A 3-3 record that could be better could also be worse. Mostly, it could be practically irrelevant in the scheme of the next 156 games, save for the nagging fact that every game counts.
We’ve mastered basic arithmetic. We know six isn’t nearly as many as 156. Yet MLB implores us to watch our team from the very beginning of a season and take it seriously enough to bet on, never mind that we have conditioned ourselves from a tender age to wager nothing less valuable than our emotions on most every pitch. It’s not too soon to notice when something is off. It’s never too soon to turn such a situation around.
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