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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 16 June 2026 12:38 am Twelve runs allowed.
Twelve-run margin of defeat.
Twelve runners left on base.
Twelfth shutout suffered with twelve or more runners left on base in a nine-inning game in franchise history.
You could say 12s were wild for the Mets on Monday night in Cincinnati, except there was nothing that screamed or even whispered “wild” about their 12-0 loss to the Reds. Maybe it is wild in retrospect that management thought bringing back Tobias Myers from Syracuse to start would be helpful. It wasn’t. Myers lasted an inning-and-a-third. Jonathan Pintaro, another minor league returnee (did you notice he was gone?), soaked up the middle part of the game, which is usually one of those yeoman tasks a fan is inclined to applaud. Pintaro gave up a grand slam, so hold your applause. Later came David Peterson, whose work did not inspire a boomlet dedicated to his rotation reinstatement.
That was the pitching that permitted a dozen runs. The dozen runners the Mets put on became no runs, one of those broad offensive misfires that might be seem unprecedented, but the very same total of runners was left to loiter in a shutout inflicted upon the Mets by the Rays just last year, on the very same date, in fact. Time flies when you’re plating none. Had the Mets stranded the bases loaded in the ninth without scoring — as they did in the fourth, fifth, and seventh — they would have set the team record for most LOBs in regulation, topping the club record for spectacular futility from August 2023, shortly after the Mets waved an enormous white flag on their season. Alas, these Mets, presumably still endeavoring to compete, went out in order. So much for breaking new if sodden ground.
Any upside to losing, 12-0? Well, had the Mets scored 11, how aggravating would have a 12-11 loss been? And had the Mets allowed just one run, imagine the frustration in losing, 1-0. Do all your ineffective pitching and ineffectual hitting together, get both out of your system, and greet the next day (with its game to be started by Kodai Senga in place of IL-situated Christian Scott) as a new day, because it is.
No, not much of an upside. What do you want from a 12-0 loss?
by Greg Prince on 15 June 2026 2:39 pm Freddy Peralta has joined Harry Parker and Jerry Koosman in that very exclusive club of Mets pitchers who have started and won on the day after the Knicks have clinched an NBA title. It’s a small sample size, but the Mets are 3-0 in those situations.
May 9, 1970: The Mets and Giants are embroiled in a 4-4 tie until the bottom of the fifth at Shea, when the home team busts out for nine hits, scoring eight runs to tie the franchise mark for most in an inning. Ex-Giant Dave Marshall drives in two. Art Shamsky drives in two. Kooz himself — who will effectively disperse 10 hits over seven-and-two-thirds — drives one in. So does Tommie Agee on the afternoon he extends his Mets-record hitting streak to 20. Ron Taylor comes on in the eighth and retires the five hitters he faces to seal the 14-5 win over San Francisco.
May 11, 1973: It’s another tight game, this time at Three Rivers Stadium. Mets 2 Pirates 2. Again, the fifth inning provides the turning point, albeit with less explosiveness than three years earlier. Against Dock Ellis, the Mets string together a hit-by-pitch, a two-out single, and one more hit besides from Jim Gosger to take the lead. Gosger is 46 years from being declared dead at the 2019 Citi Field reunion of the 1969 Mets despite continuing to live. Here, in another of his fortuitously timed cameos (Jim was a Met for slices of 1969 and 1973, but not at all in between), he is very much alive and well, and so are the 1973 Mets. Bud Harrelson works out a bases-loaded walk in the seventh to extend the Mets’ edge to 4-2, giving Parker the breathing room to withstand a Willie Stargell RBI double in the bottom of the inning. Harry gives way to Tug McGraw, who stays in the rest of the way. In the ninth, the Buccos will load the bases, but the Tugger will wriggle out of it, and the Mets come away 4-3 winners.
The Mets game of June 14, 2026, was also a win. Mets 8 Braves 1, a romp unlike the post-Knick successes in that it was taking place right in front of me. I was 7 in 1970 and not being taken to Mets games. A few Knicks games, it so happens, that first championship season, but not the Mets. At age 10 in 1973, I wasn’t making a habit of flying off to Pittsburgh for the weekend, though I can say I had been at the Garden for Game Three of those NBA Finals the Knicks finished off in five in Los Angeles. Here, it was no aberration to find myself situated in toasty warm Promenade with my friend Mark Simon on Sunday afternoon. It was my third Mets game in five days. I haven’t gone to see the Knicks since 1995.
Things change. The day-after victory habit hasn’t, I’m happy to confirm. We (the Mets) were down after a half-inning by a run. Peralta was, per usual, making the least out of the most pitches possible. After he’d thrown 26 of them, the Braves had a run in and the bases loaded. Somehow — and until he demonstrates some consistency, Freddy gets the “somehow” treatment when things go well — he escaped the jam.
Then the Mets, perhaps inspired by the blaring of the public address system to remind us the Knicks had emerged champions the night before in San Antonio (you could hear the hype all the way to Texas), went out and trampled Bryce Elder for four runs in the bottom of the first. Mark and I were able to settle into our annual game of trivia, where the goal isn’t to answer correctly on the first swing but suss out what the questioner is looking for after a series of largely inscrutable hints. My questions tend to be asked in sixteen parts. I’m loads of fun to sit next to at Mets games.
Mark was unGosgerian in his timing when it came to excusing himself in the middle of the fifth inning. He missed A.J. Ewing’s home run, which is to say he also missed Marcus Semien’s home run on the very next pitch. The bottle of water he went off to refill, however, appeared superbly refreshing, and they do show replays. They showed the home runs a lot. They showed Knicks highlights a lot. They showed special celebrity visitor and Cardinals fan Jon Hamm sitting in a fancy seat down below pointing to himself wearing a Knicks cap. Why they didn’t show the Mad Men clip of him as Don Draper singing “Meet the Mets” to Freddy Rumsen (or at least the time he’s out for drinks telling someone Bill Bradley’s having a helluva year) is beyond my Mets A/V comprehension. My week at Citi Field exposed me to unprecedented amounts of sanctioned rah-rah for a non-Mets team. If the Mets were being supportive of their fellow local athletic squad, good for them. If the Mets were glomming onto someone else’s orange-and-blue ascent, good for them, too. Steal that valor. Distract us from the tenor of the baseball campaign to date.
Not that we needed to have our attention diverted from the Mets on Sunday. The Braves never got it going, the Mets just kept on coming, adding a couple of runs to secure an 8-1 triumph. The PA remained too loud the entire day. The Knicks were still champions. And I could stop keeping track of something I’ve been monitoring since 2015.
Every time it became mathematically certain no New York-and-immediate vicinity team would win any among a Super Bowl, a Stanley Cup, an NBA Finals, or a World Series, I would do the math. By November 1, 2015, when the Mets opted out of that year’s Fall Classic sans trophy, it had been 1,365 days since the Giants had won Super Bowl XLVI, or 46 for you non-Romans out there, on February 5, 2012. In the interim, the Devils in nearby Newark had lost a Stanley Cup in the final round of 2012 (127 days) and the Rangers had done the same in 2014 (859 days). Even the 2015 World Series going not the way a significant percentage of the Metropolitan Area population wished hardly indicated we were in a title drought. But it was beginning to get a bit parched in these parts.
There hadn’t been a yawning gap from New York championship to New York championship since the white space that filled October 16, 1962 (Yankees win World Series) to January 12, 1969 (Jets win Super Bowl). I come along as a sports fan in the ensuing months, and I soon got the idea that New York might be Titletown, USA. Only 277 days elapse between the Jets setting the standard and the Mets matching it on October 16, 1969. The city and suburbs needed a mere 204 days to gets its fix once again, courtesy of the 1969-70 Knicks, the first championship team I lived and died but didn’t really have to die with on a daily and nightly basis. The 1969 Mets I joined already in progress. I was ready for the Knicks from their opening tip on October 14. My parents went to Opening Night at Madison Square Garden — hours after Agee made his two immortal catches — and reported back that the Knicks had beaten the Seattle Supersonics. We (the Knicks) got off to a 5-0 start, lost one to the San Francisco Warriors, then won their next eighteen. I was hooked for the foreseeable future.
 Banner from a championship season. We (the family) had season tickets. Mom and Dad would go the Garden on Saturday nights and some Tuesday nights. My father would use them for business in the ways one used tickets for the hottest game in town otherwise. I remember a lot of sitting at the dinner table listening to Marv Albert. Dad was into it. Mom was into it. I was into it. My sister put up with it. A few times we got to go. I still have the felt KNICKERBOCKERS pennant from my first non-circus trip to the Garden. No wonder that by May 8, 1970, the night we listened anxiously for Marv to let us know if Willis Reed was gonna play Game Seven (ABC’s telecast was blacked out in New York), it meant the world that the Knicks beat the Lakers. It absolutely did to this 7-year-old.
it meant maybe a touch less but still loads 1,098 days later when the Knicks beat the Lakers again, on May 10, 1973. Toward the end of the 1970-71 season, after close to two years of hanging on every jump shot and rebound, I found myself caring tangibly less, as if I had just come out of a hypnotic spell. I went from “the Knicks are on!” to “oh, the Knicks are on.” Maybe it had something to do with my parents giving up the season tickets. They got them back in 1972. The seats weren’t as good, but my sister and I got to go a little more frequently, including to one game per each round of the playoffs. After the Knicks took a 3-1 lead and headed to L.A. in the 1973 Finals, Suzan and I calculated we’d get to go to the potential clincher if the Knicks had the decency to lose Game Five on the road. Yet I was too much of a fan at age 10 to mess with karma. I was quite delighted to watch the second Knick championship get won on TV.
The family kept the season tickets for one more year. Going to the Garden never got old, but the Knicks had. Willis, Dave DeBusschere, and Jerry Lucas were all on the verge of retirement. The last of our games in person, against the Celtics in the 1973-74 Eastern Conference finals, was the kind of loss that told a person who paid attention, even if that person was only 11 years old, that an era was ending. The Knicks were eliminated in Boston.
New York’s title bounty continued apace, anyway, with the other professional basketball team for whom I had developed an affinity, the Nets of the ABA, winning their first championship, exactly one year after the Knicks had won their second. In 734 days, the Nets would do it again. Hence, from January 12, 1969, to May 13, 1976, New Yorkers had been party to six champagne celebrations, almost one per year. Then came the Yankees of 1977 and 1978; the Islanders of 1980 through 1983; the 1986 Mets; 1986 Giants; the 1990 Giants; the 1994 Rangers; the 1995 Devils; the unwanted but undeniable Yankees of 1996 and 1998 through 2000; the 2000 and 2003 Devils; the 2007 Giants; and the last gasp of the Core Four in the 2009 World Series. When Eli Manning bested Tom Brady for the second time, on February 5, 2012, the New York-area sporting public had a chance to revel in 26 titles in just over 43 years. Understandably, few people would have said “YAY!” 26 times, for we differentiate in our sporting loyalties, given that these are four sports and they encompass are nine local teams, spawning direct and/or emotional rivalries. I can think of seven titles right away I could have done without. But they were there if my neighbors wanted them.
Then, following the 2011 Giants’ trip into the history books, nothing. Some close calls, à la the 2015 World Series, and some ancillary trophies, like those earned by New York FC in the MLS in 2021 and the New York Liberty in the WNBA in 2024, but nothing in what one might by ingrained habit refer to as The Big Four. The longest the Metropolitan Area had to wait between 1/12/1969 and 2/5/2012, was the 1,700 days that spanned the Devils on 6/9/2003 and the Giants on 2/3/2008. We passed that shortly before the 2016 Mets lost their Wild Card game. The title drought was in full effect.
It grew and grew and grew until it threatened to surpass the granddaddy drought of them all, the 5,843 days between the New York Giants winning the World Series in 1905 and the New York Giants next winning the World Series in 1921. Professional sports basically had the Big One in those days. The Yankees were kept from the World Series in those days. Those days had something going for them. As of Saturday night, June 13, 2026, the title drought had grown to 5,242 days. We were less than two years from making John McGraw feel not so bad about the outcomes of the 1911, 1912, 1913, and 1917 World Series (not to mention getting robbed of the 1908 National League pennant). But that stuff’s for ancient history now.
Saturday night, the Knicks put an end to all the counting. New York — along with, one supposes, Raleigh, N.C., home of the newly crowned Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes — can lay claim to Titletown honors. The Knicks are the NBA champions. I lived it in 1970 and 1973. I drifted away from them in 1974. I feinted back toward them now and then in succeeding decades, but not at all in this century. The Nets maintained my affinity, from Long Island to New Jersey to Brooklyn. Strangely enough, it’s stronger than ever. When it comes to basketball allegiance, I am Moe Szyslak explaining to Homer Simpson why his tavern lacked that hot new attraction every sports bar in the country was featuring by the early 1990s. “Well, it was either cable or the mechanical bull. I made my choice and I stand by it.” Cut to Moe’s mechanical bull, covered in cobwebs. I’m a Nets fan. They won 20 games this year and came in sixth in the draft lottery.
I used to be a Knicks fan. Their run through the 2025-26 playoffs moved me little, except for a touch of resentment every time I read or heard that they were unlike any other local sports franchise because they alone in their sport represent everybody in New York. Echoes of October 1996, when “everybody in New York” allegedly pulled for the “Miracle” Yankees. Except this time, I didn’t have an October of 1986 to present as evidence of short municipal memories. May of 1976 was a long time ago. The ABA disappeared that month. I’m still waiting for the Nets to totally get the hang of this NBA thing.
 Searching old haunts for new enthusiasm. Couldn’t find it. I know how being a Nets fan works. I know I exist, even if relatively few others of my ilk do as well. Yet when the Knicks verged on winning it all and then did win it all, I was…honestly…not as annoyed by it as I thought I’d be. New York needed a championship of the first order (as long as it wasn’t captured by the Yankees). I’m genuinely happy for whoever’s genuinely happy about this. Sheesh, 53 years is too long to begrudge anybody, except the Yankees. I tried to gin up Knick enthusiasm on behalf of my younger self, but nah, this one isn’t for contemporary me. It doesn’t have to be. I’ve got the Nets and their No. 6 draft pick to maybe do something useful with. I’ve got the Mets beating the Braves two out of three. I’ve got sixteen-part trivia questions to craft for the next time I see Mark Simon. I’ll always have what the Knicks did in 1969-70 and 1972-73 and what those teams meant to me then and still mean to me now. I’m good with all that.
I know from experience how great it is to be with a champion. I’m satisfied to be proximate to one for a change.
Mark is writing an Amazin’ weekly newsletter commemorating the 40th anniversary of the greatest championship of all, that of the 1986 Mets. Learn more about it here. And if by some chance you were at Game Four last week for the comeback of comebacks AND at Shea for Game Six and THAT comeback of comebacks, let us know, because Mark would love to talk to you.
by Jason Fry on 14 June 2026 1:40 am A few hours before the Knicks turned New York City into the world’s largest block party, the Mets lost a humdrum game against the Braves by the told-you-it-was-humdrum score of 3-1.
To be fair, the biggest positive of the game was actually worth noting: Sean Manaea got the start and turned in six effective innings, a performance good enough to have translated into a win if only the Mets had offered him any offensive support. Manaea has worked patiently through any number of mechanical issues in coaxing his velocity to return to the point where his fastball can be an effective counterpoint to his sweeper; I still wish he’d taken an opportunity to surgically repair the loose bodies in his elbow, but then it’s always easy to recommend surgeries for other people. Manaea earned a start, showed he can pitch effectively, and ought to get more starts.
Manaea aside, though, there wasn’t much worth one’s time. The Mets could do little with Martin Perez, got racked by Ronald Acuna Jr. fill-in Eli White, and fell short. Though there are worse things than a humdrum loss, I suppose. Consider, if you dare, what would have happened if Austin Warren hadn’t allowed a Michael Harris II home run in the eighth to give the Braves an insurance run. Juan Soto led off the Mets’ ninth with what was initially ruled a home run and then downgraded to a double after a crew-chief review detected … well, to be honest, hours later I’m still not quite sure what was detected. Soto never advanced beyond second, as Mark Vientos struck out, Marcus Semien walked and Francisco Alvarez rapped into a game-ending double play.
The difference between Braves 3, Mets 1 and Braves 3, Mets 2? Merely cosmetic. But if it had been Braves 2, Mets 1 before Soto hit a ball over the fence that was then ruled to be something else? That would have been an unhappy recap indeed — one I’m pretty glad I haven’t had to write.
* * *
 If you remember the name Rick Sweet, well, I’m impressed … and you must be a monster at Mets-related Sporcles.
Sweet appeared in three April games for the 1982 Mets, pinch-hitting in all three — he never even got to wear his catcher’s gear as a Met. His big-league career consisted of parts of three seasons. But that thin Baseball Reference entry belies the fact that Sweet is a baseball lifer, having managed 36 minor-league seasons, and is closing in on the record for wins by a minor-league manager. Writing for the Athletic, Tyler Kepner has a wonderful profile of Sweet, a momentary Met you’ll enjoy learning more about.
(Accompanying this post is my own Sweet custom card.)
* * *
The most fun part of the Knicks’ run? It’s been the jubilation in the city. Today I was walking over to help with our kayak program in Brooklyn Bridge Park and passed person after person in Knicks garb, witnessed strangers high-fiving and exchanging good wishes, and overheard conversations about the upcoming Game 5 that covered the entire sports-fan gamut, from strutting confidence to naked anxiety.
I’m merely a basketball tourist: I watched the NBA Finals, enjoyed them and will now go back to worrying more about the Mets’ bullpen construction than I ever will about the Knicks. But the significance of what the Knicks did wasn’t lost on me: They ended a 53-year drought for their fans.
I was born five months, one week and one day before the Mets won their first World Series; I must have seen some of it from on laps and in bassinets but obviously have no memory of it. I was 17 when they won their second one, ending a drought that was coincidentally as old as I was.
I was raised properly: I didn’t assume the Mets would win another title in 1987, let alone feel entitled to one. But it’s now been 40 years, and the current incarnation of the team doesn’t exactly offer hope of ending that drought before we start talking about 41 years.
I found the Knicks’ citywide block party delightful, and I’m thrilled for their fans. But as Emily and I passed knots of fans outside bars, on our way home to watch the game ourselves, one thought and its variations kept pushing out all the others in my head: I want to feel if winning a title is as sweet as it was at 17. I want Mets fans under 40 to know that feeling. I want this for us.
by Greg Prince on 13 June 2026 4:44 am Like Bob Seger so many summers ago, Bo Bichette woke last night to the sound of thunder. BOOM! before the game. Then he woke the rest of us up. BOOM! in the first inning. BOOM! like crazy in the second. Bo went BOOM! twice in a game that waited for a wicked storm to pass through the vicinity to get going, and drove in six runs before it was done. Talk about some night moves.
Led by an erstwhile Blue Jay who appeared lost once separated from his flock, Bo has found quite a Met groove of late. No doubt superfan/supercritic Gene Shalit would have given Bichette’s character arc a rave review. Bo stands as the main if not sole reason the Mets were 7-5 winners over the Braves on Friday. The Braves are in first place. The Mets are in last. For one sweaty night, the standings were irrelevant. We took a lead in the season series. We clinched the championship of June 12, 2026. We didn’t totally mind enduring a 1:16 delay to do it.
 “A plot to plotz from!” NBC’s Gene Shalit raves. We — a cohort that included my pal Kevin and me, attending our annual Mets-Braves tilt — were cautioned to take shelter as lightning descended over Citi Field as the originally scheduled first pitch time approached. At the moment word of weather danger went forth, we were in the smallest room the ballpark has to offer: the Mets Museum, waaaaay over in the right field corner. There’s enough in there to keep a Mets fan engaged for a good four or five minutes. We’d been in it for maybe two. Since it wasn’t known how long the impending precipitation would pelt Flushing, we were instructed to go wait it out somewhere else, presumably because the guard feared if we stuck around, he’d have to listen to us ask, “What in the name of Edward Emil Kranepool happened to all the stuff that used to be in the museum when the museum was a proper size and in the Rotunda?”
Up in the Promenade concourse, you could mostly avoid the rain if you stood at the appropriate angle. The thunder you couldn’t miss. BOOM! it went, presaging Bo. The loudest claps unleashed the most topical of local chants. “KNICKS IN FIVE! KNICKS IN FIVE!” Soon enough, perhaps.
When the baseball game got underway, Nolan McLean looked untouchable. It was a look we’d miss by the second, but it sure was tantalizing in the top of the first, as he retired the Braves in rapid succession. In the bottom of the first, Bichette offered his first sound of thunder, giving Spencer Strider’s slider a guided tour of the left-center field seats. They could put it in the Mets Museum, but then they’d have to move three other items out in order to accommodate the addition. Juan Soto followed directly with his fifteenth homer of the season. From our seats in 517, I’m pretty sure I saw a mask replace the hard hat for conveying dugout giddiness. Glad we’re hitting so many homers that we’re getting bored with the same old props.
In the top of the second, everything went wrong for McLean except the bottom line. Far too many pitches. Far too many baserunners (featuring Dom Smith in Old Friend™ mode). But only two runs. Nolan McLean may be the pitchin’ magician. We’d prefer that efficient fellow from the top of the first.
Fortunately for the Mets, Bichette enjoyed the sound of thunder so much, he decided to make more of it. BOOM!!!! Three men were on when Bo came up in the second. All of them scored after Bichette swung. Bo joined them. This second homer snuck over the fence in the right field corner, not as far as the first, yet it counted for four times as many runs. Baseball math — go figure.
Supported by that grand slam, McLean fended off the Braves off for a couple more innings. A Bichette sac fly gave Nolan a five-run lead and himself six RBIs. Margin for error had arrived. Cionel Perez could give up a solo homer to Matt Olson, and it wouldn’t hurt much. The Mets could stop scoring, and it didn’t have to be an omen. The Braves could scratch out a couple more runs in the eighth, and…well, that wasn’t ideal. At 7-5, the game was feeling tight enough to fit inside the Mets Museum. It was also late enough that fans who normally catch an eastbound train home from Woodside — which works fine before but not necessarily after midnight — had to scan the LIRR app for more reasonable options. Just like high starter pitch counts guarantee too much bullpen usage, lengthy delays play havoc with postgame commutation.
Devin Williams achieved a four-out save, which I assume means he won’t be available for the next two weeks. That can be sorted out later. It was imperative to get the win that was within reach, and it was attained. Ideally, the win would have occurred at a brisker pace. Instead, it didn’t go final until 11:35. I’d be staying on the 7 well past Woodside and going for the 12:35 out of Grand Central Madison, a sparkling rail hub where I am essentially a gaijin, relative to my lifelong familiarity with grimy Penn Station. Kevin, an East Sider recently back from sampling the wonders of baseball in the Far East, was kind enough to extend his Friday night journey a little longer in order to point me toward the correct escalator. I made my way down to my train. Bo Bichette made his way up in my esteem. Sayonara, Spencer Strider and the rest of you Braves.
by Greg Prince on 12 June 2026 9:28 am Between innings on Wednesday night, after a shared reluctance to shvitz our assorted body parts off on Thursday afternoon had pushed up by eighteen hours Stephanie’s and my vague plan to fulfill our even vaguer ambition to go to a game this week, I stared out at Citi Field’s well-manicured lawn with admiration. It had that freshly mowed mien it doesn’t always display. No indentations from a concert or soccer match. Smooth and serene. The grounds crew must be doing a heckuva job, I thought.
Then, when the game resumed, I realized coming to see the Mets play baseball is akin to watching grass grow. Given that the Mets were en route to losing to the Cardinals by seven runs for a second consecutive evening, the grass’s progress elicited greater satisfaction.
That was Wednesday. Interesting night to attend a sporting event in the city of New York, if not this sporting event. The Mets at least had the decency to efficiently get their loss over in time for people to make their desired train at Woodside, therefore allowing them to arrive home swiftly and take a gander at any other game going on in town. Grass, ironically, was not growing underneath the feet of those playing in a place known as the Garden.
Thursday, with my wife and I not in attendance, Christian Scott started his assignment on the mound looking like some combination of shrub and schlub, giving up a home run in the first, then another couple in the second, negating whatever momentum Met bats had gathered in the bottom of the first, when Bo Bichette and Jared Young each went deep. St. Louis led, 4-3, Sinatra’s fickle friend the summer wind and its cousin June Humidity doing what they do to make the afternoon uncomfortable from multiple perspectives.
 Killing time, watching the grass grow. As the Flushing grass continued to grow, the action settled down. The Cardinals stopped scoring. The Mets stopped scoring. A dog chased a cat and they were both walking. That kind of day, it appeared. Baseballs went from flying out of the park to not much bothering anybody. Good news for Scott. Less good news for his teammates permitted to hit. They were permitted to hit on Wednesday night. Most of them declined, as reflected by the lineup going a collective 3-for-30. Perhaps one through nine in the order were as enthralled by the grass’s growth as I was.
A television viewer couldn’t be blamed for believing Thursday’s bottom of the first, when Bichette and Young stirred, loomed as an aberration. In the bottom of the fifth, however, Juan Soto commenced doing Juan Soto things, upside edition. Juan stung a double into the right field gap with one out and decided to become a full-fledged baserunner when Young followed that with a single to center. Not content to stop at third, Soto chugged all the way home, where he was about to be out by if not a mile, then a couple of blocks. Fortunately the throw to the catcher took too much of a bounce to be handled cleanly. The Cardinals corral almost everything they get their mitts near, but not here. The Mets had tied the game at four.
Summertime sleepiness returned for a spell longer, thanks in part to the usual lack of Mets aptitude on offense, partly because Scott’s legion of successors induced the Redbirds into a good, solid nap. Enter Soto again, this time making his seventh-inning trip around the bases academic with a solo shot over the wall in right. Two very authoritative at-bats, two runs the Mets desperately needed. That is if one infers there is desperation to the Mets’ season rather than killing time, watching the grass grow.
From A.J. Minter and Brooks Raley deploying their veteran lefty wiles for two-and-a-third, to Luke Weaver crocheting yet another shutdown inning in the eighth, to Devin Williams closing matters out sans drama, the Mets came away 5-4 victors, hot enough on a day when temperatures soared and people who chose to go the loss night before instead of this matinee win didn’t much regret their decision. A win’s a win, whenever and wherever you take it in.
by Jason Fry on 11 June 2026 10:37 am Hey, from my perspective the Mets looked great Wednesday night.
Perhaps that’s because I was on the East River in a kayak for the opening innings, went out to get pizza once I got home, and then watched the Knicks given how things were going. End result: I watched the game for about six minutes and during that time I saw Francisco Alvarez connect for a homer and the Mets outscore the Cardinals by two.
If only baseball worked that way, right?
I’d be embarrassed, but given the outcome, my life choices were uncharacteristically good ones. Kayaking is good for body and soul. The Knicks … well, wow. Meanwhile, there are only so many pixels one can spill on what’s wrong with David Peterson this time and whether that should be the Mets’ problem to fix, and only so rhapsodic one can wax about not-bad garbage-time innings from Jonathan Pintaro or Alvarez looking like the hitter he can be between stints on the injured list.
The Mets simply aren’t very interesting right now; they’re like the doomed programming other networks put up against the Oscars … or the Knicks. Until the Mets are watchable again, hey, the world is full of wonders and there’s no shame in discovering them.
by Jason Fry on 9 June 2026 10:47 pm Just the other day the Mets rode some goodwill across the country from San Diego, goodwill that lingered through an off-day in which the Knicks took up all the city’s oxygen anyway, but was still ready to be tapped at Citi Field on a lovely Tuesday night.
Well, so much for that.
The Mets squandered all that goodwill early with a fallen souffle of a game in which they looked inert against a Cardinals team that played with verve and dash and an agreeable recklessness. The Cardinals made superb plays on defense, stole a run against a flat-footed Marcus Semien and Jared Young, and battered Freddy Peralta on an off-night. Going into this season, the rebuilding Cards looked like a lead-pipe cinch to record consecutive full-year losing seasons for the first time since Eisenhower was president, a pretty astonishing run. Instead they’re in the hunt, playing with the pinch-me confidence of a young team that’s arrived early and is betting with house money.
They’re fun to watch, where the Mets are too often unwatchable.
Games like this happen, and the wisest thing would be to advance one’s mental calendar to Wednesday and be done with it. Which I’m trying to do, except for one thing that keeps annoying me, and that’s Freddy Peralta.
Peralta has been … fine. His numbers are pretty good (though they weren’t tonight). He generally keeps the Mets in games (though he didn’t tonight). But I’m not that annoyed about tonight — again, games like this happen. What annoys me, and I now realize has been annoying me more and more all year, is that Peralta was billed as this great get and instead he’s been … just a guy. He’s felt interchangeable and replaceable, a No. 3 starter whose contract status should be on the Mets’ to-do list somewhere down around “touch up stadium paint.”
I don’t know why I have it in for Peralta. He’s personable enough and thoughtful about his craft, and God knows plenty of his fellow imports have been too fragile to take the field or less than impressive when they do. (Seriously, I have no need to ever see Jorge Polanco again.) But Peralta just leaves me cold, and makes me wish I was watching Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat try to figure things out alongside the rest of the Mets’ kiddie corps.
A look at the stats is a reminder to be careful what you wish for: Sproat has been battered as a Brewer and Williams isn’t exactly tearing it up in Nashville. Still, those two at least have futures one can imagine being excited about. When every fifth day rolls around and I realize Peralta’s pitching again, I think, “Him again?” I have questions about a lot of aspects of David Stearns’ offseason plan, but I’m pretty sure that reaction wasn’t what he had in mind.
by Jason Fry on 8 June 2026 10:05 pm Emily and I were up in Massachusetts for our high-school reunion and so missed both the good vibes of Friday night’s game and the disappointment of Saturday’s clunker. Plus we drove up Thursday night, which was an off-day, spent by the Mets in their usual posture of wandering the West Coast.
Even in a season that’s been lousy and threatens to become lost, I don’t like missing the Mets. And I never like a long car ride without a ballgame for company. Baseball is lots of things – a welcome diversion, a sporting event, an art form, a metaphor for far too many things – but perhaps above all other things, it’s good company.
So Sunday was a relief on multiple levels: The finale in San Diego (and the Mets’ last West Coast game of the season, though I suppose let’s add a “regular” qualifier there out of loyalty) began with us in the car making our way toward the city, along with what felt like the population of a fair-sized province in China. Which was OK, because there were the Mets, right where we’d left them.
Even better, there were the Mets doing things one actually wanted to witness. They got off to an early 1-0 lead. They escaped an early jam. They got another home run from Marcus Semien, who seems to quietly have had surgery to remove the large fork from his back that had hampered his early-season play. They got good bulk work from Sean Manaea, who’s little by little regaining the velocity and bite on his pitches. And they kept after it – after newly minted Padres annoyance Freddy Fermin cut the lead in half with a two-run homer, the Mets coolly riposted with solo shots from MJ Melendez and Carson Benge. In the end, they walked away with a fairly sweat-free 7-3 win.
Benge was all over this game: 5 for 5, missing only the double for a cycle. Benge was utterly lost in April, looking saucer-eyed and overmatched at the plate. Only injuries kept him from a demotion to the minors, and that didn’t feel like a kindness with the rest of the team at sea. There are tough lessons one has to learn to survive in the big leagues; there’s also being left to drown, and for a while it sure felt like Benge had been abandoned to that fate, with potentially dire effects on his development.
But at least on this score, the Mets knew what they were doing. Benge kept saying the right things and kept working and kept learning, and all of a sudden the kid who was drowning is hitting a very much above-water .265 and you can’t imagine the lineup without him. The same goes for the outfield, where he’s become a capable wingman to A.J. Ewing – another young player who’s quietly gone about his business and moved from question-mark prospect to lineup mainstay. Ewing was notable on Sunday too, streaking into deep left-center to pocket a drive ticketed for the alley and turn it into just another out.
Apologies to Tug McGraw, but I have trouble believing this Mets team will force me to keep my October calendar open – too many injuries, too many misfit mercenaries, too many misalignments and misfortunes. But I am thoroughly enjoying watching Benge and Ewing grow into themselves. Their tomorrows look bright – it’s easier and easier to imagine them as Mets mainstays – but their todays are enjoyable too. You can dream on what they’ll become, but they’re already good company.
by Greg Prince on 7 June 2026 11:42 am One final late night West Coast start for 2026 awaited. Its contents were a mystery at its beginning, but you couldn’t be blamed if you sensed in advance something would go awry. Escaping the Metsian temporal cul-de-sac is rarely a breeze.
Saturday. San Diego. After dark. You don’t have to be Joe Piscopo to report that trouble likely lurks. Petco Park houses Turner Field, Pac Bell Park, and Miller Park energy, cited for venues gone or since rechristened that unleashed recurring stretches of bad Metsian energy over long periods of time. Dodger Stadium has been like that in the past decade, though that may be more about the Dodgers being the home team. Petco has traditionally sheltered a walkoff doggo just out of sight ready to bite. Billy Wagner knew it. Francisco Rodriguez knew it. Edwin Diaz discovered it. Devin Williams didn’t have to, because Austin Warren got to the mound first. He didn’t even wait until the eighth, let alone the ninth. The game wasn’t over as Austin sought a third out in his first inning of work, but it might as well have been.
In the bottom of the seventh, with the Mets ahead by a slender run, Warren gave up a two-run homer that can be described as plump to Padres catcher Freddy Fermin. I know it can be described as plump, because I went to Merriam-Webster’s website and searched antonyms for slender. My whole life I’ve been hearing about slender one-run leads, yet no obvious opposite to “slender” that came to mind seemed appropriate. I don’t know that “plump” does, either. I do know that once Fermin, who is now batting .133, got hold of what Warren served up, the Mets’ lead had turned from slender to non-existent. Therefore, with Fermin taking Warren uncomfortably deep and no effective Met response in the offing, it was time to prepare our good nights.
Good night, Nolan McLean’s six gritty innings of one-run ball.
Good night, standoff with Old Friend™ Griffin Canning, who went five and gave up just one run.
Good night, highlight reel play from special teams All-Pro Luis Torrens, yet again executing one of his core backup catcher competencies, quashing a double-steal attempt by turning a runner (Sung Mun-Song) breaking for home back toward third, transforming the whole thing into a 2-5-1 putout to end the fifth.
Good night, Marcus Semien in the role of something approximating hero for the solo homer he delivered in the top of the seventh off Bradgley Rodriguez to make the score Mets 2 Padres 1. It was Semien’s seventh dinger of the season, which is many as his trade partner Brandon Nimmo has accumulated for Texas. Marcus outpoints Brandon in RBIs, 24 to 22. Brandon has scored one more run than Marcus, 26 to 25. So the trade to date is a draw, right? Nimmo’s WAR, per Baseball-Reference, is 1.5. Semien’s? Despite our being reminded regularly of his defensive wizardry (usually when he misses another ball he supposedly gets to 99 times out of 100), Marcus’s bWAR wallows at -0.3. Also, Nimmo’s Texas team has clawed its way into playoff position. The Mets’ participation in the postseason stakes remains purely hypothetical. Marcus Semien may not be the mature differencemaker he was portrayed as, but he does have seven home runs.
Incidentally, Marcus Semien used to play for a team in the American League West, which means he faced pitchers who pitched for teams in the American League West more often in the course of those seasons than he did pitchers who pitched for teams from other divisions. This seems to come up on TV and radio every time Marcus bats against a longstanding Mariner or former Angel. On Saturday night, Keith Raad mentioned Semien is no stranger to facing Canning the erstwhile Halo. I believe I heard something similar mentioned when Marcus stepped in versus George Kirby in Seattle. The same basic thing gets said regarding our myriad former Brewers vis-à-vis anybody who’s hung around the Cardinals or Pirates for a couple of years. I’ve decided to let this factoid invocation get on my baseball nerves if not my real ones, for it doesn’t really unlock untold insight about this player or that. Marcus Semien does not possess the key to eternal understanding of the universe because he is 10-for-31 lifetime versus Canning, nor is his inner morality suspect because he is 4-for-29 in his career when batting against Kirby. It all sounds revealing. I’m not convinced it shows much
Brandon Nimmo had more plate appearances (70) against Aaron Nola — a modern NL East mound stalwart if ever there was one — than any other pitcher he faced as a Met. Yet he was traded out of Nola’s division to face an array of Mariners, Angels, and So Forths. Semien left behind all that experience taking on Astros and Athletics. And?
And Freddy Fermin is 1-for-2 lifetime against Austin Warren. Warren got Fermin on a flyout in 2023 when Austin was an Angel and Fermin was a Royal. Had that outcome been a true template for their most recent encounter, the Mets might not have lost to the Padres, 3-2, on Saturday night in San Diego, and I wouldn’t have minded staying awake for one last late night West Coast start in 2026.
by Greg Prince on 6 June 2026 10:55 am The Mets are 3-0 in Friday night West Coast games in 2026. Maybe they should schedule some more of them. Or maybe we should just play every Friday night from 9:40 PM Eastern time forward, regardless of locale. The same team that toppled the Giants in San Francisco on a Friday night in April and edged the Angels in Los Angeles of Anaheim on a Friday night in May pounded the Padres in San Diego on a Friday night in June. If that’s not a trend, it’s at least a trendlet. Reserving one of these spots every month for the rest of the season would seem to loom as imperative.
What’s that? We’re out of Friday nights on the West Coast? Actually, that makes sense. It was bizarre and absurd — bizsurd, too — that we winged west over and over and over and over to get this season off the ground. Perhaps the surfeit of transcontinental travel contributed to the Mets falling on their collective face early and often, sprinkling of Friday night successes notwithstanding. The Mets have played 27 games on these four trips thus far. Not all of them have been in the Pacific Time Zone, but each has been wrapped up in the same hither-and-yon itinerary. Their record in (deep breath) St. Louis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Anaheim, Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, and San Diego (let it out) between March 30 and June 5 is 11-16, with two Petco dates remaining.
That feels somewhere between not as bad as one could have expected and emblematic of a team that can’t quite manufacture momentum. Unless the latter is what they’re beginning to do now, what with winning in Seattle on Wednesday afternoon before flying south. It’s hard to gauge, considering Friday nights in California seem to define the Mets’ small sample size sweet spot.
 On this particular Friday past dusk in the Golden State, Lesley Gore, having celebrated warm California nights nearly sixty years ago, might have been moved to sing some new verses to acknowledge all the Metsian wonders sprouting along The Coast. Jared Young belted a homer to lead off the second inning. Bo Bichette tripled in the Mets’ second run of the evening in the third. Luis Torrens earned his first donning of the home run hard hat with a two-run shot that highlighted the fifth. And Christian Scott is suddenly making a habit of notching Ws. The righty went five-and-two-thirds, pulled with two out and two on in the sixth, up 4-0. No doom followed his exit, as Huascar Brazobán informed the Padres in no uncertain terms, “It’s my party, and I’ll get out of this jam if I want to.”
HB mowed down SD in the seventh as well. I didn’t see that, nor the zeros wrought by Luke Weaver in the eighth and A.J. Minter in the ninth. I also missed Brett Baty driving in A.J. Ewing after Ewing singled and stole two bases versus the usually untouchable Mason Miller, because, well, live from California, it was Friday night. Nodding off comes with the territory, no matter that the territory became the land of a Mets 5 Padres 0 final once the wee hours arrived.
One more late-night start in San Diego tonight. One more long flight back to New York tomorrow. Then first pitches that don’t automatically augur yawns. I won’t miss the challenge of staying awake. I won’t mind more Friday night wins.
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