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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 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 foods 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.
by Greg Prince on 25 June 2026 1:31 pm Wednesday started, more or less, with Michael Conforto robbing A.J. Ewing of a potential extra-base hit. Conforto was playing right field for the Cubs eleven years after he began playing left field for the Mets. He was the hope of outfield future in the summer of 2015, a first-round draft pick whose elevation to Citi Field was accelerated by a combination of his progress and the organization’s desperation. Hope was beginning to abound in small bursts that season. Conforto’s arrival preceded those of a few others, most notably that of Yoenis Cespedes, and hope exploded with a thunderclap all over Flushing. Three months later, the kid Conforto was playing in the World Series. For us.
The hope of outfield future from a pennant-winning year taking a double away from one of our hopes of outfield future from this last-place year was probably a sign of the day and night to come, though at the moment Conforto made his catch, it just meant other current hope of outfield future Carson Benge, who had doubled ahead of Ewing’s at-bat in the bottom of the first, had to tag up if he wanted to advance to third base. Over the next ten pitches, Bo Bichette and Jared Young each struck out, stranding Benge at third.
Signs, signs, everywhere some signs if you insisted on discerning them. But why bother? It was a lovely afternoon. A contingent of Norwegian soccer fans, on a break from their World Cup rooting, populated the center field seats usually identified with the 7 Line Army outings, joyfully gesticulating at the baseball game in front of them, making motions and noises that had nothing to do with the likes of Conforto, Ewing, and Benge. Are you gonna tell 500 chanting, rowing Norwegians they’re doing a day in the sun wrong?
The Mets weren’t yet erring all over Wednesday. That would come later. Oh, it would come, all right. You might have let Conforto’s catch slip to the back of your mind. You might have focused on all Nolan McLean was doing well as he kept the Cubs shut down through four. You might have rowed and cheered yourself into a Viking-inspired frenzy when Canadian Jared Young homered to put the Mets on the board in the fourth, and you might have ratcheted up your approval when Francisco Alvarez of Venezuela also traveled beyond the fence. The Mets were ahead, 3-0, and appeared en route to their GOOOOOOOOOAL!!!!!!!!! of winning the matinee.
Appearances can be deceiving as hell. The Mets appeared to be a playoff contender before a single game was played in 2026. The 2026 Mets were at their best theoretically and hypothetically. Reality has been has been a Dansby Swanson-sized pain in their ass. McLean, himself an avatar of youthful hope and dreams, cracked in the fifth, giving up a run-scoring double to Conforto and a two-run homer to Michael Busch. The Norwegians seemed to like that as much as the home runs from Young and Alvarez. Their allegiance was mostly to having a good time. Mets fans with an interest in the score were now tied up in a tie game, though that unraveled with two out in the sixth when, with two on, Swanson made like a hungry man, and devoured a fastball, depositing the aluminum tray on which it was served up over the left-center field wall. McLean’s start had devolved from promising to gritty to six earned runs allowed over six innings.
The Mets stopped scoring somewhere along the way, which made overcoming a 6-3 Chicago lead difficult. Deploying Jonathan Pintaro in the seventh and eighth would make it impossible. The seventh was fine. The eighth was when Swanson came back for seconds. Still hungry, he launched a grand slam halfway to Scandinavia. Pintaro was up as the day-nighter’s 27th Man. I’d hate to see who constitutes the Mets’ 28th Man.
The Mets wound up losing, 10-3. The Norwegians moved on. The Mets were mandated to stick around play another game in the evening. Too bad they couldn’t have set sail on the Seven Seas or taken up another sport, like soccer. They were about to show how much they could kick a ball around.
In the nightcap, the Mets technically came closer to winning than they did in the first game. They lost by only five runs, but it was much worse. The headline was six errors committed by four Met infielders, including rusty Francisco Lindor at short, newly out-of-position Bo Bichette at third, DH who infrequently plays the field Mark Vientos at first, and the most overrated former Gold Glove winner in the history of “he’ll improve our defense up the middle” fielders Marcus Semien (whose offense is non-existent and veteran leadership is invisible to the naked eye) at second. Vientos and IL-bound Semien each totaled two miscues. The quartet’s errant exploits summoned the statistical ghosts of 1962, specifically the opener of another doubleheader, at Colt Stadium in Houston, when each among Marv Throneberry, Rod Kanehl, Charlie Neal, and Felix Mantilla committed a flub apiece. When you’ve not only matched but outdone the Original Mets at something so quintessentially Original Mets…fellas, you’re simply Amazin’.
Six infield errors overshadowed the four home runs the Mets hit Wednesday night (Bichette, Vientos, Ewing, and Alvarez); the Mets’ failure to do any other hitting of note; Sean Manaea lasting only three innings; some solid relief from Husacar Brazobán and Luke Weaver; a misplay by miscast right fielder Brett Baty; the back tightness that sidelined Juan Soto for both games; and even more helpings of Swanson. Holy crap, Dansby Swanson — making our lives miserable for practically a decade — drove in four more runs, giving him FIFTEEN for the first three games of this four-game series. That’s right, more Mets-Cubs on tap tonight!
If you followed Warner Wolf’s advice and turned off your sets right there (anywhere), the Mets lost the nightcap, 10-5. They fell to a dozen games below .500 for the first time this year. They sit nine games out of the Wild Card. And, as if to emphasize their also-ran status, after the sweep, they traded their longest-tenured player, David Peterson, to the club on the other side of the field. Petey, like Conforto a former No. 1 draft pick (and the 1,100th Met overall, coming along exactly 100 Mets after Michael’s debut), goes to the Cubs for a first base prospect named Cole Mathis. With a name like Cole Mathis, the youngster will presumably be assigned to the Mets’ Genoa City farm club, where he will learn to climb the corporate…I mean minor league ladder at the hand of the venerable Victor Newman.
Peterson’s reign as our latter-day Ed Kranepool — a.k.a. The Dean of the Mets — was short. He inherited the title last November once Brandon Nimmo was traded to Texas in that clever deal to snare the services of the aging Semien. It was a nice reward for a pitcher who grinded us through the stretch drive and playoffs of 2024, giving us his blood, sweat, and tears, making us so very happy when he emerged as an All-Star for a splendid first half’s work in ’25. Sadly, Petey peaked with that honor. It’s been all downhill since then for the senior Met. His spot in the rotation was never more than tenuous. His last outing, on Sunday, was disastrous. And now he’s to 2026 what Eduardo Escobar was to 2023, the first suddenly extraneous veteran to be sent to a team that believes itself to have a chance to get somewhere in the months ahead. The Mets have a chance to get to the end of the season, if they don’t drop it. Don’t count on that not happening.
Succeeding the once young and restless David Peterson as The Dean of the Mets is Francisco Lindor. The All-Star shortstop from Cleveland was once the newest of Mets. It is as if he alighted in town on April 5, 2021, a well-dressed stranger; looked around at those who held sway before showed up in town; rubbed his hands together; and thought to himself, “Soon enough, I will eliminate all my rivals, and it will be me, Francisco Lindor, they refer to as The Dean of the Mets!” Fast-forward five years, and all who preceded him in orange and blue have been whisked away.
Coincidence that Lindor returns from the IL just in time to watch the last of his predecessors be shown the door? Yeah, probably. I’m just trying to stay entertained here.
by Jason Fry on 24 June 2026 7:51 am The email came from a work colleague: We’re planning our annual Mets outing, please RSVP.
My instinctive response: Oh God, do I have to?
That’s where this death march of a season has brought us: A free ticket to a Mets game feels like a burden.
The Mets have gone from confounding to infuriating and finally to the place marketing people pray their team never reaches: embarrassing.
Witness Tuesday night’s all-you-can-eat buffet of horrors. Kodai Senga was front and center, resuming his quest for the not particularly cherished distinction of Most Exasperating Starter Ever. Senga blazed through a promising first inning, pitching aggressively and annihilating the Cubs. But in the second he reported for duty with his velocity noticeably down, nibbled on the corners (without hitting them) and got strafed for five runs. I have no idea what’s wrong with Senga and no longer care: I just want him to be somebody else’s problem.
The Mets did some other embarrassing things we’ve grown used to, such as look inert on offense — no, ninth-inning lipstick on the pig of a lost game doesn’t count. And then there was whatever they were up to in the seventh inning: Down five, they made us sit around for eight minutes or so to win a challenge on a ticky-tacky overslide by Pete Crow-Armstrong of second base, which came on ball four to the batter. (Never forget: PCA was a Met farmhand whom we traded so we could watch Javy Baez sulk for two months of garbage time.) Craig Counsell‘s disgust was palpable; so was mine. By God, is that ever not what replay is for: The Mets not only shouldn’t have won the challenge, they also should have lost their right to challenge for the rest of eternity.
I felt sorry for this year’s kidcaster, who had to endure an endless half-inning of Senga being terrible before getting to call a few plays by himself. The Mets of course supplied a one-two-three half-inning with nothing worth calling; by then the poor kidcaster was in his late thirties, wild-eyed and bearded and shouting out warnings of the apocalypse from his fetid lair under a bridge. So it goes with the 2026 Mets.
Oh, and Juan Soto left with a side/back ailment. Though perhaps the real injury is to his pride from having to be a party to this shambling horror show.
By that metric, we should all be on the IL.
by Greg Prince on 22 June 2026 10:35 am In the spirit of Norm Macdonald in 1994 on the subject of Kenny G’s new Christmas album, NBC and the Mets teamed up last evening to say, “Hey, happy Sunday night, baseball fans — hope you like crap!”
 “In related news, David Peterson will be starting a baseball game tomorrow night on this very network.” Folks tuned in to enjoy the exploits of Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper, and Zack Wheeler may have been satisfied with what the broadcast network version of Sunday Night Baseball presented them from Citizens Bank Park. Folks who left their televisions tuned to their local NBC affiliate after the U.S. Open ended at Shinnecock Hills and then tended to other matters were presumably tuned out. Anybody who actually expected much enlightenment regarding the baseball game playing out on their screen — or be spoken to as if the baseball game playing out on their screen was the reason they were watching it — was going to be disappointed.
Anybody who looked forward to the Mets competing let alone winning on Sunday night was courting dismay, but anybody paying attention to this team in 2026 probably knew enough to temper expectations. The matchup pitting Wheeler versus David Peterson was the first clue. Wheeler now qualifies as one of the venerated masters of his craft. He made his first major league start, as a Met, this month in 2013. He missed two full seasons due to injuries, but has compiled a ton of innings since getting healthy in 2017 and mostly staying healthy in the years that have followed. Very good innings. More Phillie innings than Met innings by far. Zack hasn’t been a Met since 2019. He last started for us in Game 159 of that year.
Peterson, who’d been working his way up the Met chain, was called up to start in the fifth game of the next year, which means he and Wheeler just missed overlapping within a Met rotation. Eight starts separated them…along with an offseason, a change of uniform for Wheeler, a promotion from the minors for Peterson, and a global pandemic that shifted and shrunk the 2020 season. Their near-proximity as staffmates is of the horseshoes and hand grenades variety, yet given that Wheeler has been around practically forever and Peterson is the senior Met in terms of service, you’d be forgiven for thinking they crossed clubhouse paths at Citi Field. Surely they nodded at one another in St. Lucie.
The two were both named to the National League All-Star team last summer. Wheeler opted out of going. Peterson was somebody else’s replacement. Only one of them figures to be considered for another invite next month. Wheeler keeps rolling along. Despite a touch of sixth-inning wildness, Zack has little problem raising his record to 7-1, which tracks with his ERA of 2.11. David, who usually has an opening act warm up the mound for him, came on cold to begin the bottom of the first. The Phillies nicked him for two runs pronto. In the second, Schwarber scorched him for a three-run homer. Down, 5-0, Petey settled in for a couple more innings. Or the Phillies got bored with hitting. Our longstanding lefty left with his ERA sitting above six.
So the ad hoc NBC crew of Jason Benetti, John Kruk, John Franco, and Anthony Rizzo would have something to do besides feign interest in and amusement with one another’s forced observations, Harper greeted Austin Warren with a leadoff homer in the fifth. National TV voices love to prattle on about Bryce Harper. The Mets, already dead, were buried. Their one modest rally followed the orange-and-blueprint with which we’ve grown familiar. Three walks led to a run-scoring groundout. Earlier, Juan Soto turned a two-out single to center into an easy out at second by inexplicably attempting to stretch his hit into a no-chance double. It was replayed and noted but not exactly analyzed, despite the presence of three analysts. Also, Carson Benge socked a homer to left, which gave the yakking quartet a few giggles when it was noticed the kid who seemed to fling the ball back onto the field in protest of the isolated Met success was actually throwing a different ball. Either way, it didn’t take the run off the scoreboard. Either way, the Mets were en route to a 6-2 loss.
After years of dreading Met visits to the ESPN Sunday night spotlight, I was curious to see how NBC would handle the assignment. The network had the Mets and Pirates on Opening Day, which now seems as long ago as 36-year-old Zack Wheeler’s major league debut representing a changing of the demographic guard. Opening Day was a Thursday afternoon, it was the first game of the season, and we were more intrigued by our new players than a new telecast. I’ve since consumed bits and pieces of NBC’s baseball coverage (sometimes on Peacock) and had been neither overly impressed nor totally repelled. Their decision to team the generally admired Benetti with voices connected to whoever was playing struck me as a good idea. I guess I was thinking of Lindsey Nelson partnering with Curt Gowdy.
Franco, bless his resilient left arm, tried his best. Now and then, when allowed to expand on pitching strategy, I came close to learning something. But then we needed to hear from Kruk, whose main selling point is his Krukness, and Rizzo, who sits near the field, and before we knew it, what a pitcher might be thinking when behind in the count got steamrolled by a critique of the local cheesesteak scene. All national broadcasts suffer to some degree from its producers deciding in advance that the audience can’t have its attention held by baseball. Let’s wander off and maybe it will be entertaining. Benetti probably isn’t helped by the panoply of parachuting partners. The viewer isn’t helped at all by any of it.
To be fair, the Mets hardly constitute compelling viewing. Since snapping their aberration of a 12-game losing streak, they have gone 27-27. If you wish to infer that a third-of-a-season’s worth of play indicates this is a .500 team rather than the one nine under in the actual standings covering the 77 games thus far completed, go ahead. Two months of win-one/lose-one haven’t gotten this team anywhere. The last two games in Philly indicate how far this team is from getting anywhere. The upward blips are instantly negated by the downward dips. Eventually, the Mets will win a game here, two games there, and it will be suggested their intermittent success is a sign that prosperity is just around the corner, what with multiple missing pieces coming off the IL and three Wild Cards in every pot.
You’ve still got to win more often than you lose over a lengthy stretch of the season. Isn’t that right, Anthony Rizzo?
by Jason Fry on 21 June 2026 12:06 pm I was right to be wary of Bryce Harper after a lousy game Thursday: BOOM Harper hit for the cycle.
It’s always a good call to be wary of Kyle Schwarber: BOOM two home runs in the third inning alone, 913 feet worth of pain, and then a homer to a more mortal distance later on. Funny how they all count the same.
Freddy Peralta was on the mound, and did nothing to make me revise my lukewarm “him again?” opinion. The 2026 version of Peralta springs from a special precinct of Baseball Hell: the guy touted as reliable in that he’ll take the ball every fifth day, only to have you realize you’d be better off if he took the ball less often. Peralta’s season has decayed to the point where he’s meh in the rotation and useless as a trade chip. If the Mets fall out of contention — which they’ve already thoroughly done, who are we kidding ourselves? — what are you getting back for a couple of months of Freddy Peralta? A failed prospect stuck in high-A whom nobody wants to talk about anymore? A case of stale Big League Chew? A wallet of Myanmar cryptocurrency?
Besides chronicles of labor strife, the offseason will be chock full of “How to fix the Mets” plans. Here’s the start of mine:
- Mark Vientos is never allowed to challenge — a sniper will be in the on-deck circle with a dart gun, ready if Vientos’ hand so much as approaches his head.
- David Stearns is forbidden from acquiring any more Brewers. Not even if Jacob Misiorowski becomes available in some dodgy MLB lottery, or a mad scientist with a vat full of bubbling DNA clones Robin Yount.
Anyway, once the score got to “Is Zack Short going three innings or just two?” territory, I turned the game off, which I make zero apology for. Instead of watching the Mets get pummeled, I watched The Killers, an awesome film noir with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner that has a wonderfully twisty plot and some jaw-dropping tracking shots. Highly recommended instead of the next Mets game.
Hmm. I see Short only went one inning — but was somehow unscored upon. Anyone opposed to him taking Peralta’s next start?
by Jason Fry on 19 June 2026 10:05 am Welcome to a sunny Friday without a baseball game, which is so weird that I know that come early evening I’ll be poking at my TV remote in consternation until I remember: “Oh yeah, stupid World Cup.”
At least that gives us extra time (see what I did there) to marvel at the Mets’ 6-4 win over the Phillies from Thursday, a thoroughly ridiculous baseball game that came out the way we wanted it. Seriously, it was ridiculous, and it was ridiculous from the jump — though not the familiar “Citizens Bank baseball Pachinko” ridiculous, but more “Are you sure you’re tall enough for this ride?” ridiculous.
The Mets got off to an immediate 1-0 lead when Juan Soto banged a home run off the facing of the second deck, one of those homers you knew was gone the second you saw the improbable launch angle, then added another run on an A.J. Ewing double that was a double because Brandon Marsh took a Jeffy in the Family Circus-style route to its vicinity, a misplay that followed Aaron Nola tagging Jared Young near first only to discover the baseball was in the grass behind him. Whoops!
The Phillies immediately halved the lead in the bottom of the first when Alec Bohm — who, lets recall, is suing his parents — singled home Trea Turner. But Sean Manaea escaped further harm when Bryce Harper was thrown out on a strike ’em out, throw ’em out steal attempt. (Harper came up small repeatedly in this game, which makes me reflexively brace for impact as we move forward — but that’s a Saturday problem because, again, stupid World Cup.) It looked like the Phillies would tie the game in the second, as certified annoyance Edmundo Sosa hit a leadoff triple, but Manaea sandwiched two grounders around a pop-up to escape harm.
Soto led off the third and hit a fly ball to the outfield, one that saw him begin the mildly disgusted trot of a hitter who knows he’ll hit first and then make a left for the visitors’ dugout. But Gary Cohen saw the danger before any of the principals did — Soto had hit the ball high if not ominously far, and the wind was whipping out. The ball kept going and going and plopped into the seats above an unhappy Justin Crawford‘s head, with Nola looking disgusted and Soto looking pleased but a little sheepish.
(Yeah, this is a lot of detail. But a) we’ve got time, because stupid World Cup; and b) it was one of those games where you kept going, “Wait, what in the world is happening now?” Which is always fun to try and recreate.)
The Phillies got closer in the bottom of the inning thanks to another dose of ridiculousness: Kyle Schwarber reached first on a strikeout/passed ball/throwing error, with the umps not calling him out for running inside the baseline as they should have. Schwarber came home on an RBI double from Bohm, one Carson Benge came within a whisker of making a terrific catch on in the right-field corner near the groundskeeper’s little hobbit house, a feature of Citizens Bank Park I’ve always found endearing, and a definite improvement over the Vet’s unfortunately emblematic in-house jail. The Phils then tied it an inning later when Ewing’s throw home hit not just the mound but also the rubber, caroming over a helpless Francisco Alvarez‘s head.
That drained the reservoir of ridiculousness for a time: Manaea gave way to Huascar Brazoban, whose newfound reliability continues to startle me, while Nola handed his duties over to Seth Johnson and then the hulking, mercurial Jose Alvarado. There’s no Phillie reliever more satisfying to get to than Alvarado, and in the seventh the Mets got to him. It started relatively conventionally: leadoff single for Benge, two-out walk for Mark Vientos, clutch pinch-hit RBI single for Eric Wagaman. But then things got weird again: Marcus Semien appeared to have struck out on a 2-2 cutter, with Alvarado and J.T. Realmuto walking off the field. But Semien thought he’d tipped it — channeling Gil Hodges, albeit without the shoe polish or dugout chicanery, he asked home-plate ump Brian Walsh to look for a smudge where the ball had hit the dirt before Realmuto secured it.
Smudge detected! Semien went back to work, and an understandably deflated Alvarado delivered a sinker that was more of a sitter. Semien mashed it to left-center, into the wind again. Crawford’s first step was a bit tentative, and the ball wound up off the wall above his glove for a two-run triple. The Mets got more good relief, with Luke Weaver fanning Harper, Bohm and Marsh in the eighth, and turned a three-run lead over to Devin Williams.
I don’t think I have it in me to trust Williams — ironic, since it was his close encounter with Pete Alonso that seems to have knocked his career off-kilter — but let it be noted that Bo Bichette misplayed a two-out grounder that should have ended the game. Someone named Gabriel Rincones Jr. singled, Crawford singled in a run, and oh boy here came Schwarber with a chance to hit a walkoff. In Citizens Bank Park. With the wind blowing out.
Williams’ 2-2 pitch had too much plate, and Schwarber belted it — but it was a low line drive out to right, not a high line drive destined for Mets Hell. In fact, it was just a couple of steps from where Brett Baty was patrolling. Baty secured it, first blood had gone to the Mets, and our reward is to wait around for a day.
Stupid World Cup!
by Greg Prince on 18 June 2026 11:57 am Welcome back to NBC 4 New York’s continuing coverage of this unforgettable day. We now go live to Bruce Beck, who has word of an unforeseen development, as the massive downtown celebration of the NBA champion Knicks takes an unexpected turn.
Natalie, since Lower Broadway was already set up for an UNBELIEVABLE procession, New York City is now proud to welcome to its legendary parade route the 33-41 New York Mets, winners of a 9-1 game over the Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday afternoon! A little-known fact: the Mets wear orange and blue, just like the Knicks, so the color scheme here is a PERFECT match. And despite wallowing eight games below .500, the Amazins linger a mere FIVE-AND-A-HALF games from the third and final National League Wild Card spot. Keeping up the pace they established Wednesday in Cincy looms as the KEY to the CITI Field security staff potentially unlocking their gates beyond Game 162.
Leading the way up the Canyon of Heroes, emerging from his own canyon of ZEROS — seven innings pitched with no earned runs allowed and nine Reds struck out — is Nolan McLean. The fans go tentatively WILD, given how excited they were about McLean when the 2026 season started, only to scale back their fervor when the staff’s prospective ace hit a rough patch. But now that the Mets are ROLLIN’ with Nolan, the shouts on his behalf are becoming DEAFENING again!
A familiar face fronts the next float. It’s the SIXTY-SECOND Recidivist Met in franchise history, Zack SHORT! Zack, who started at the position named for him Wednesday, left the Mets early in 2024, and about a month later, the 2024 Mets took flight. The 2026 Mets are 1-0 since Short’s return to the team. No wonder the utility infielder is practically DROWNING in ticker-tape. The Recidivist Met float on which Short stands tall is sponsored by eBay, where you can probably find that item you suddenly have second thoughts about having gotten rid of years ago.
The strains of Counting Crows accompany the entrance of not Boo, but BO Bichette, who would probably like everybody along the parade route to eat some crow. No, folks, Bo Bichette’s career as a productive major league hitter is not over. Since dropping to a nadir of .213 early this month, Bo has batted .436 in his past thirteen games, definitely the sign of somebody who is more than simply ‘hangin’ around’. On Wednesday, Bichette chipped in another three hits and scored three more runs. This crowd seems to have set a record for thunderous applause building from NOTHING.
 One of these days… Ooh, it appears one of the fans along the route has broken loose of the police barricades and may be looking to cause a stir. But wait! A.J. EWING has caught that fan! A.J. catches EVERYTHING, folks, as exemplified by his diving grab of J.J. Bleday’s bid for a bases-loaded double or something even more lethal in the third inning Wednesday. It became a sac fly and the only run Cincinnati would plate. A.J. also drove in a couple of runs in the rout and the fans are showing their appreciation for all the rookie can do.
As for that interloper Ewing caught, the cops are going to let Luis TORRENS throw him out. What an arm! Luis has shot down twelve of sixteen baserunners trying to steal so far this year. And what a bat we’re seeing waved to the crowd from his backstop buddy Francisco Alvarez, who had three hits as designated hitter on Wednesday. Ooh, the throng starts booing at just the mention of “designated hitter,” but it may be Francisco’s best position. Mets pitchers’ earned run average when Alvy is behind the dish is almost FIVE, whereas when Luis goes into his crouch, it falls to just above three.
Now here comes a vehicle you can’t miss: Juan SOTO’S luxury ride. It’s taking its time coming up the parade route, because that’s just the way it goes. As soon as it moseys the length of Broadway, it will be showered with confetti and adoration in acknowledgement of the three hits, two runs and two runs batted in Juan contributed to Wednesday’s victory. Natalie, to opposing pitchers, Juan is unsafe at any speed. Even with the time he missed due to injury in April, Soto’s Baseball-Reference WAR is more than twice that of any other Met position player. Leading Mets pitchers in that category? Clay HOLMES, who’s been out for more than a month. Folks, sometimes Wins Above Replacement really tells you the score.
You won’t want to miss the rest of this repurposed 2026 Mets parade, just in case it’s the last one that happens this year. We’ll be back in a minute to see if we can find any sign of Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert, to name just TWO of the several Mets who we don’t think have shown up yet.
by Jason Fry on 16 June 2026 11:58 pm Well, they didn’t lose 12-0.
Nope, on Tuesday night the Mets fell behind 4-0 in the first, but then won the rest of the game 3-1, which is a roundabout way of saying they lost 5-3. Kodai Senga somehow only gave up two hits over four innings, but those two hits came in the form of 800 feet worth of first-inning home runs; saying Senga settled down after that is like saying he attended to barn doors with aplomb once equine residents were no longer present to pose distractions.
Senga’s struggles were dispiriting enough, but the Mets also continued their recent tic of being mind-bogglingly hopeless with the bases loaded, collecting zippo for their sacks-drunk efforts in the third and the fourth innings. Their runs came on an RBI single by Bo Bichette, who seems to have turned back into the hitter we thought were getting in April (hey it’s something), and a moonshot by Mark Vientos, whom it still feels like damning with faint praise to say has looked better of late. But you know what? Mark Vientos has looked better of late!
So no, not a 12-0 loss where the only suspense was if Luis Torrens was going to be frog-marched out to the mound. Still, it never really felt like the Mets were coming back — a bloop and a blast seemed as unlikely as the Mets scaling Everest without oxygen. Insult to injury: What in the world was Marcus Semien doing squandering the Mets’ last challenge with two outs and a four-run deficit in the second inning? Francisco Alvarez‘s slightly earlier challenge was at least psychologically defensible, as he was trying to get a spooked pitcher back in harness, but what was Semien thinking?
While not fuming about miscellanous Mets misdeeds, I kept coming back to Senga. We’ve forgotten, amid so much that’s gone wrong, just how good the 2023 edition of Senga was — dart of a fastball, evil ghost fork, no chance for opposing hitters. 2024 was a lost season, but 2025 was going swimmingly until an errant throw by Pete Alonso brought everything crashing down, yet to be reassembled.
Now? I don’t know who the Kodai Senga out there is — and I doubt the man himself has an entirely firm grasp on answering that question. He couldn’t land his breaking pitches Tuesday night, with the ghost fork only occasionally flickering to life, like a flashlight plucked off a basement shelf and whacked into fitfully working order. No pitcher in today’s game is terribly effective with just a fastball — well OK, maybe Jacob Misiorowski is — but Senga’s looks like it’s lacking the bite it used to have, and which he sorely needs.
So what’s wrong with Senga? You’ve got me.
Maybe it’s the latest in a cascade of injuries — a lot of pitcher maladies are, with the game’s dopey omerta preventing us from hearing what exactly was wrong until it’s been fixed. (Unless, of course, whatever’s wrong isn’t fixed at all for some baffling reason. Cough, Sean Manaea, cough.)
Maybe it’s that Senga’s persnickety near-obsession with his own mechanics has sent him down a rabbit hole he can’t escape — sometimes Senga reminds me of Ron Darling, a smart pitcher who might have been better off as a baseball player if he’d been a little dumber.
Maybe it’s something else — at several points over the last three seasons, the Mets have let slip a certain degree of exasperation about what page they’re on versus what page Senga is on, the kind of disconnect teams rarely allow to be seen in the modern game, and which therefore speaks volumes.
All I know is it’s been like this long enough that a bleak weariness has settled over all involved: the team, the fans, Senga himself. The Mets could sure use a healthy, happy Senga, but does that pitcher exist anymore? Maybe all the Met voices have become so much Peanuts adult noise for Senga; maybe he needs to hear other voices to get back to what he was. You hate to think it — it’s a long-winded way of saying “OK, we give up” — but sometimes giving up becomes best for all involved.
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