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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 4 August 2026 2:07 pm As I saw one trade after another announced in the leadup to 6 PM Monday, my impulse was to frame so many forced Met exits happening at once as some kind of massacre, à la the one that happened late on a Wednesday night a little over 49 years ago, the date of another trade deadline. Then I remembered the real massacre, in a contemporary baseball context, had already occurred. It commenced in late March and just kept going. Its bloody aftermath has been visible at the bottom of the National League East standings for months.
August 3, 2026, is not going to be mistaken for June 15, 1977, on any scale, yet the one similarity the fusillade of transactions we just experienced has to the blast of bulletins that assaulted our fandom as Shea Stadium reverted to Grant’s Tomb, is the Mets team suddenly expunged of Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman (and Mike Phillips) was summering in the cellar. Trading Seaver absolutely ended an era, but it didn’t push those Mets over a competitive cliff. They had already tumbled and were going to keep plummeting whether they maintained their ties to the Franchise or not. Maybe instead of going 64-98, Tom’s pitching and Sky King’s slugging might have powered them to 70 wins. The Mets flopping toward the end of the 1970s were beset by structural problems that no two icons, nor the assortment of players their departures returned, were going to reverse in the short term.
We were still entitled to miss them like crazy. Those trades, especially of Seaver, massacred our hearts and souls as Mets fans. They didn’t make much difference to where our team was going between June 16 and the end of the 1977 season. Our team was already going nowhere but down.
These trades of late July and early August in 2026 were surely coming, just as we knew — even if we couldn’t fathom — that Seaver and Kingman were leaving. Maybe some kid somewhere within the confines of Metsopotamia has lost his or her favorite player and is now questioning whether naming his or her cat Huascar was such a swell idea, but chances are the critical mass of regret, even among the relatively innocent sharers of our fandom, is minimal on this day after. The regret we feel now, whatever our age, was already forged in the fires of a Mets team we took on faith in advance as being no less than perfectly all right posting a record of 47-66 to this point. It’s the exact same record the 1977 Mets held after having played 113 games, and the 2026 Mets didn’t even have to trade Tom Seaver to get there.
Between now and the end of the 2026 season, I’d guess the Mets will probably be a little worse than they’ve already been. It would hard to be a lot worse. Considering that four of the seven major leaguers they’ve traded since Thursday night were their four most dependable middle and setup relievers, four arms sought by legitimate playoff contenders, and the Mets were still 47-66 despite having used those arms often and effectively…well, what’s the harm in the evanescent present? Probably that games we were losing by scores of 2-0 will now be lost by scores of 4-0 or 6-0. A bad bullpen can undermine a good team. A good bullpen can do only so much for a bad team. We could have kept every able reliever and the 2026 Mets would be who they are appear to be, the way Homer Simpson was quite obviously Homer Simpson when he took the Stonecutters oath.
HOMER: And by the sacred parchment, I swear that if I reveal the secrets of the Stonecutters, may my stomach become bloated and my head be plucked of all but three hairs.
MOE: Um, I think he should have to take a different oath. ‘Cause he’s already kind of heavy, you know…
 David Stearns goes about remolding the Mets. Luke Weaver of the Pirates, Huascar Brazobán of the White Sox, Brooks Raley of the Phillies, and A.J. Minter of the Twins each helped the Mets as much as he could, even if as a unit they couldn’t help the Mets be tangibly better. Thanks for the innings, boys. The temptation is to say “thanks for nothing” to Freddy Peralta of the Rays, and, honestly, I don’t have a “but…” rejoinder to such a graceless shove out the door. He did seem like a good dude, though, and I won’t begrudge him a future rediscovery of the touch that made him so attractive to us in January, especially if it has anything to do with keeping the Rays ahead of the Yankees. Clay Holmes and Tyrone Taylor are now Cubs. Holmes was a miniature success story as a Met, building himself from reliever to starter to de facto ace, only to be cut down in his Met prime by a batted ball, then sent packing before he could resume his Met prime healthy. I won’t detest seeing Clay Holmes pitch well in October, regardless of uniform.
Taylor is the only one in this septet to have made a notable positive impact on a postseason thrust that worked out. Tyrone engineered one hell of a plate appearance in the eighth inning of Game 161 of 2024, lasting eleven pitches and ending his time up with a double that chased Spencer Schwellenbach, setting the stage for all the Mets Classics heroics to follow. Taylor’s legacy — besides the awesome personality everybody talked up once he began making consistent solid contact — also includes a three-run homer that turned a Subway Series game in our favor and 26 regular-season pinch-running assignments, tying him with Wally Backman and Ron Gardenhire for eleventh place all-time among Mets who ran when called upon. Andy Green hadn’t used Taylor to pinch-run very much lately, possibly because to insert a pinch-runner, the manager needs to have a runner on base.
One thing that struck me about each of the guys the Mets traded was they all swore they really didn’t want to leave. They’d all been big leaguers long enough to understand the parameters of the trade deadline, that veterans on expiring/reasonable contracts with teams that have no chance of reaching the playoffs are prime candidates to move on. But they liked being Mets, even 47-66 Mets. I don’t know if there’s some implication to be mined that maybe a team that’s been trundling downhill since the middle of June in 2025 constituting a splendid place to come to work needs to toughen up in some way. No more hot water in the showers until you win five in a row! Nevertheless, I’m glad they didn’t renounce their Metsdom, even as their tasks will now include stepping right up to beat the Mets.
None among the traded was here all that long, and none was homegrown. It was the trade deadline. We were out of it. This wasn’t our first ruined rodeo. This was very much business. No Seaver aftershocks that project as resonating five decades after the fact. No regular recriminations similar to what one might still be feeling since Alonso left or wondering “WTF?” when I see Marcus Semien lofting a pop fly to shallow right, no matter what Brandon Nimmo is or isn’t doing in Texas. Some nights I lie awake deconstructing how the miserable 2025 stretch dive became the 2026 launch pad implosion. Couldn’t have we kept the guys who’d played a role in getting us close to the playoffs last year and figured a way to improve that team rather than blow the whole thing up, only to be surprised all we were left with was smithereens? The guys we traded or let walk during the winter were here a long time and a few were homegrown. They were intrinsic to what triumphs that qualify as recent. A little piece of me is always going to miss Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo. A significant piece of me has already forgotten Brooks Raley and A.J. Minter.
After attending and kvelling from Saturday’s 1986 reunion, I caught up on the in-game interviews our most glorious alumni granted Steve Gelbs. As usual, one of the most insightful respondents was Bobby Ojeda. Gelbs asked him about team chemistry. Yeah, Bobby O said, team chemistry shouldn’t be overlooked, but y’know what builds team chemistry? Winning. Lots and lots of winning. I’ve listened to the eventually traded 2026 Mets attest to how much they enjoyed being here, and I’ve heard some version of the same from those who are still here, and I’m concluding that chemistry is an elusive concept in this game. The 2026 Mets came outfitted with players who had accomplished fine feats elsewhere. The players who joined in the offseason were, for the most part, wanted by other teams, too. Most everybody in our dugout seems to dig most everybody else in the course of nine innings, or at least not outwardly despise one another so much that it’s obvious. Yet they never meshed collectively and hardly any of them achieved much individually. This team needs better chemistry, better players, better results. You didn’t need to be a previously acclaimed president of baseball operations to figure that out.
The bullpen that will attempt to finish out 2026 now includes Bryce Conley*, Jefry Yan, Nate Lavender, Chayce McDermott, and the presumably recovered Dedniel Nuñez. May the 4-0 and 6-0 losses be few and not on your head. Cristian Pache is the new spare outfielder. May as many nice things be said of him as were said of Tyrone Taylor. Whether the gang of prospects who are now in the Mets organization following the torrent of deadline deals will meaningfully alter the quality of baseball and quantity of wins down the road sits in the remain-to-be-seen bin. The kid from the Cubs, Jefferson Rojas, is said to be a comer with the bat. The kid from the Pirates, Sammy Stafura, not only brings a slick infield glove but a genuine lifelong affection for the Mets. His favorites when he was growing up in Westchester were David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Ruben Tejada. It’s the inclusion of Tejada that sells the authenticity. We love that sort of detail when we don’t know anything else about somebody who is insinuated without warning within our psychological ecosystem. We loved when we learned David Stearns grew up a Mets fan. If David Stearns was better at molding the Mets, we probably wouldn’t have been trading Luke Weaver for Sammy Stafura or anybody in early August. Somebody being a Mets fan makes for a marvelous morsel of introduction. Somebody making the Mets like they oughta be is what will make us adore him for decades on end.
Here’s to the new Mets, hopefully not the same as the current Mets, maybe someday as good as select editions of the old Mets. Maybe not quite the ones that featured Seaver in 1969 and Ojeda in 1986, but maybe somewhere in that realm. Hoping is what keeps us going. I’d say winning, lots and lots of winning, as well, but we haven’t done a ton of that this century. Yet at 47-66 here I am, still hoping.
*Bryce Conley was designated for assignment 38 minutes after the above was posted. Life, like the transactions wire in the wake of deadline day, moves pretty fast.
by Jason Fry on 3 August 2026 11:44 am Freddy Peralta, Huascar Brazoban and Brooks Raley have followed A.J Minter to greener pastures, with the likes of Luke Weaver and Tyrone Taylor still wondering if they will have new employers come Tuesday when the Mets and Guardians renew their (checks notes) utterly nonexistent rivalry.
I’ll spare you highly amateur scouting: I know no more than you do about Émilien Pitre, John Spikerman, Luke Gabrysh or the other newcomers to the system, beyond observing that the Mets are at least restocking their roster of interestingly monikered prospects. We’ll know them better in time, or forget all about them, or most likely it will be a mix of the two.
And I don’t particularly care, to be honest — I would have happily shed Peralta for a bag of street-fair tube socks*, and while I applauded our two former relievers’ work for the Mets, in a lost season most any return would have been fine for a free agent to be and a 36-year-old reliever at the likely peak of his value. Weaver’s fate remains the most intriguing trade-deadline question; given relievers’ innate unpredictability season to season, I’m not opposed to seeing him move, but it better be for a genuinely decent return.
The Mets at least took some of the sting out of this trade deadline by showing us by May that we could make other October plans, turning Departure Day into a when, not an if. But I’m still flashing back to the 2023 selloff, the last time the Mets hosed out the stables.
There’s a certain relief to definitively and authoritatively turning the page, but that doesn’t last: Pretty soon it dawns on you that the next seven weeks will be spent watching a jackass-carpentry roster, many of whose pieces will be discarded as square pegs by the time spring training rolls around. Remember Adam Kolarek, Jonathan Arauz or Sam Coonrod? Me neither.**
That won’t be fun, to say the least. On the other hand, the bleak trudge of Garbage Time 2023 was followed a year later by a wonderfully unexpected spring revival and a march nearly all the way to the World Series. The Mets will likely look very different come 2027,*** but they’ll probably have a corps of intriguing young starters and a not bad (at least on paper) offensive nucleus. You can dream on less, and goodness if you’re a Mets fan you already have.
* * *
Sunday’s actual game is best dispensed with quickly, as the Mets reminded us why this year has been so hopeless by getting zilch from a bases-loaded, no-out situation when they were poised to tie the Marlins or even take the lead.
The one exception was the unexpected sight of Robert Stock, whom Emily and I just saw on the mound up in Syracuse, and who made two starts for the Mets back in 2021.
Stock is an interesting guy with an intriguing bio, having plugged away in indy ball and overseas among stints with eight different MLB organizations; he was impressive this spring before being felled by thoracic outlet syndrome. He’s an engineer’s kid who’d built websites as a teenager, so last offseason he used Claude to create Stockyard Baseball, an open-source pitch model. (Meanwhile, I was drinking bourbon and buying shit I didn’t need.)
Stock made all of one bad pitch Sunday; he’ll turn 37 shortly after the World Series, so don’t expect him to be part of the long- or even medium-term answer. But he’s someone to root for before the curtain falls, and we’ll need all of that we can get.
* We’ll undoubtedly face him in Tampa Bay and I’m sure he’ll hit us with seven scoreless innings. I am already bitter.
** The only player to emerge from 2023’s Garbage Time scrum? Reed Garrett.
*** Let’s not discuss the looming labor war. It’s too depressing right now.
by Greg Prince on 2 August 2026 12:49 pm When it comes to retrospection in the moment, the 1986 Mets have become their own version of the 1969 Mets. That is to say, it’s damn good to see them after all these years. It may not produce the electrical charge it used to, but damn good is plenty good.
I attended, in the delightful and generous company of my dear friend Jeff Hysen, Saturday’s 40th-anniversary reunion of the 1986 world champions, the last Mets team (you might have noticed) to have won a World Series. I also attended Saturday reunions on the occasions of the 20th and 30th anniversaries, when 1986 was, respectively, a while ago, and a long while ago. Maybe because 2006 and 2016 were 20 and 10 years closer to 1986 than 2026 is — as well as far more contemporarily competitive — I could feel the Flushing air bristle with excitement at the sight of the not-so-old champs. We certainly wished in ’16 and ’06 that we hadn’t been left waiting for an encore, but until we got one, we had the ’86 Mets right here in front of us. The 1986 Mets were our beau ideal of baseball like it oughta be. They still are, I suppose, but their massive accomplishments are too distant to feel remotely present. Kind of like the 1969 Mets by the time we got to their 25th and 30th anniversaries.
The people who ran the Mets in the 1970s, even while running the 1970s Mets into the ground, never shied from the 1969 legacy. There was a 10th-anniversary Old Timers Day in their honor in 1979, as bottom of the barrel a season as the Mets have ever known. It was more than damn good to see the 1969 Mets 10 years later. As many of them who weren’t playing anymore showed up at Shea to remind us miracles were possible. In 1979, it was gonna take a miracle to get us thinking anything good could ever happen to this franchise. Little would have we guessed the greatest of all things was going to happen seven years hence.
The 1969 Mets came back as a unit in 1989, in 1994, in 1999, all after 1986, all after they were no longer the most recent world champion Mets. Just about every member of the team who had been let go unceremoniously (which was just about every member of the team) had returned to the organization’s good graces, and vice-versa. The business of baseball engenders understandable grudges. The romance of baseball erases them. When the ’69 Mets came back to be celebrated, they didn’t need to go through an emotional car wash to rid themselves of the grime of having been traded or released. They returned as the Mets they always were, the Mets they’d always be. And by doing so as blessedly frequently as they did, they became just familiar enough to not be exotic. The thrill of ohmigod, the 1969 Mets are here! in 1979 evolved by the 1990s to something more like oh, the 1969 Mets are here. It was damn good to see them. The electricity might have flickered.
Changes in stadia helped replug the ’69 Mets back into our central nervous system. It meant something that so many of them were on the field for the last day at Shea. It meant something more that so many of them gathered to be feted the next August at Citi. Citi Field felt barren and soulless for its four-plus months of existence. The 1969 Mets’ 40th-anniversary reunion consecrated the grounds. The facility was now a ballpark. When as many who could came back for the 50th anniversary in 2019, I daresay the atmosphere for their reunion bordered on electric. Those are the 1969 Mets! Right here! Ohmigod!
Perhaps it’s an adjustment for nostalgic inflation to glean that the 1986 Mets at 40 are approximately where the 1969 Mets were when they were 25 or 30. We who were coming of age as something approximating adults when the 1986 Mets were storming through the National League may have been reluctant to let go of our youth as readily as our predecessors. The 1986 Mets never didn’t seem at least sort of recent when they got together again. They weren’t invited to get together again for a 10th anniversary, either because too many were still busy playing or the people who were then running the Mets didn’t wish to acknowledge a team like the 1986 Mets once roamed our earth, so when the 20th anniversary came around, and the 1986 Mets came around to get properly toasted, our response in the stands veered between cathartic and orgasmic. Between 2006 and 2016, YouTube exploded, and we kept clicking on 1986 highlights. The recency barely budged when their 30th anniversary was celebrated, which was also the “ass in the jackpot” night Noah Syndergaard sought to send a delayed message to Chase Utley. The best message would have been “get the ’86 guys down from whatever luxury suite they’re congregating in, they’ll know what to do.” It had been only 30 years. Surely our champs were still in fighting trim.
On Saturday afternoon, the edge the arrival of the 1986 Mets brought to the event they headlined was limited to memory. Helluva memory, no doubt, but c’mon. It’s 40 years. They’re entitled to recede in relevancy. We know they were rascals and rapscallions in their day. We still love the seminal clips that compose the Proustian montages. We see them as avatars of another time. It wasn’t an Old Timers Day in name, but I feel qualified to say, as someone who is roughly the same age as quite a few of the 1986 Mets, a touch of gray kind of suits us, anyway.
Did I mention it was damn good to see them? All but one of the surviving World Series teammates were on hand. They all got a nice hand. They all deserved 116 nice hands, one for every game won from Opening Night in Pittsburgh to the final out versus Boston. They did something only one Mets team did before them, something no Mets team has done since them. The latter reality may have had something to do with the diminished edge attached to the sight of them. The 1986 Mets are golden now. They don’t gotta fight for their right to party. They won the fight and still hold the title. It’s damn good to know that. And it’s damn good to imagine a 50th-anniversary reunion when we will remember they won practically every game they played but have lost the title of most recent Mets champions.
The 2026 Mets aren’t going to do anything about that part. They were considerate enough to wear the racing stripe uniforms of 1986, a beautiful complement to the ceremonial aspects of Saturday, but they had a hard time fitting into them, and I don’t mean because of tapering issues. To say the 2026 Mets are not the 1986 Mets is not a knock, for no Mets team is the 1986 Mets. After 112 games, the 1986 Mets held a record of 75-37 and led the NL East by 18 games; with 50 games to go, their magic number was down to 33. But the 2026 Mets are not a whole lot of other Met teams when measured by record. After 112 games, the 2026 Mets are 47-65, leaving them in last place, 19½ games out of first, nowhere near any Wild Card. The only magic number the Mets were counting down Saturday, as they quietly went about losing to the Miami Marlins, was how many hours remained until the trade deadline. The 2026 Mets have the same record after 112 games as the 1977, 1978, 1979, and 2018 Mets. Fifty different Mets team posted better records after 112 games than the 2026 Mets have.
Think about the 2026 Mets too long, and you’ll find yourself unable to generate any warmth toward humankind. Think about the 1986 Mets instead. Try not to think about how long it’s been. Just remember what it was like if you can. If it doesn’t get you hot and bothered like it once did, I truly believe you’ll still feel warm all over.
My friend Jeff has had a couple of members of the 1986 Mets on his podcast, National League Town. Listen in on his conversations with Roger McDowell here, and Darryl Strawberry here.
by Greg Prince on 1 August 2026 9:24 am The Mets held a Christmas in July promotion the other night, which apparently inspired a sequel of sorts on Friday when they conducted their business a little like it was the end of March. They had a starting pitcher slated to throw, but then decided they better not let that starting pitcher be seen, lest somebody get too good a look at him. That’s the thought process you hear about as Spring Training is coming to an end. You’re playing the Marlins in Jupiter or St. Lucie, but you know you’ve got the Marlins in the first series of the year, thus you don’t want to overly expose whoever’s lined up to face them for real in five days.
Friday night was something like that, except it was the end of July when such thoughts shouldn’t circle an organization’s head. And though the Mets were playing the Marlins for real, this had nothing to do with the Marlins. The Mets were concerned that somebody contemplating trading for Freddy Peralta would get too good a gander of Freddy Peralta and adjust their contemplation. Or, one supposes, they wanted to figuratively bubble-wrap Peralta, keeping him from harm’s way on his way out the door.
Too bad it didn’t occur to the Mets’ brain trust to deploy the Hide Peralta strategy shortly after breaking camp. A season in which Freddy Peralta had been kept from pitching for the Mets likely wouldn’t have been any less successful than the one in which he took the ball 22 times and gave up five earned runs every nine innings.
If this really were the final days of Spring Training, the Mets would have grabbed a minor leaguer from a back field to take Freddy’s Friday start. Instead, they checked that storage unit they maintain on College Point Blvd. to double-check that they had never gotten rid of Kodai Senga. Senga hadn’t pitched in about two weeks. For a team that’s made a habit of shuttling fresh and used arms back and forth from the minors, ever conscious of overuse, it’s quite a feat for a presumably healthy pitcher to go completely unused for a discernible stretch of time. An unsightly ERA might have had something to do with it, but it’s not like giving up runs discouraged the Mets from repeatedly using Peralta.
So Senga was the self-inflicted emergency starter Friday night and he was, for four innings, the best version of himself, certainly a damn sight better than any version of the Freddy Peralta Mets Experience. Only one Miami baserunner, no Miami runs, impeccable efficiency. The Mets weren’t doing anything on offense versus Janson Junk, but that was OK. Who pays attention to the score when you’re just trying to get through these meaningless games ahead of Opening Day?
Oh, that’s right. This was July 31. The season’s been going on since March 26. Yet it was hard to remember that for the Mets this counted as much as any regular-season game counted. Because it’s July 31 and the trade deadline is August 3, everything about this team that exited contention prior to April 30 is provisional. We kind of know who’s going to be traded, but except for A.J. Minter, they haven’t been traded yet. Shouldn’t use Peralta. Probably done using Brooks Raley. Luke Weaver is in limbo. Tyrone Taylor was hot for a few days, so he’ll be gone, maybe. Luis Robert, if he stays in one piece, might be a piece that gets moved. Really, there’s more roster certainty in St. Lucie in the final days of camp most Marches.
Senga got hit a bit in the fifth, and the luck that had been pressed evaporated. Xzavion Curry came on and didn’t budge, going five innings to finish out the 5-2 defeat accompli. Good for Xzavier Curry, who wasn’t a Met when the day began. He, along with the sticky Jonathan Pintaro, replaced Minter and the injured Cionel Perez in the bullpen. Pintaro is intermittently sent down but never seems to be gone. Perez was the bullpen’s answer to Jared Young for a couple of months, climbing from “hey, who’s that?” to “say, he’s not bad.” Sadly, Perez suffered a left forearm strain. Whatever plans the Mets had for him — higher-leverage innings or everybody-must-go inventory — had to be shelved.
Conceptually, the 2026 Mets fancied themselves buyers by the end of July. That was toward the end of March, when they had no idea they wouldn’t be one or two clever deadline deals from shaping a playoff-ready roster. The end of July has become the beginning of August. There will almost certainly be new players here soon. The story will remain the same. The Mets might win a game. The Mets might lose a game. The result will show up in the standings. There are Grapefruit League standings, too, but it rarely occurs to a sane person to look at them.
by Jason Fry on 31 July 2026 8:43 am I shouldn’t be surprised, given how baseball is riddled with ironies, and yet I am: A team about to undergo a trade-deadline sea change is playing its best ball of the season.
(The transformation is already underway, as the Mets have traded A.J. Minter to the Twins for a pair of prospects: Bruin Agbayani, the 19-year-old son of fan favorite Benny Agbayani; and Billy Amick, a Double-A third baseman with power but contact issues. My reaction will likely be the same that greets every departure save that of Luke Weaver: OK, fine, ask me my opinion in a couple of years.)
Anyway, the Mets squared off with the Marlins for a rain-delayed Thursday night game that turned out to be pretty fun, principally though not exclusively because they won — beating the loathsome, nihilistic Marlins is always worth an extra fist pump.
This one started as a nifty duel between Nolan McLean and Eury Perez: McLean made a pair of bad pitches that went for solo homers, while Perez had one bad inning, with his defense bearing a lot of the blame. It was fun to watch, but ended in a stalemate, an extended table-setter for what was to come with both starters having departed and the outcome to be determined by the bullpens.
In the eighth the Mets broke through with the kind of heartening inning we’ve seen … checks notes … basically never in 2026. Francisco Lindor had a long, grind-it-out AB against Miami’s Michael Petersen that looked like nothing more than a moral victory, as it ended in a pop-up and left the Mets with two out and nobody on. But it cost Petersen bullets he’d need; Bo Bichette then doubled and Carson Benge — who’d failed earlier in the game to bring home a gimme run from third — dug in for a long AB of his own, this one ending in a single. Benge stole second and Luis Robert Jr. snuck a ground ball through the 5.5 hole for two runs and, it would turn out, a Mets’ win. The win went to possibly soon to be no longer with us Brooks Raley, a W that was well deserved; the save went to we’re probably stuck with him Devin Williams, whom my flickering sense of fairness compels me to admit pitched just fine.
During this recent stretch the Mets have been watchable and even fun, their run keyed by solid starting pitching. That likely ends tonight with Freddy Peralta making what one can only hope is his last start in a Met uniform, a departure I will decidedly not mourn. You know it’s gone badly when fans like me make a mental note to attend a departed Met’s return and risk soft-tissue injuries by booing the shit out of them; I don’t know when that date will be, but rest assured it will be on my calendar.
But I can endure one more evening of Peralta-related dyspepsia so long as it’s the last one, and genuinely will look forward to Zac Thornton and Christian Scott and more McLean and maybe more Sean Manaea and Clay Holmes, or perhaps those last two will be replaced by younger arms deemed deserving of a first chance or a latest one, which would also be fine. The calendar will have turned unofficially but decisively to 2027, and if the Mets look more like the Mets of the last week than the Mets of the preceding 57 or so, I’ll make my peace with that.
by Greg Prince on 30 July 2026 12:44 pm When the Mets edged the Braves in the afternoon portion of Wednesday’s day-night “doubleheader” at Citi Field (if they scan for tickets twice, then it’s really just two wholly separate games played on the same day), it was both satisfying and mystifying. The satisfaction came mainly from the Mets having extended a winning streak to three games for the first time since they won four in a row to close out May. Lest we forget, the middle win of this aberrational trio was attained by a score of 14-3, registered not four weeks after the Mets had lost in Atlanta by the very same score of 14-3. The 14-3 loss on the Fourth of July represented only the fourth time the Mets had ever lost by that exact score. And the 14-3 win on July 27 represented only the fourth time the Mets had ever won by that exact score. Same Met team. Same Brave team. Same month. I’m still satisfied from having sussed out this discovery.
The mystery angle of Wednesday afternoon sat a bit inside the realm of “how did they do that?” — going 2-for-12 with runners in scoring position and leaving nine men on base doesn’t seem like a recipe for success — but mostly revolved around not knowing what to make of this 3-2 victory besides understanding it was a product of solid pitching, a modicum of timely hitting, and whatever was ailing Atlanta.
The Manaeassaince continued in earnest, with lovable ol’ Sean going six two-run innings and reasserting himself as a legitimate major league starter. Good news for us, unless this makes him trade bait. Then we go from “Sean is back!” to “who’d we get back for Sean?” Similarly, the frontline of the righthanded relief corps each contributing a scoreless frame was straight from the diagram of bullpen like it oughta be, except because it was July 29, and the trade deadline is August 3, and the 2026 Mets are the 2026 Mets, does that mean Huascar Brazobán goes? How about Luke Weaver? All one sees when a new pitcher comes into a game this week is how much (or how little) David Stearns will get in exchange for a functioning arm ideal circumstances would keep in Queens. Devin Williams and his contract don’t get mentioned much in this context, thus he appears ensconced to be issued the Mets’ weekly save opportunity.
The Met runs were driven in by three fellas under the age of 25, which is what we who have absented ourselves from the leaguewide pursuit of a playoff spot are supposed to be living for this time of year in a year like this. Play the kids, and get more kids. One of those who delivered an RBI was Francisco Alvarez, an elder in the Mets’ nascent youth movement. Somewhere along the way, the now 24-year-old Francisco crossed that line from young player with a potentially promising future to young player with a relentlessly frustrating present. His good couple of days at the plate could be taken for progress. Or a sign to move him while he’s hot. A.J. Ewing and Carson Benge can get hits and make catches (the more splendiferous the better) to their and our hearts’ delight. They’re not going anywhere at this deadline. Neither are we. The first game of the two-admission twinbill ended the season’s first half, with the Mets ascending to a record of 46-62. Doing the math to extrapolate their 162-game pace therein will only do a disservice to your well-being.
One can still be a happy with a 3-2 win in the afternoon, especially over the Braves. How happy is a question best left to instinct.
The nighttime portion Wednesday, compelled by rain Tuesday, was already a victory of sorts in that it inconvenienced Atlanta. The Braves generally don’t give their visitors a break by scheduling Getaway Day day games. The Mets had been courteous in making Wednesday’s planned series finale a matinee, a courtesy not extended them whenever they’re finishing up at Truist Park. Because of weather, the Braves wouldn’t be flying into Atlanta until pretty late Wednesday night/Thursday morning, likely making them a touch more tired than they thought they’d be today. HA!!
That’s about as “of sorts” as a victory can be, but we were entering the final third of a season on pace for 69 wins. We’ll take our victories, even the spiteful ones, thank you very much. Our pace, incidentally, isn’t carved into a predestined path. If we pick up the pace a tad, as out-of-it Met teams have been known to do — whether it’s from dealing the veterans, playing the kids, or luck balancing out — we might win a few more. I don’t want to say this too loud, lest some algorithm decide I need to see more gambling come-ons, but I wouldn’t bet against the Mets breaking the 70-win barrier before this dreary business concludes. It would probably require more three-game winning streaks occurring with greater frequency than every two months, but the Mets, identity of the components constituting them to be fully determined once the deadline passes, are bound to improve marginally after two-thirds of a season spent being not very good. I hesitate to say things can’t get worse than they’ve been (recent robust three-game winning streak notwithstanding), because that resides in the department of daring the Mets to do their worst. That can always happen around here.
The Mets didn’t necessarily do their worst on Wednesday night. They just didn’t do much versus Chris Sale, who they at least nicked for a few markers during that 14-3 loss on July 4. They’re hardly the first team about whom little can be said regarding their offensive effort when facing one of the most stifling lefties of his era. I’m sure they tried to hit him this time around. They didn’t much succeed. Benge singled. Eric Wagaman, who has assumed Juan Soto’s roster spot to zero fanfare and even less playing time, also singled. Those singles were a couple of innings apart. Not much in the way of rallying. Christian Scott was his own version of effective. Our youthful righty didn’t smother Brave bats as thoroughly as southpaw Sale did for the opposition, but it was heartening to watch him work. Christian posted zeros for five innings, then gave up only one run in a tough sixth, leaving the bases loaded in the process. Most nights — and during the day Wednesday — that would be enough to put a pitcher in line for a win.
At the risk of letting a fan’s imagination run modestly wild, Manaea (if he remains a Met) and Scott combining with Nolan McLean and h-less Zac Thornton doing what they’ve been doing lately has put me in mind of Earl Weaver’s famous formula for winning: get pitching and get three-run homers. We may have the former. We’ve gotta work on putting together more of the latter.
For the Mets on Wednesday night, it was pitching and no-run homers, no runs at all, a 1-0 defeat that was primarily Sale (6 IP), along with some dispiriting flailing at the Braves bullpen. Our night shift relievers were pretty good themselves. A.J. Minter gave the scouts a solid inning. Cionel Perez and Daniel Duarte may be putting themselves on some GM’s radar. Trade deadlines can make a lot of penmen popular.
A sweep of this so-called doubleheader might have left me awash in more mystification. How thrilled should I be now that we’ve climbed to…how far below .500 are we, again? Instead, I encountered only the familiar sensation of a Met loss, albeit with the wrinkle that it took place in a lost season’s final third. Fifty-three more games with these Mets, whoever these Mets will be by the fifty-third of them.
by Jason Fry on 27 July 2026 11:40 pm Zac Thornton and a band of relievers were good. The Mets’ bats were better — 19 hits, including three each from A.J. Ewing, Francisco Lindor, Bo Bichette, Marcus Semien and Tyrone Taylor. Lindor had two home runs on a huge night, Semien smashed one into the second deck, and Taylor hit a longball as he continued his absurd hot streak — which is also a beacon begging someone to helicopter him off the Mets’ roof before the trade deadline.
When five guys in the lineup collect three hits each, you’re probably going to win. (Francisco Alvarez Estrada, not exactly known for his patience, even walked three times!) It helped that the Braves looked weary and ragged, playing the kind of defense we’re more used to seeing from the Mets. With the game creeping out of reach and Atlanta’s bullpen exhausted by previous nights’ efforts, Walt Weiss left poor Connor Thomas out there to absorb a fearful beating: 11 earned runs in two and two thirds. It was tactically smart but cringingly cruel, a Seelingeresque stomping that left Thomas with an ERA for the year of 21.32 — old enough to drink, and a grim bookend for the 20.25 ERA that he posted last year as a Brewer.
Thomas will now undoubtedly become a Gwinnett Striper, while his teammates turn to a rested relief corps bolstered by whatever new arm is rotated in to be abused. That’s cruel too. But I don’t feel too bad for the Braves — first of all, because they’re the Braves, and second of all because they’re headed for October while the Mets are headed for the knacker’s yard.
One night in which hits felt as common as the raindrops isn’t going to reverse those fortunes. But damned if it didn’t feel good to be a peasant feasting in the royal banquet hall for one night. Eat, drink and be merry — for tomorrow, most likely, we go back to being the Mets.
by Greg Prince on 27 July 2026 9:57 am Contrary to popular perception, the Los Angeles Dodgers do not merely have to throw their gloves on the field in order to defeat the New York Mets. Friday and Saturday, I’m pretty sure all it took was the Dodgers checking in on the MLB Ballpark app. From all appearances, L.A. clicked “win” prior to first pitch and confirmed their result in advance. The Dodgers truly looked like a team looking at their phones while playing a three-game series that didn’t seem worthy of their bother. They’d take an extra base if they didn’t have to slide. They’d score an extra run as long as the plate was left vacated. They’d stick out their bats on the assumption a baseball would meet it and produce satisfactory contact. They’d wait for the Mets to inevitably err.
On Sunday, the disinterested Dodger approach did not yield them a victory, proving…well, little beyond teams going nowhere occasionally outdo over the course of nine innings teams going to the airport. The Dodgers’ ultimate destination is their fourteenth consecutive postseason. They won this series. They won the two series that preceded it on their Northeast Corridor road trip. They also won the last World Series, the one before it, and all the playoff series required to reach the past two championship rounds. They are in first place by a dozen games. An 8-3 loss to the Mets hardly precluded the likelihood of a happy flight home. Until they’re overly weighed down by the massive expectations they pack every year, I imagine all the Dodgers’ flights are reasonably happy.
Yet for a few innings on Sunday, Mets fans’ spirits could soar. Tyrone Taylor hit a three-run homer to transform a 3-1 deficit into a 4-3 lead. Taylor’s swat in the sixth held up as heroic enough to rate an attempted ice bath while Steve Gelbs interviewed him postgame. It should surprise no one that the designated cooler dumpers, Francisco Alvarez and Juan Soto, missed their target, but did get the grass nice and wet. Marcus Semien also added a three-run homer in the seventh to assure us the scoreboard wasn’t an optical illusion.
Once late-period Freddy Peralta was done slogging through four pitch-laden innings yet giving up only three runs (the analytical interpretation of his line was “could have been worse”), the Met bullpen did its yeoman best. Cionel Perez, midseason’s answer to Austin Warren, shut down L.A. for two innings. One would think Cionel’s too low-profile to attract trade-deadline interest, but Perez has emerged as one of those Met relievers who doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of those rooting for him. Brooks Raley followed with a seven-pitch seventh. We intuit he’ll be gone by next week. Luke Weaver pitched into and fielded out of a spot of trouble. I’ll be sorry to see him leave if he does. By the time Devin Williams came on to close, the ninth wasn’t a save situation and Dave Roberts was pinch-hitting for Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman, less waving a white flag than dabbing his forehead with an apathetic handkerchief.
For self-esteem purposes, this was a big Met win. No last-place team, no matter how miserably their year is going, should have to endure an ohfer in a season series versus a league behemoth. The Mets had played and lost to the Dodgers five times in 2026 prior to Sunday. One final shot at the champs yielded pay dirt. Or wet dirt, pending on how many ice cubes from that cooler piled where. Wet dirt is generally known as mud, which is where the Mets have been stuck since before their trip to Los Angeles in April. That was when we fretted all those West Coast swings were going to be the death of us. Maybe they were, but based on the way our team has played in and closer to Queens since, it’s safe to say geography wasn’t our primary problem.
We received another self-esteem boost if we chose to accept it on Sunday when Carlos Beltran declared his allegiance to the orange and blue in Cooperstown. Beltran’s plaque now hangs in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, where his likeness is adorned by a Mets cap. That makes us 3-for-18 in terms of players in the Hall — and 0-for-2 among those inducted as managers — regarding what they’re wearing while bronzed. Tom Seaver’s Mets cap was an obvious historical and sartorial choice. Mike Piazza’s hat selection felt accompanied by billows of righteous white smoke, having risen in those halcyon days of not automatically assuming the Dodgers were going to get the best of us every time we saw them. When Beltran and the Hall let it be known over the winter that he and they thought the curly NY was appropriate for eternity, I was mildly surprised. Statistically, it wasn’t wrong. Spiritually, it was a coin flip, less between the Mets and Beltran’s first team the Royals than any of his seven teams and going sans insignia. Carlos was a modern ballplayer, elevated by free agency and agency in general. He went where he wanted to go. In the end, he wanted to go into immortality as a Met.
 “To the Mets fans,” Beltran said as part of his induction speech, “thank you for believing in me. You challenged me. You let me know when I needed to be better, and that was a lot of times. I got to hear those boos, let me tell you that. But I also appreciate your support along the way.” Clearly, the superstar who became the finest all-around center fielder we ever experienced, heard and processed his share of cheers at Shea and Citi. A player of Beltran’s caliber choosing us in 2005 was a rocket ship for our self-esteem. It surely helped turn our team into a contender and division champion. Though he’s done earning Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers in our garb, I believe the decision to be a Met on his plaque says something meaningful (beyond cementing his current role as a front office advisor). We remember who plays for us. It’s nice to be reminded that those played for us remember who cheered for them.
Sixty Hall of Famers, including the three newest, were on stage at Cooperstown on Sunday. Eight have “New York, N.L.” on their plaques if not on their heads. Jeff Kent joined Beltran (and Andruw Jones) as an inductee. Kent is portrayed as a San Francisco Giant, and fairly so. It was as a Giant, two teams after his Mets days, that his offense detonated, allowing him to pave a Hall of Fame path. Yet Jeff did take a moment to remember where his career gained a modicum of early traction. “New York was somethin’ that I was not prepared for,” our mid-’90s beacon of hope admitted. “You learn about pressure and accountability and responsibility fast in that city, and if you don’t, it’ll chew you up. But I am, without a doubt, grateful for every minute of it.” Kent also acknowledged the influence of long-ago Met lockermate, fellow Hall of Famer and ceremony attendee Eddie Murray (let’s say Murray sat stoic with pride while being shouted out), and his manager from 1993 to 1996, Dallas Green, who Jeff said accepted “no excuses for failure” despite the rampant epidemic of failure that beset Flushing during their shared era.
Few are those who enter the Hall of Fame in the 21st century without a word for multiple home teams. “Every organization shaped your career,” Beltran told the crowd spread out on the grounds of the Clark Sports Center. “New York shaped my life.” It was as a Met, Carlos continued, that “I experienced my greatest success and some of my greatest challenges. Playing for the Mets made me a better man […] The Mets cap represents for me growth and a place where I became the best version of myself.” Give or take a year like 2026, who among us wouldn’t attest to something like that?
by Jason Fry on 26 July 2026 9:17 am A lesser-known quote from the great Rogers Hornsby has been on my mind recently: “People ask me what I do in summer when there’s baseball like this. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for winter.”
Today is Greg’s recap, I plan to be on the East River in a kayak during the matinee, and all of us are better off.
Well, maybe my poor blog partner won’t be better off (sorry Greg), but the Mets will get less bile spewed in their direction on Bluesky, you won’t have to roll your eyes at my moaning and complaining, and then there’s the fact that I would rather perform emergency eye surgery on myself with a spoon than watch David Stearns’ prized offseason acquisition Freddy Peralta try to avert a Dodgers sweep.
(Baseball being infinitely perverse, Peralta will now probably spin a no-hitter. Great! It’ll boost his trade value!)
I was definitely not better off Saturday night, when the Mets inflicted another tooth-grinding loss on what’s left of their fanbase. Everything went to pieces in the third inning: a bolt of a Kyle Tucker home run off the foul pole adjoining Carbonation Ridge, a double play turned into nothing when not-a-first-baseman Brett Baty‘s throw glanced off Dalton Rushing‘s helmet, a fielder’s choice that wasn’t a double play because Nolan McLean couldn’t find the first-base bag on the back end, and a passed ball by Francisco Alvarez to let in another run. The Dodgers are hard to beat without spotting them extra outs; the Mets gave them three freebies to make hay with, and they set to work with pitchforks flashing.
The Mets fought back, more annoyingly than successfully. In the eighth, down 4-1, they put the first two on in front of Jorge Polanco and Marcus Semien, those mighty twin pillars of Stearns’ 2026 vision. Both struck out haplessly, with Polanco underlining his incompetence by using up the Mets’ last ABS challenge on a strike that was, in fact, a strike.
The Mets drew within one on a pinch-hit double from Tyrone Taylor (who, to be fair, was also added by Stearns), and sent Francisco Lindor, Bo Bichette and Carson Benge to the plate in the bottom of the ninth against Brock Stewart. Bloop and a blast? Ha ha ha, oh you sweet summer child. Lindor struck out on a high fastball, Bichette grounded out, and Benge — who we should remember is still just a rookie despite a positive first season — was eviscerated on three straight strikes to end the game.
Sigh. The trade deadline can’t get here soon enough — to say nothing of the last pitch of this miserable season.
by Jason Fry on 25 July 2026 8:35 am Here’s a free preview of the 2026 Holy Books roundup: It wasn’t Carson Benge‘s fault.
On Friday night Benge made not one but two sparking plays against the Dodgers, first nailing Shohei Ohtani at third when the best player in the history of the game tried to turn a one-handed excuse-me double into a triple, and then starting a perfect relay that erased Freddie Freeman at home.
Two outfield assists, the second setting a mild, very modern-era record of sorts: Benge’s throw came in at 100 MPH, the speediest tracked OF assist by a Met in the 11 years of Statcast. That’s a stat that struck me as equal parts pointless and entertaining; if you’re curious, it broke the record set about two weeks ago by Carson Benge.
So Benge contributed some nifty outfield play. That was good! Meanwhile, Sean Manaea pitched about as well as he has all year, leaning on his fastball and working aggressively, with welcome conviction behind everything he threw. That was also good!
But the Mets won a couple of battles — or at least tied them — while losing the war.
Not all of their shortcomings came with reasons for finger-wagging. The chief problem was that Roki Sasaki was really, really good, wiping out Met after Met with a splitter that was frankly dazzling. Veterans or rookies, capable hitters or somewhat suspect ones … it didn’t matter. They knew what was coming but the splitter was still untouchable.
Sasaki was really good — and so are the Dodgers. They kept coming at the Mets, as teams that know their business do, putting the leadoff hitter on base in seven out of nine innings. Baserunning misadventures? So what: They figured things would eventually break their way, and they did. In the seventh, Brooks Raley allowed a pair of gently struck singles to start the frame, then conspired with Francisco Alvarez on a sloppy rundown, getting Kyle Tucker at home but allowing Tucker’s teammates to wind up on second and third instead of first and second, which paved the way for a game-tying sacrifice fly from Ohtani. The Mets were still in the game, but an inning later A.J. Minter left a four-seamer middle-middle to Tucker, who crushed it for a fatal two-run homer.
Oh, and Juan Soto‘s calf flared up on him, so he exited in favor of beloved David Stearns import Jorge Polanco. Fantastic.
Good performances outshone by somewhat better ones, one team doing the little things better than the other team. Not the kind of thing that has managers overturning buffets or throwing bats into the showers to scare ’em (not that managers do either anymore), but enough for another humdrum loss in a season that’s filling up with them.
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