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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 5 July 2026 12:12 pm Before the Mets fell — and I do mean fell — in Atlanta on Saturday night, 14-3 (Pete Gogolak connected for a late field goal, but those two Falcon touchdowns were too much to overcome), Juan Soto was named as a starting outfielder to the National League All-Star team. This might be a fact worthy of sustained celebration had the Mets not just lost, 14-3, for their twelfth defeat in their fourteen most recent attempts at not being defeated. But good for Juan being voted in by fans everywhere. It’s nice to know being the most recognizable player on these particular New York Mets hasn’t totally sullied his brand.
During the game in which Mets lost by eleven to the first-place team they now trail by seventeen, there was little to commend, but I’m of a mind to tip a cap to Sean Manaea, starting pitcher. The Mets during their eerie bookend phase (38-55 to end last year, now 36-53 to begin this year) have shown a knack for transforming established starters into staff nomads. I suppose the pitchers have done it to themselves just as much. David Peterson was an All-Star starter midway through 2025. He wandered into an undefined bullpen role, never to fully return to form. Kodai Senga, 2023 All-Star, is currently a man without a routine. Manaea, who earned Cy Young support in 2024 as the closest thing the Mets had to an ace, was stranded in that leaky boat when 2026 started. He wasn’t a reliever, yet there he was, soaking up odd innings in the pen, sometimes making progress, sometimes regressing a tad. Yet here we are, in tatters in general, but with Sean Manaea having taken the ball for five consecutive starts. I mean, sure, that’s why he was re-signed two winters ago, but we’ve watched wayward paths devour all sorts of plans of late. Undermined by what we’ll call his defense, Manaea lasted five innings Saturday. It took him 108 pitches of effort, the epitome of inefficiency, but he could have very well been done after three. Within the context of this game, he held the fort just enough to let the Mets creep back to viability (from 6-0 to 6-3 in the sixth) against a less than stifling Chris Sale, though the Mets’ bats crept back into their hole at the first sign of Sale’s successors. At the very least, Sean Manaea saved wear and tear on the pitching arm of Luis Torrens the catcher who had to face only three batters in the eighth.
After the game that put a damper on the Fourth of July, assuming you could hear anything over your friendly, local unsanctioned fireworks shows…and I mean the next morning, we learned Joey Gerber was optioned to Triple-A. Joey Gerber had to be rescued amid mop-up duty by Luis Torrens, so his demotion wasn’t a surprise. The absolute shock greeting us this Fifth of July was the Mets calling up a righthanded reliever named Guillermo Zuñiga. Despite the gentleman (listed as Guillo Zuñiga by Baseball-Reference) having thrown an inning against the Mets in 2023, I hadn’t tracked his career much. I didn’t know he had been pitching for us in 2026 at Binghamton and Syracuse. I didn’t know he was considered Next Man Up on our depth chart. Most of all, I didn’t think Tyler Zuber’s hard-earned place at the end of the all-time Mets alphabet would be vulnerable to a nudge so soon. Zuber, as you have surely retained, was acquired at the trade deadline in 2024, but didn’t make his Met debut until last June. When he did, he supplanted Don Zimmer as the last of the Z’s in Mets history. Pat Zachry couldn’t do it. Todd Zeile couldn’t do it. But Tyler Zuber did it, with one appearance in 2025. One appearance was all it took. It’s barely a year later. Guillermo Zuñiga is on the scene. Like so much of the 2026 Met season, I did not see a new ‘Z’ coming to town. Most of what we’ve seen of the 2026 Met season we wish to unsee. Zuñiga? We’ll zee…
by Greg Prince on 4 July 2026 1:25 pm For America’s 250th birthday, the New York Mets have presented us with a pair of slightly misshapen bookends they’ve been crafting for over a year. The club begs our indulgence regarding the way they don’t quite match. While the Mets realize the Semiquincentennial is an occasion worthy of the bookends’ unveiling, they ask if we can give them just five more days, and there’s a chance they will get the pair to match exactly.
We, of course, give them our indulgence on the Fourth of July. And on the Third of July. And on just about every day, inherently celebratory or not. Our indulgence is our gift to them. I was out and about and sweltering on the Third of July in 2026, thinking not, “Isn’t it something that our country has reached a notable round number since its founding?” but “Hey, the Mets are on tonight!” Few Mets teams have been less worthy of an anticipatory exclamation point than the 2026 Mets. Awareness of their itinerary at this point is becoming surprising.
But we are their fans, and this is how we are, at least until they come on the air and remind us how rarely they contribute to a celebratory mood. On Friday night, the Third of July, the Mets took the field in Atlanta, and lost to the Braves, 5-3. Juan Soto’s opposite-field, third-inning, two-run homer, caught in the left field bullpen by Cionel Perez in the role of Tom House, put the Mets on the board. The Braves had beaten the Mets there via Michael Harris II’s own two-run shot a half-inning earlier.
Ozzie Albies took back Atlanta’s edge in the bottom of the third with a solo blast. In the fifth, Matt Olson went very deep with nobody on. The Braves were up, 4-2. Christian Scott, who gave up the first two Atlanta longballs, and A.J. Minter, who gave up the next, didn’t allow anything else in terms of singles, doubles, or triples. Nor did reliever Kodai Senga, until Olson invited him on a lunar exploration mission in the eighth. All the hits for the home team were home runs until two outs in the eighth, when Harris snuck a single through the infield to negate the curiosity factor of what loomed as yet another dull Met loss you wouldn’t think to detail for public consumption unless you and your friend got in the habit of detailing every Mets game for public consumption in April of 2005 and you two never broke yourselves of it.
The Mets’ ninth tantalize the fan who looked forward to all this during the afternoon. God, that fan is silly. Essentially asleep since Soto’s 262nd career homer in the third (Juan is 493 behind Henry Aaron and exactly 500 from Barry Bonds), the Met offense stirred just enough to make keeping one’s eyes open an almost worthwhile endeavor. Luis Torrens singled off closer Raisel Iglesias with one out, and took second on defensive indifference with two out. God, the Mets inspire so much indifference these days. Soto singled Torrens to third. Bo Bichette, fresh from feeling the love in Toronto, made himself useful to New Yorkers in Atlanta with an RBI single that scored Luis. Juan went to third. Francisco Lindor came up as the potential go-ahead run à la September 30, 2024. Or he could just keep the first sustained Met rally of the night going. Alas, Linsanity was not in evidence. Francisco grounded to second (score it 4-3) to end the game (score: 5-3).
None of this spoke well for the Semiquincentennial spirit. Or maybe it spoke precisely to the Semiquincentennial spirit, as that’s a word you haven’t heard all that much and will likely hear very little after this weekend. Still, as we inveterate daily viewers of New York Mets baseball and dedicated annual viewers of 1776 will affirm, the eve of the Fourth of July is the eve of the Fourth of July. Every ten years on July 3 in years ending in 6, the Mets are at least modestly interesting.
JULY 3, 1966: The nation turns 190 years old. The Mets split a doubleheader with the Pirates, losing the opener, 8-7, taking the nightcap, 9-8. It was as if Wes Westrum had gathered his charges between games and informed them, “Boys, I know you’re all fond of letting Pittsburgh score eight runs, but if you’re gonna do that, you fells simply gotta score nine.” Lesson learned, especially in the bottom of the sixth, when the Mets erased a 6-3 deficit with six runs built on five singles and two doubles, all enough to withstand Willie Stargell’s inevitable ninth-inning two-run homer. (Willie Stargell hit more home runs at Shea Stadium than any opponent; somewhere, I believe, Willie is still hitting them.) South of Shea that very day, in Atlanta, future Met Moises Alou was born. Moises’s dad Felipe was employed by the Braves then, thus explaining why when Immaculate Grid asks for a player born outside the fifty states and District of Columbia, you shouldn’t pick Moises Alou, even though Moises Alou — onetime Pirate, Expos, Marlin, Astro, Cub, Giant, and Met — is otherwise a most versatile Immaculate Grid answer.
JULY 3, 1976: It was Medallion Day at Shea Stadium. Promotions were rare enough in those days that the promise of a coinish object commemorating the 200th anniversary of America and the 100th anniversary of the National League could draw more than 47,000 paying customers. Maybe those medallions have appreciated in value in the succeeding half-century. I wasn’t there. I had a gloriously gaudy Bar Mitzvah gala to attend in the evening. It was in one of those places, in Jamaica, where multiple affairs are going on at once. I vaguely recall a rumble nearly breaking out between guys from my friend’s Bar Mitzvah and guys from somebody else’s Bar Mitzvah. Maybe a floral centerpiece was up for grabs. The Bar Mitzvah boy on our side of the divide was my Yankees fan friend Todd Feltman, who wasn’t necessarily kvelling that earlier in the day, the Mets had won their ninth in a row by besting the Cubs, 3-2, in ten. Tom Seaver and Rick Reuschel each pitched into the tenth, suggesting that in terms of how pitching is managed, 1976 was closer to 1776 than it would be to 2026. The winning run was set up by a Buddy Harrelson triple to deep right to lead off the tenth. Harrelson was asked if he thought the ball he hit uncharacteristically far looked like a home run as it traveled toward its destination. “Frankly,” he responded, “I don’t know what a home run looks like.” Cubs manager Jim Marshall, an Original Met, ordered two intentional walks — to Joe Torre and Mike Phillips — in the wake of Buddy’s three-bagger. Set up to get an out at any base is something they teach you from the Torah. It was a desperate ploy to escape the jam that had just materialized, but Marshall didn’t live to 94 years old without a few hunches paying off. A strikeout of Bruce Boisclair indicated the strategy had a chance of succeeding. But then Darold Knowles, he who appeared in all seven games of the 1973 World Series, thought he’d get cute and try to pick Phillips off first base. As Phillips — who had cycled in Chicago eight days prior — dove back into the bag, the ball got away from first baseman Pete LaCock, and Harrelson scored the winner. It didn’t negate the World Series result from three Octobers earlier, but it did yield this Bicentennial-appropriate quote from Joe Frazier: “That’s baseball and that’s what makes this country great.”
JULY 3, 1986: Of the 108 regular-season wins the Mets amassed in the Year to Remember, this one rates as unforgettable. Back and forth between the first-place Mets from the East and the (entering the evening) first-place Astros from the West before a Fireworks Night crowd of better than 48,000 at Shea, perhaps proving fireworks are a slightly more popular attraction than medallions. The Astros scored two in the first. Ed Hearn homered in the second. Houston plated another run in the fourth. Darryl Strawberry tied it with a two-run blast in the fifth. The game went to extras. The frigging Astros took an apparently definitive 5-3 lead when Phil Garner homered with a man on in the tenth. But the 1986 Mets were all about defining things on their own terms. Lenny Dykstra walks to lead off the home tenth. Darryl lets loose with his second home run of the night. Tie game. Two outs later, Ray Knight is up. This is how Tim McCarver described the swing of Frank DiPino that ensured a 6-5 final on Channel 9: “This ball is outta here, and this ballgame is over, and I don’t believe it! Ray Knight hits a game-winning home run, and the Mets have won seven in a row. They’re spreading the news that they are right now the DOMINANT team in this game — in either league.” Indeed, the Mets had raised their record to 53-21, 4½ games better than anybody else anywhere. Their next-closest competitor — in either league — was the Red Sox. Like the Astros, we’d see them in October. So much foreshadowing. So many fireworks. Meanwhile, somewhere in Indianapolis, an infant his parents, the Hunters, would name Tommy was born. Tommy would grow up to pitch for many teams, including the Mets in 2021. It was as a Met that year that Tommy Hunter recorded his only major league base hit of a career that would span sixteen seasons. Though he would pitch in 2022 and 2023, Hunter never batted again, meaning he remains 29 games shy of the Mets’ franchise mark for consecutive games with at least one base hit. That record, of 30, is held by his fellow July 3 baby, Moises Alou.
JULY 3, 1996: We, which is to say sentient Mets fans, demanded the promotion of Alex Ochoa from Norfolk. The Mets were in their extended mid-1990s doldrums. Ochoa was batting .339 versus Triple-A pitching. Hell yes, get him up here. Through nine games, he was scorching National League hurlers for a .344 average. In his tenth game, he took an ohfer, to fall to .306. In his eleventh game, this game, Alex went 5-for-5, including one of every kind of hit, which is to say Alex Ochoa made like Mike Phillips at Wrigley Field in 1976 and hit for the cycle at Veterans Stadium, leading the Mets past the Phillies, 10-6, and pushing us to the brink of a brighter day, we, which is to again say sentient Mets fans, were certain. Of course he was. Alex Ochoa was batting .390 after going 5-for-5 with a single, two doubles, a triple, and a home run. Bless those small sample sizes. By year’s end, Alex’s average would drop (it was going to rise?), but it settled in at a respectable .294 for roughly a half-season’s work. The five hits he totaled on July 3 matched the five tools we, which is to say sentient Mets fans prone to believe any positive scouting report, were told Ochoa possessed. The Mets lost 91 games in 1996 despite his presence. They won 88 in ’97, though Alex’s contributions were muted. He batted .244, without a ton of excellence displayed in any facet of the game. He’d be traded to Minnesota shortly thereafter. We, which is to say sentient Mets fans, moved on, but we’d always have that cycle.
JULY 3, 2006: Gotta be honest. This wasn’t an interesting game the way its July 3 in years ending in 6 predecessors were. No Met offensive explosions or Met walkoff triumphs. We — which is to say the Mets — lost to the Pirates at Shea, 11-1. But I did sort of, kind of, almost catch a foul ball. Well, not really, but the foul ball caught my left thumb. Upon reflections, I’m surprised the foul ball didn’t take my left thumb with it. Because my aforementioned habit for detailing for public consumption every Mets game was in full effect by July of 2006, your left thumb can vicariously experience the same buzz my did twenty years after the fact.
JULY 3, 2016: WILMER! WILMER FLORES! WILMER FLORES WENT SIX-FOR-SIX, TYING EDGARDO ALFONZO’S METS RECORD FOR MOST BASE HITS IN A SINGLE GAME! WE SMASHED THE CUBS, 14-3! WE SWEPT FOUR FROM THE EVENTUAL WORLD CHAMPIONS! WHY AM I YELLING? BECAUSE IT WAS JUST THAT WONDERFUL!
Compared to all that, July 3, 2026, comes up a little bit shy. Yet the Mets continued to work on that pair of bookends they appear so anxious to give us.
Over the final 93 games of 2025, the Mets put together a record of 38-55.
Over the first 88 games of 2026, the Mets put together a record of 36-52.
If we — which is to say sentient Mets fans who are tempted to nod off during their games, despite looking reflexively looking forward to them (but we can’t, thanks to whoever in the neighborhood insists on making every night this time of year Fireworks Night) — can show a bit of patience, and wait for the Mets lose to three of their next five games, the bookends will be perfectly matched. What are the odds the Mets won’t go 2-3 in their next five to get to the 93-game mark at 38-55? I’m confident that some MLB sponsor would happily post those odds if asked. I’m not confident that the Mets will get to 93 games at 38-55, however, because those mathematical goals that get close tend to turn elusive at the last minute. Witness the Braves hitting only home runs and nothing else on Friday night while scoring as many runs as they did. As mentioned on the telecast, that had never happened for the Braves before in their 151 seasons of operation. That single they got in the eighth foiled a neat statistical note.
Is this is to say I’m rooting for the Mets to go 2-3 in their next five games just so I can point to the team going 38-55 to end last year (which triggered the roster transformation that followed) and the team going the exact same 38-55 (with a tangibly different cast, indicating the inefficacy of said roster transformation) rather than rooting for the Mets to win every game they can?
That’s a trick question. It doesn’t matter what I root for. The Mets go 38-55 to end one year and 36-52 to start the next without seeking my consent. And how did not seeking consent work out for the British 250 years ago?
by Greg Prince on 1 July 2026 7:46 pm On Canada Day 2026, let us remember that since 1962, our neighbors to the north have given (or at least loaned) the New York Mets a dozen of their countrymen, sending them south from their home and native land to play baseball for the likes of us. Therefore, we salute:
Ray Daviault — who pitched in the Mets’ very first home game at the Polo Grounds;
Ken MacKenzie — who posted the only winning record for the Original Mets;
Tim Harkness — who belted a 14th-inning walkoff grand slam to defeat the Cubs in 1963;
Ron Taylor — who saved 13 games for the 1969 World Champion Mets;
Brian Ostrosser — who briefly filled in at shortstop for Buddy Harrelson during the prelude to the Mets’ pennant run of 1973;
Jason Bay — who ran into walls as a Met left fielder, only because he couldn’t run through them
Mike Nickeas — who used the custom R.A. Dickey knuckleball mitt behind the plate when Josh Thole needed a breather;
Jim Henderson — who followed in the no-relation tradition of Met Hendersons Steve, Ken, and Rickey;
Rob Zastryzny — who waited patiently through roster roll call for a spell during 2022;
Zach Pop — who is better known to us in the northeastern United States as Zach Soda;
Jonah Tong — who remains talented and eager to show it again soon;
and Jared Young — who is the Mets’ incumbent first baseman, partly on merit, partly because there’s not really anybody else on hand to be that.
Canada, in the form of its lone existing Major League Baseball team, also gave the New York Mets a whuppin’ on Canada Day 2026, a 9-3 decision in favor of the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. The Jays gave it to Freddy Peralta in particular, but in the spirit of North American brotherhood, they gave it to us all.
Let us forget that.
by Jason Fry on 1 July 2026 7:42 am Six solid innings from Nolan McLean, followed by a criticism-free inning each from Brooks Raley, Luke Weaver and Devin Williams.
Home runs from Francisco Alvarez and Luis Torrens — the rare Double Catcher Dinger Combo — with a bit of late insurance from Brett Baty.
Sound defense, with a succession of nifty plays from homecoming kid Bo Bichette front and center.
No notes, one might say, though that’s not really what we do here. So, well, here are some notes.
My first instinct on McLean was to call it a return to form, but that’s accurate without being true, and gets at a misconception that hasn’t been helpful. What McLean’s been going through in his recent uneven stretch has struck me as fairly typical young pitcher stuff, the lumps and bumps taken in learning inevitable lessons. No surprise, except McLean’s first starts were so good that we somehow thought he’d jumped over that part of the learning curve. He hadn’t, and that’s OK — and it’s a storyline to watch in the second half of this lost season.
This week the Athletic is looking at the Mets as sellers and exploring what they could get for their various saleable pieces; they got to the relievers this morning, speculating on potential landing places for Raley, Weaver and others. Which is wise, but depresses me a little too much to engage with: I’ve really enjoyed Weaver for being tiny and fearless as well as a puckish, unpredictable interview, and I find Raley’s quiet implacability soothing. (Williams is different; he’ll always feel miscast as a Met.)
A strong second half from Alvarez would be welcome, of course, but that’s something we’ve said many times before. Alvarez is somewhere around Julio Franco‘s age if measured by the Disappointed Met Fan reckoning but chronologically just 24. That’s far too young to give up on, yet you also feel like Alvarez may be who he is: so aggressive that he looks like he’s swinging for the fences in the next stadium over. Just leave him alone and hope he can stay on the field. I’ve pretty much given up on Baty, as well as on Mark Vientos, neither of whom look like they begin ABs with any semblance of a plan — though Baty, at least, has made himself into a fairly reliable defender, with a shot at growing into McNeil-esque versatility. Maybe one or both of them can find something they’ve been missing without a playoff spotlight. Maybe one or both of them get traded to a new organization offering a new voice. At this point I’m fine either way.
Then there’s Bichette, who’s come a long way from his lackluster start of the season. I always figured Bichette for a one-and-done mercenary, invoking his first of two player options and returning to the free-agent market having proven his legs were sound. (No moral judgment there; it’s the contract the Mets agreed to.) I suppose a solid second half would make that still possible, but Bichette might be better off sticking around for another year.
Gah, this all feels like offseason stuff — and ahead of an offseason that may be irritatingly extended, no less.
Let’s go back to the beginning: The Mets won a 3-0 game in which all aspects of their performance were praiseworthy.
Should’ve left it at that.
by Jason Fry on 29 June 2026 10:10 pm So let’s see. The Mets…
…turned Sean Manaea‘s sixth pitch of the game into a 1-0 deficit, as Juan Soto let what should have been a George Springer single bounce over his head, after which it also eluded A.J. Ewing, allowing Springer to dash pell mell around the bases and score.
…hit about eight zillion balls on the nose, but approximately eight zillion of them found Blue Jay gloves, generating a soundtrack (at least in our house) that was primarily moans of frustration. The lone exception was a bolt into the right-field stands by Francisco Lindor, an eerie echo of his no-hitter-breaking blast in this ballgame from late 2024. That home run kicked off a rally and a feel-good Met win; this one could only get the Mets within spitting distance of an opponent they couldn’t quite reach.
…managed a ringing double against brief Old Friend Tyler Rogers, struck by Francisco Alvarez, but could do nothing else against their former mate. I don’t really have anything against Rogers, generally accorded to be the good acquisition of David Stearns’ otherwise ill-fated 2025 trade deadline, except that I’ve always muttered that Rogers wasn’t so much good as he was “better than Ryan Helsley or Gregory Soto or Cedric Mullins,” which is like winning a high jump competition against a sea urchin and two box turtles, one of which smells funny and might actually be dead.
…saw Ronny Mauricio hit Alvarez with a bat in the on-deck circle, which didn’t hurt either player, unless you count Mauricio getting bodied by Louis Varland on three straight breaking pitches to end the game. Let the jokes about swinging at anything fly, except actually it was Alvarez’s fault for being too close to his teammate when he should still been in the dugout.
Good things? There was Lindor’s homer, and all those hard-hit balls, and Bo Bichette showing some welcome human emotion in trying to assess what it was like to return to Toronto with all the memories it holds for him. And Manaea pitching OK if you ignore the fact that the Blue Jays also hit about eight zillion laser beams right at fielders, and Joey Gerber pitching better than OK by any metric.
Those aren’t enough good things, not when you lose 2-1. The most interesting thing about this year’s Mets might be how many ways they can find to lose: by a ton, by a sliver, in embarrassing fashion, despite their best efforts, because they couldn’t pitch, because they couldn’t hit, because they couldn’t field, because they could do all those things but not quite as well as the other guys could. It’s a little different every night, around a core of essential similarity: another L on the ledger, another day off the calendar. The 2026 Mets find a way, and I suppose that’s remarkable in its own hopefully inimitable fashion.
by Greg Prince on 29 June 2026 11:07 am Depending on where you’re sitting and who’s surrounding you, the least conducive place for intently focusing on a ballgame can be at the ballpark. I sat most of very warm and very sunny Sunday afternoon in Citi Field’s Big Apple Reserved section, those uncovered seats in center far from home plate. Never was I happier to have tossed a tube of sunscreen into my game bag before heading out for the train. Stray passing clouds and their accompanying if evanescent breezes clinched co-Player of the Game honors by the second inning. (Can David Stearns be blamed for not hanging onto them, too?) I was surrounded by perfectly nice folks and their perfectly nice families who came as parts of larger perfectly nice groups. My attachment to one such larger group is how I wound up at Citi Field on Sunday, actually. My wife works in community services in the same borough where the Mets operate. Tickets, layered with a generous concession credit, were graciously donated in her agency’s direction late last week. People there were notified to respond in the affirmative ASAP if they were interested in going to the game. All available ducats were snapped up pronto. Stephanie and I were among the legion of snappers.
Nothing wrong with larger groups coming to a ballgame, though it tends to mean your neighborhood for the duration is populated by many people who have entered the premises with limited emotional investment in the unfolding of what will play out on that field off in the distance. To be fair, some of the perfectly nice folks and their perfectly nice families are conscious of the nominal attraction, in this case the New York Mets hosting the Philadelphia Phillies, and are into it. For example, one of the presumably perfectly nice folks, from one of the larger groups to which I was not attached, seemed proud that he knew the name of the Mets’ center fielder, for he filled between-pitch pauses with it repeatedly. “TY-RONE TAY-LOR! TY-RONE TAY-LOR!” I suspect this fellow’s day would have been made if Tyrone Taylor, technically at work, as much as shrugged a shoulder in our sections’ direction, for the gesture could have been interpreted as “I hear you and I appreciate you,” rather than “it sure is hot out here and I’m a little uncomfortable standing in my alternate blue jersey as I stay ready for a Phillie to hit a ball toward me.”
Either way, Tyrone Taylor didn’t so much as shrug.
In this setting, everybody’s kind of wandering around, chatting each other up. Why shouldn’t they? One weekend shy of the nation’s semiquincentennial, what could be more classically American than accepting an invitation to a group outing at the ballpark? Enthusiasm abounds for enthusiasm’s sake, if not the Mets’. At a gut level, this kind of outing appeals to the diehard Mets fan and it appeals to those who don’t know Tyrone Taylor from A.J. Ewing. It looms as a day to hang with people from work, yet nobody has to work right now. Tyrone Taylor is the only soul remotely in our midst who’s on the clock.
When you are in Big Apple Reserved, the scoreboard is at your back, so if you haven’t committed to following the action, the action dissolves into distant scenery. If there are kids on hand (and there were definitely kids on hand), their interest in baseball seems limited to standing in the first row, having migrated there as if by homing instinct, and hoping to be recognized or acknowledged in some way, perhaps with a baseball itself. You also get a steady stream of literal posers who recognize a major league outfield as a charming backdrop for photos, despite possessing no more than a slight inkling of the activity the outfield and the infield beyond it are used for. They trundle down the steps in clusters and turn around to smile for the camera phone for minutes at a time in different combinations (“OK, now I’ll take one of you and you”) while a regulation baseball game continues behind them. I imagine these people scroll through their pictures later and try to remember where this was and what they were doing there even as they admire the way the camera on their phone really captures the greenness of the grass at “this place where we went that time, I guess”.
To escape the sun and deplete our can’t-take-it-with-you concession credit, we set up for an inning or so in the shade at one of those green tables behind what used to be known as the Mo’s Zone in right. I’ve given up on keeping current with who sponsors which swath of seats at Citi Field. Evincing no sentimentality for an extinct brick & mortar retail sporting goods chain, it’s just easier to refer to it as the Mo’s Zone. Choosing to stand as shadowy fans on a shadowy planet, we gained an adequate view of the diamond and a monitor to replay whatever we didn’t grasp live. Another couple shared the table. Stephanie and I shared a hearty fruit cup, a product bearing the logo of Melissa’s Produce. Did you know Citi Field has fruit cup? It’s nestled within the beer cooler inside the World’s Fare market steps away from the erstwhile Mo’s Zone. Fruit cup makes for a surprisingly effective ballpark quencher after the sun’s been beating down on you for a couple of hours. I couldn’t tell you how much it cost, because we used our nontransferable concession credit to procure it. I’m guessing Citi Field sells at least three of them per game.
Our consumption of the fruit cup coincided with A.J. Ewing’s pinch-hit home run that tied the game at three in the sixth. Andy Green may have been one of the people at Citi Field on Sunday who didn’t know Tyrone Taylor from A.J. Ewing, because daunting lefty starter Jesus Luzardo or no daunting lefty starter Jesus Luzardo (most Phillie starters are daunting), I’m not sure why an interim manager would sit one of the two promising youngsters he has at his disposal three games into his limited tenure. Prior to Ewing pinch-hitting for Taylor after Luzardo had exited in favor of righty Chase Shugart, the only Met run was generated via Carson Benge’s RBI single off Luzardo…lefty versus lefty, youth getting a chance to succeed, and succeeding. Andy Green isn’t interim-managing to play the percentages. Andy Green is interim-managing to make a little something out of a nothing season. At least he knew enough to eventually give Ewing a chance.
Give me shade and some fruit cup, and my focus on the ballgame emerges intently. Yes, a home run from Ewing! Yes, a high-five with the guy from the other couple at the green table! Yes, we’ll stay here at the spot that apparently has some runs in it long enough to watch Benge drive in the go-ahead run! Yes, the Mets lead, 4-3!
Then, with just a few grapes and one square of cantaloupe remaining, we take our fruit cup back to the Big Apple Reserved seats, where the various groups have thinned out a bit in deference to the sun’s ongoing beatdown. Still, we are refreshed, excited to watch as best we can bulk reliever Kodai Senga pitch as best as he can with a lead. Senga’s been in since the fifth, having followed opener Cionel Perez who was fine for one inning, and Tobias Myers, who gave up three runs in the third. When the third ended, someone to whom I’d just been introduced, having learned I regularly write about the Mets, told me, “You must have the patience of Job.”
I might not, really, because after Senga gave up an inevitable two-run bomb to Kyle Schwarber that crash-landed in the abyss between the outfield fence and the Big Apple seats to return the lead to the Phillies (a security guard stationed in our vicinity spent a chunk of the seventh-inning stretch trying to retrieve the ball for authentication purposes, not quite finding it despite a multitude of helpful Big Apple fingers pointing to where it loitered), I realized fruit cup contained only so much efficacy versus Ol’ Sol, never mind Ol’ Schwarbs. By the eighth, I suggested to Stephanie we vacate our seats, drift back into the Field Level shade, and take in the remainder of the game from a spot where we could make a quicker getaway once all was over. She didn’t argue. We stood and watched the Mets load the bases via a trio of Orion Kerkering-issued walks in the bottom of the eighth alongside others who had roughly the same idea vis-à-vis sun and shade. Poised to tie or go in front — one man out, three men on — the Mets see their rally die before it can birth even a single run. Ronny Mauricio popped up. Francisco Alvarez struck out. Senga would hang in there for the top of the ninth but we wouldn’t. I knew Jhoan Duran lurked for the bottom of the ninth. The quick getaway to the LIRR seemed in order.
Once again, Stephanie didn’t argue.
Slipping out a side staircase rather than departing through the Rotunda as is my usual custom, I tuned in MLB’s audio, which stubbornly rebuffered a few times and briefly sent me to the Athletics-Angels broadcast, but I was getting the gist of how the game was ending. By the time we planted ourselves on the Mets-Willets Point platform, the 4:57 to Woodside about to rumble toward us, I could hear Luis Torrens lining out to right, with Brett Baty’s preceding walk coming to naught. I hadn’t focused intently enough to notice the Mets had left fourteen runners on base Sunday nor that they had gone 2-for-16 with runners in scoring position. But they did both, and despite Senga’s mini-revival (5 IP, 2 ER) and Ewing’s and Benge’s fleeting moments in the omnipresent sun, they lost to the Phillies, 5-4. Two nights earlier, they lost to the Phillies, 2-1. The night before that, they lost to the Cubs, 4-3, but that was under a different manager, and the sunscreen could be left at home. So it’s not like every game the Mets lose is the same damn thing over and over.
by Jason Fry on 27 June 2026 11:02 pm It generally happens this way: A team that can’t get out of its own way finally gets out of its own way, and in the aftermath you’re left blinking in surprise and wondering, “What was so hard about that?”
Not that the Mets made it easy from the jump on Saturday. Bryce Harper connected for a two-run homer in the second off Christian Scott, with the ball banging off the fence about a foot above A.J. Ewing‘s head — an odd inverse echo of Derek Hill going above the fence to take a two-run shot away from Juan Soto on Friday night.
But that one pitch aside, Scott was effective in his return from the IL, giving up nothing else before departing in the fifth rather than face the Phillies’ formidable order a third time. Unfortunately, in an all-too-familiar story, the Met bats looked completely inert, doing nothing against opener Tim Mayza or bulk guy Alan Rangel. Rangel bedeviled the Mets, keeping hitter after hitter off-balance, but in the sixth he tired, or the baseball gods decided to let up on the Mets, or maybe it was a bit of both. Before you could blink, Soto had singled and Bo Bichette had singled and Francisco Lindor had tripled them home, tying the game. Rangel exited after walking Jared Young, but Jonathan Bowlan walked Mark Vientos and surrendered a game-breaker of a two-run single to Ewing.
That was all the Mets needed, though the next inning’s Soto triple and Bichette sacrifice fly were certainly welcome; giving Luke Weaver and Devin Williams a little more breathing room to put down the Phillies and give Andy Green his first Mets managerial win. (Francisco Alvarez handed Green the ball at the end of the handshake line, and I imagined the ghost of Willie Randolph‘s celebratory cigar puffing out a smoky sigh of relief.
Where did all this offense come from all of a sudden? Don’t ask — a bedrock rule of baseball is that it will make a fool out of anyone who thinks they have a crystal ball. Just don’t assume whatever happened today will also happen tomorrow.
What was so hard about that? Maybe everything. For a night, though, put the crystal ball aside and just enjoy it.
by Jason Fry on 27 June 2026 12:24 pm A lot of signals emerge from a season that’s cratered, and as a veteran Mets fan, I have enough experience with craters to have grown familiar with them. Last night’s 2-1 loss to the Phillies, the maiden voyage of the SS Andy Green, brought another jolt of recognition: Ah yes, it’s the loss that somehow doesn’t sting as much because this time it wasn’t super embarrassing.
Which, if you think about it, is a signal of just how much has gone horribly wrong. The Mets just lost — it’s not like they made six errors, or left multiple shell-shocked relievers with new bouts of PTSD, or doofed up a new brace of ABS challenges, or made a mockery of the game with a ticky-tack replay review of an overslide on a walk. Just to bring up a few recent indignities in what’s been a dreadfully long string, with more of them to come.
No, they just lost. Lost because Zach Thornton looked nervous early against his fellow Zach/k before settling down; because Derek Hill robbed Juan Soto with a circus catch you’ll see between innings for years (with a pretty solid defensive coda from Brandon Marsh a few innings later); because Huascar Brazoban had an off inning (at this point he’s entitled to one or two); and because Zack Wheeler is awfully good.
Thornton pitched well after that rocky first — and most importantly, he was aggressive when too many Mets starters have looked like they don’t trust their stuff. And Jared Young showed why the first-base job should be his, making several sparkling plays and contributing the Mets’ lone run at the plate. Young even used the ABS challenge system correctly … though 2026 being what it is, his subsequent challenge went for nought, with that little slice of pink confirming that the ballgame had ended. In a lost season, Young at least is a good story — a Cubs prospect turned suspect who rebuilt his career with a solid season in Korea. It’s the kind of story we hear more and more with baseball having downsized the minor leagues. That eliminated a lot of slots for players, particularly guys like Young who’ve slipped into Quad-A status. Now, instead of bouncing between Triple-A affiliates hoping for a break, those players are re-establishing themselves in Korea or the Mexican League or indy ball.
But anyway, the Mets lost and somehow it didn’t hurt that much. But in a good stretch, yeah, that one would have stung like hell.
A couple of random thoughts before 2026’s delightful death march resumes:
* * *
Veteran Faith and Fear readers might remember that Andy Green had a cameo with the Mets back in 2009, another star-crossed season. Green’s first Mets AB was a source of unexpected delight amid the misery of that year, tinged (inevitably) with irony. Greg and I were both there, and his retelling of the story is one of my all-time favorites.
“Understudy steps into the starring role and dreams come true” is a time-honored storytelling trope, but I believe the Mets that this is a three-month gig for Green before he goes back to running the farm system, and not an audition for a permanent gig. (And if there is a clamor for Green to become manager, then hey, things will have gone uncharacteristically well.) And it could be a good fit: Green is familiar with a number of the young Mets, having overseen their development, and hopefully he’ll have a lot more kids under his tutelage as the team sheds various disappointments and deadwood. I will happily take watching Zach Thornton and prospects yet unglimpsed every fifth day over more throwing up my hands about Kodai Senga and what’s happening between his ears, thanks very much.
As for Carlos Mendoza, I think Greg was on point as usual. I didn’t think the major problems with the Mets were Mendoza’s fault — managers don’t control lineups and playing time they way they once did, and while Mendoza’s bullpen management was exasperating, there are 29 other fanbases who also think their manager sucks at this. But when the ax finally fell, the Mets had been inexplicably terrible for a full calendar year — and when that’s the case, there’s no such thing as an unjust firing.
* * *
By now I’ve accepted that just the sight of Zack Wheeler leaves me fuming. The Wilpons were notorious for using their proxies to shit-talk players once they departed, but they outdid themselves with Wheeler. At the end of 2019, you may remember, Wheeler hit free agency after injury-riddled but promising years with the Mets. The Phillies came calling, Wheeler heard their offer and circled back to the Mets … and heard nothing. So he signed on for five years in Philadelphia.
That was when the Wilpons sent out useless mannequin Brodie Van Wagenen, whom they’d hired to be a plastic-smile Pinkerton, to tell reporters that “our health and performance department, our coaches, all contributed and helped him parlay two good half-seasons over the last five years into $118 million, so I am proud of what our group was able to help him accomplish.”
So how’d that little bit of bitchiness work out? When Wheeler leaves Philly, it will be for Cooperstown; if you live near Van Wagenen, do me a solid and key his car.
* * *
Lastly, I was amused by the fans chanting “PETE A-LON-SO!” the other night after Mark Vientos made another hideous gaffe at first.
On the surface, that was pretty unfair: Vientos shouldn’t be at first base (or anywhere else that involves a glove on his hand), and Pete Alonso was frankly terrible over there by the end of his Mets tenure.
But Vientos wasn’t the fans’ real target — they were taking aim at David Stearns. Since Stearns will never stand on the field to face the music himself, I thought that was a brilliant way for the fans to let him know their verdict.
And why stop there? Should Jorge Polanco ever return, let him inherit the “PETE A-LON-SO” chant. When Marcus Semien comes back, give him a full-throated rendition of “BRAN-DON NIM-MO!” Serenade Devin Williams with “ED-WIN DI-AZ!”
The players will get it. So will Stearns and the Cohens. And they’ve all thoroughly earned it.
by Greg Prince on 26 June 2026 1:45 pm By the general acclaim of those who interacted with him on a regular basis, Carlos Mendoza was a mensch. It didn’t matter. Consensus rarely pinned on him the bulk of the Mets’ on-field woes that stretched back more than 365 days in the course of the year-plus his ballclub circled the drain. It didn’t matter. Managers are said not to matter as they did in the era when they cut larger-than-life figures and were perceived as their organizations’ primary strategists, tacticians, and maybe molders of men. That didn’t matter, either. Following one last languid loss to fall amid a blizzard of life-lacking Ls, Mendy the Mensch is no longer the manager of the Mets.
I feel bad for the human being who wore the uniform. I’m hopeful the implied shakeup his dismissal represents will impact for the better the team he leaves behind. I have no idea if his interim successor, 2009 cameoist Andy Green — 871st Met overall and 139th Met third baseman ever, for those of me keeping score — will make any difference over the impending half-season. If managers don’t matter, not even the ones considered splendid individuals skilled in the execution of baseball administration at the level that bridges the clubhouse and the front office, then what is there to expect from Andy Green taking over a 34-47 lost cause? What was there to expect from Carlos Mendoza after the Mets’ cause started getting lost not quite midway through the season before the current one?
 Page 9 of the 2026 yearbook. Gonna need to print a revised edition. As we’ve found ourselves saying more than a few times upon the departures of those connected with our most recent magical spurt, we will always have 2024 to think of Mendoza at his finest. Surely he was a difference-making manager when those Mets rose from nearly dead and soared close to a World Series. As the champagne flowed in Atlanta, in Milwaukee, and at Citi Field after the vanquishing of Philadelphia, only the most hard-bitten cranks would have grumbled we’d gotten where we’d gotten in spite of Mendy or irrespective of Mendy. When your team wins, your manager is exactly what your team had to have.
When Mendoza wasn’t being that, he came off as a good guy overseeing a bad team, giving inadequate answers when asked to explain subpar play, probably because it’s hard to articulate impactfully over the sound of a swirling drain. He wasn’t the one committing the costliest errors, making the rally-killing outs, or giving up the backbreaking hits. Nor was he the one acquiring the players whose collective shortcomings consigned more than a year’s worth of Met box scores to the Horror section of Baseball-Reference. Mendy was stuck in the middle with us, not happy with what he was watching, though he put on a more stoic face than we ever could regarding the unrelenting stream of contemporary Met miseries.
He was the manager. It turned out to really not matter.
by Greg Prince on 26 June 2026 2:54 am Eric Wagaman was fun, mostly because my friend Ken and I, sitting out in right field, decided in advance of Eric’s pinch-hit home run Thursday night to think of the most random of 2026 Mets as The Waga-Man. After bemoaning that so much of the Met roster has been defined by randomness, we were willing to hitch our wagon to The Waga-Man if it meant getting back into this game. The Cubs were up, 3-0, before The Waga-Man got involved in the bottom of the sixth. Son of a gun, The Waga-Man connected, and the Mets had pulled to within 3-2.
Jared Young was fun, mostly because Ken and I had concurred earlier, while Jared was sitting on the bench, that something’s wrong if a team that planted Pete Alonso at first base for seven seasons and never had to give the position a second thought has to make do there most nights with perfectly nice yet utterly unremarkable Jared Young. Thursday night, Young was a substitute. It said so on the scoreboard as he batted in the seventh, specifically that he had a real high OPS as a “substitute”. What strange phrasing, we agreed. Then the substitute — in this case a substitute left fielder — whacked a game-tying homer. Jared Young is not the kind of substitute who just shows a movie to the class.
The guy who materialized in Ken’s and my midst about two-thirds of the way into Thursday night’s game was fun, I guess. He was apparently a buddy of two chill dudes in the row in front of us who had an empty seat next to them. Hey, sit with us. He did and he performed. The two chill dudes were his audience. We caught the overspill. The performance was kinda loud, but it was hard to not admire his enthusiasm. A lot of “LET’S GO METS!” without public address provocation. A lot of punctuating his pronouncements with “ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT!” He urged every Met pitcher to “knock” every Cub batter “off his feet”. He wanted his pals to know he knew stuff, and I have to say as someone who considers himself a stuff-knower, he did. I wish he could have played rather than cheered. The Mets could have used the spark he was trying to bring them.
Beyond the pleasantness of a temperate Thursday evening with a truly great guy like Ken; and a commute that threatened to go off the rails yet didn’t (the 7 was ineffective shuttling passengers to Woodside, but the LIRR’s Port Washington line threw an inning of relief worthy of Luke Weaver); and a surprise giveaway Juan Soto bobblehead, surprising because I didn’t line up early for it, yet stacks remained available at 6:30; and the undefeated joys of a Hebrew National frank plus potato knish purchased from the kosher food stand upstairs…beyond those foundations of a pleasant evening at Citi Field, you have to appreciate the little things, like the scrubs/subs going deep and the uncontained ardor of a true believer who’s a little over the top on behalf of a team that’s usually under the bottom. That is if you’re going to go to a Mets game and be a Mets fan in a season like this.
Everything else about Thursday night’s sixth consecutive Met loss — their fourth of four to the Cubs this week and their seventh of seven to the Cubs overall — was as lame as I assume it looked on TV or sounded on the radio. All those things that have made the Mets the Mets this year were omnipresent as this year reached its halfway point. It even had an extra inning of the Mets being these Mets in case you weren’t convinced their record of 34-47 didn’t accurately reflect their performance.
The starting pitching, while not abysmal, fell short of adequate. The fielding was selective at best. The batting, besides that of Wagaman and Young once apiece, resisted opportunism. There was no spark to this team. There was limited spark to this game. The Cubs, despite earning their few too many interloper followers the right to crow “GO CUBS GO!” on the way out, didn’t come off as worldbeaters. They were Metbeaters. How hard is that to be these days?
In the end, the Mets absorbed a 4-3 defeat in ten innings. They did not enough of what was needed. They were beset by too much of what wasn’t. Another half-season to go. May you now and then find your version of fun therein.
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