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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 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.
by Greg Prince on 23 July 2026 1:26 pm Someday, the Mets will do that thing you want them to do. They’ll figure out a place for Brett Baty, whether on the field or in another town. They’ll let a pitcher go as deep as his arm will allow him. They’ll hit a ball past a Brewer with runners on base. They’ll take less than three hours to slog to a 4-3 loss. They’ll loom as savvy buyers rather than put-upon sellers as a trade deadline approaches.
Wednesday was not the Opposite Day you might have sought. Baty was directed to a position that wasn’t in his Top Two, right field, and made the critical misplay that turned the getaway day matinee irreversibly against them. However many extra pitches his failure to make a difficult but makable grab cost Christian Scott ushered the righty off the mound before four innings were complete. The Mets bullpen, currently doubling as a trendy pop-up shop for MLB contenders, didn’t do badly after the starter departed, but the Mets were too busy finding a way to not win for it to matter. The Brewers are a first-place team. The Mets are a last-place team. The Mets played as well as they could have for considerable stretches, yet they were doomed to not get the big hit or make the key catch, whereas the Brewers were destined to do enough of what they had to do to prevail. Doom versus Destiny. It’s one of those seasons. Losing only two of three at the facility formerly known as Miller Park is the July 2026 equivalent of one of those series wins the rationalizing set usually trumpets as a tangible victory. They came so close to a four-and-two road trip!
Someday, the Mets will win twelve games in a row. That’s the thing I want them to do. Win another World Series, too, but that’s on everybody’s to-do list. I’ve seen them win two World Series. I’ve never seen them win twelve in a row. Five times in their history — 1969, 1972, 1986, 1990, and 2015 — they’ve won eleven in a row. Eleven in a row has been the Mets’ winning streak record for the life of my fandom. It’s one of the first things I knew about the Mets, and it is therefore one of the oldest things I know about the Mets. I found myself thinking, in the weeks leading up to this season, “I’d love for the Mets to win twelve in a row in 2026.”
 An incredibly tough act to follow. A couple of weeks after the 2026 season had started, the Mets had lost twelve in a row, which was not a record, but that’s OK, I wasn’t looking for a record in the opposite direction. They had won four in a row right before losing twelve in a row, and they later won four in a row once more. Their two longest winning streaks of 2026 have combined to equal a third of their longest losing streak of the year, the most games they had lost in a row in 24 years.
All of this came to mind as the 2026 Red Sox ran their winning streak to 15 consecutive games, which tied their franchise high from 1946. You may recall the Mets were the opponents in Boston’s seventh, eighth, and ninth wins in a row, proving it takes a little luck to fire off a monumental streak of this nature. The Red Sox’ luck was finding the Mets on their schedule right in the middle of it. The Sox couldn’t break their record, falling to the Orioles in the night half of their doubleheader Wednesday, meaning any fan of theirs who had been thinking as I was thinking before the season (“I’d sure like to see that 80-year-old standard of ours surpassed at last”) did not come away fully sated. Still, 15 in a row was pretty effective. The Red Sox rode it from the edge of oblivion to grasping a playoff spot. They don’t figure to be selling off players as we will be over the next eleven days.
I still wish for the Mets to someday win a dozen consecutive games, to top their most sustained hot rolls of dice from 57, 54, 40, 36, and 11 years ago. Should the Mets suddenly grow scalding, I won’t throw myself in their path to slow their roll, but I don’t know that I’d appreciate an unforeseen twelve-game winning streak in the back half of 2026 the way I might when it could do the Mets some genuine good. Let’s say the Mets win twelve in a row starting Friday against the Dodgers. Such a skein, as the papers used to call it, would lift them from their current mark of 43-60 to 55-60. They’d likely still be out of the Wild Card stakes, albeit quite a bit closer than they sit now. For this unforeseen uprising to create the kind of impact a lengthy surge oughta, the last-place Mets would need to follow these hypothetical twelve in a row with several more sizzling streaks, skeins, and spurts. Like a sweep of the three upcoming games versus the Dodgers, I’d welcome such momentum, but I wouldn’t expect it. Had somebody else’s winning streak not become a story, it wouldn’t occur to me to even think of asking for one of ours right now. It’s one thing to order a win à la carte. It’s another to request a dozen of them prepared to your liking ASAP.
I’m asking for twelve wins in a row someday. If I can be choosy about it, I’m asking for them in a season or the juncture of a season when they won’t spur me to ask, “Where were these when we could have used them?” I distinctly remember a seven-game winning streak in the latter half of August 1992. The Mets had already fallen on their faces and out of the pennant race. Then they won those seven in a row, and I found myself annoyed at the timing. The seven consecutive victories lifted them from fourteen under to seven under, from fifteen out to twelve-and-a-half-out. Save it for when we can use it, Mets. By the next time we could use it, we’d have mostly all new Mets. The next time the Mets won as many seven in a row was six years later. The Mets won nine in a row right after acquiring Mike Piazza in May of 1998. It got us into Wild Card position, a status that didn’t exist in August of 1992. That winning streak, like the non-coincidental presence of Mike Piazza, really came in handy in the context of its season. A mammoth winning streak now will just insert additional data points into any calculus our president of baseball operations is quantifying as the trade deadline approaches. That’s a guy who already acts as if he knows all the answers.
So while I will not be rooting for the Mets to not win their next twelve games in a row, and while I suspect I would heartily applaud the breaking of a positive franchise record, I’m putting my desire for a Mets twelve-game winning streak on the proverbial back burner. Or I would if, in fact, a twelve-game winning streak was just sitting around the kitchen waiting to be heated up. The waiter has just come to my table to advise me a Mets twelve-game winning streak is not on the menu, and special-ordering it now will be impossible.
by Jason Fry on 22 July 2026 7:43 am Remember the long-ago ad in which they switched a fancy restaurant’s presumably fancy coffee for Folgers crystals? A similar experiment seemed to have happened in Milwaukee Tuesday night.
That was platinum glover Brice Turang looking oddly lethargic on a Carson Benge grounder that wound up bringing in two critical runs, and that was the Milwaukee infield doing ill-advised things with balls entrusted to it. (Pat Murphy‘s look of disgust in the Milwaukee dugout brought me back to the gape-mouthed stare Dallas Green sported too many days at Shea.) Meanwhile, that was Bo Bichette making beautiful plays at third and A.J. Ewing manning left field like he’d been there his whole life instead of making his maiden voyage.
But then it was a game of switcheroos, with Brandon Sproat starting against the club that sent him away in the now-infamous Freddy Peralta deal and Devin Williams returning to the site of his greatest success — and, if we’re being less charitable (as I generally am where Williams is concerned), the place where his career arrived at a fateful before-and-after moment.
Sproat looked pretty good, all told, working into the fifth and allowing two runs. But he also looked inefficient, with four walks ensuring his early departure. Sounds a little like Peralta, minus the snarling and snapping from your chronicler — and oh what I wouldn’t do for another switcheroo that involved those two changing places once again.
On the other side of the ball, Zac Thornton was terrific once again — and this time his teammates didn’t blow it, ensuring his first win. (Baseball Reference, like most places, seems not to have adopted the three-letter version of his name quite yet, so you’ll find our Zac here.) Thornton has unprepossessing stuff, but he fills up the strike zone and he’s aggressive, pitching with a sense of conviction that too often feels absent elsewhere on the Mets’ pitching staff. I’ll be curious if Thornton can keep it up once the league gets wise to his approach; for now, though, he’s a welcome sight in a rotation that feels like Russian roulette for the stubbornly innumerate.
And the Mets actually hit behind him! Jared Young grabbed the early lead with a second-inning homer, Francisco Lindor had three knocks, and Luis Robert Jr. mashed a ball that menaced a satellite or two, turning mouths in the Mets dugout into a comical line of amazed Os.
When Juan Soto is impressed by something you did at the plate, add it to your personal highlight reel.
by Jason Fry on 21 July 2026 7:36 am I’m a little worried about Freddy Peralta.
To be clear, I’m not worried about Peralta himself — he’s a rich man, one who’ll soon have a new employer, maybe one who can figure out what’s gone so thoroughly awry with his pitching this season. No, I’m worried about how I react to him. I’ve gone from indifference to visceral, anticipatory loathing — just the sight of Peralta leaves me frothing at the mouth, in ways that do me no credit.
Peralta doesn’t want to pitch poorly — not ever, and certainly not in a return to Milwaukee and the franchise where he had great success. I’m sure he’s upset about it, and frustrated, and maybe even embarrassed. But pitching poorly is what he did, again — this time it was Monday night, as he faced the Brewers for the first time since David Stearns traded for him to be a Mets’ ace, only to wind up with … I dunno, a 3 of clubs? And it left me stewing on my couch, uselessly spewing venom into the social-media void.
It was an additional cruelty that Peralta’s opponent was the otherworldly Jacob Misiorowski. Misiorowski was electric in the first, hitting 104 against an admiring Juan Soto, and a bit less so after that, but by that point it didn’t much matter, not with Peralta throwing batting practice against his old mates.
Misiorowski didn’t even stick around for the five innings needed to qualify for a gimme win. The Brewers face a problem with their phenom that the Mets would love to have: He’s set to throw far more innings than he ever has before, and Milwaukee wants to save some of his bullets for the postseason and not risk an injury to that amazing arm. Misiorowski went 13 days between starts and his usage will now be throttled down the stretch.
It makes sense, in a modern baseball way, but it felt like insult to injury: The Brewers are looking at October as the real prize and strategizing how to best play an ace. Beating the Mets on a July night? That’s incidental — and not too tactically demanding. You don’t need a Misiorowski to beat the Mets — most nights, they’ll take care of it themselves.
by Jason Fry on 20 July 2026 8:09 am This lost season has brought some actual good developments, among them Emily and I embracing the joys of “ambient baseball.” That’s baseball as an amiable companion, welcomed but not fussed over, and happening nearby as you have a conversation or eat something or just enjoy a peaceful moment.
You can make an MLB game into ambient baseball — I love a good baseball nap, when your eyes close on the couch and the middle innings of a weekend afternoon game melt away, to be reconstructed later if needed. I suppose the All-Star Game works too, though that’s due to its bedrock pointlessness. But ambient baseball really shines when watching minor-league ball — you’re not living and dying based on the scoreboard’s verdict, the players you’re watching are wayfarers whose ambitions lie elsewhere, and the people in charge of in-house entertainment don’t fight against this sense of passing through.
A while ago Emily and I earmarked this long weekend for the latest chapter in my quest to visit all 3,144 U.S. counties (this is a terrible idea), targeting the last four Pennsylvania counties I needed and the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. That lent itself to baseball explorations as well — I designed a route that passed through Binghamton and Syracuse, two parks I’d never seen.
 Binghamton was our first stop, where the Rumble Ponies were hosting the Akron RubberDucks, the Guardians’ Double-A club, at Mirabito Stadium. Binghamton is scuffed and scruffy, still searching for a new direction after being hollowed out as a manufacturing center, but it’s a place you instinctively root for, and the stands at Mirabito were full of Rumble Ponies gear in its various forms, of which there are a lot.
Binghamton has been a baseball town for a long time — the Mets have had their Double-A club here since the 1990s, and the Triplets were a Yankees farm team from the 1930s through the 1960s. So the stadium’s wall of fame includes the likes of Edgardo Alfonzo and Bobby Jones, as well as Whitey Ford, Lefty Gomez and Ken Harrelson. I was pleased to see a plaque for local legend Rob Gardner, he of the 15 shutout innings and phenomenal Game Score, and a portrait of Bud Fowler, a pioneer in baseball integration who played for the Binghamton Bingos in 1887. (Not mentioned: Fowler moved on, as he often had to, after white teammates refused to play alongside him.)
 We were free to wander Mirabito as we liked, nearly tripping over a gigantic Chris Suero as he left the batting cage down the right-field line shortly before the game. Rowdy and Ruby, the Rumble Ponies’ mascots, were much in evidence, as were more sessile carousel horses scattered around the ballpark. (That’s the source of the team nickname.) We bantered with our seatmates, ate hot dogs and soft serve (as one does), and enjoyed a lovely summer evening.
Another benefit of ambient baseball? You don’t feel any pain if the home team is getting absolutely shellacked, as the poor Rumble Ponies were. They’re in last place, with the IL full of names you vaguely know. R.J. Gordon — whom we saw pitch last year as a Rumble Pony up in Portland, Me. — didn’t have it and none of his successors fared much better; we shook our heads at multiple fruitless ABs from Kevin Parada, whose once upon a time status as a top draft pick has proved a heck of an employment guarantee. With the Rumble Ponies down 11-0 in the top of the ninth we decided to put a bow on the evening and walk back to our hotel.
The Mets didn’t play that night; the next day we listened to a few innings of Met haplessness against the Phillies, some of it while parked at a Finger Lakes winery during a downpour too torrential for safe driving. The downpour took down our MLB Audio signal shortly before the same weather system forced a rain delay; we shrugged and got on with our drive when the skies cleared. Ambient baseball, y’all.
 Sunday brought us to Syracuse and NBT Bank Stadium, home of the Triple-A Mets. Every member of the starting lineup was someone with big-league experience, a mix of recent Mets and quite possibly future Mets: Hello, Nick Morabito, MJ Melendez, Ronny Mauricio and Hayden Senger! So this is where you’ve gone, Christian Arroyo, Cristian Pache and Christopher Morel! Hello again, admirably cheerful momentary Met Robert Stock!
(That must have been confusing when Morabito played at Mirabito. Sometimes a promotion is welcome for multiple reasons.)
 NBT is a bigger park than Mirabito but has the same cheerful vibe, with decks in the outfield offering good vantage points and artificial-turf berms where kids can safely release their pent-up sugar-fueled energy. The park also showcases Syracuse-area favorites: I don’t recommend the coneys (at all, blecch) but the butter-dipped salt potatoes are sublime, a prime example of not complicating things unnecessarily.
Once again, the baseball proved less compelling than the atmosphere around it: Tobias Myers elicited sighs in Syracuse just as he has in Flushing, though an Arroyo home run then tied the game. The Mets in waiting were tied with the Buffalo Bisons at three-all when we returned to our hotel, lured by the prospects of the World Cup final (Emily) and a nap (me), so we didn’t see things fall apart for the hometown nine in the ninth.
Also missing from Sunday’s experience: the actual Mets, though this was by design. I checked in on them from the NBT stands, registering with mild surprise that they were up 3-0 and then 5-0, and then got back to not really watching their organizational undercards.
The details, once filled in, were heartening: Francisco Lindor once again looked like the guy who put us on his back for the run to the 2024 postseason and not like the hobbled, weirdly befogged player he’s been this year, while Nolan McLean continued to make the mental and strategic strides needed to take full advantage of his arsenal of cruel and unusual breaking balls. Holding the Phillies’ lineup in check on a summer day at Citizens Bank Park is no mean feat.
But as I said, these details were filled in later. The baseball was mostly ambient, and more pleasant for the lack of effort. I recommend it — particularly if it comes with a side of salt potatoes.
by Greg Prince on 19 July 2026 1:17 pm On Thursday evening, the Mets saw fire, or at least the haze from the smoke that wafted down to Philadelphia from Canada, and responded well, all climate conditions considered.
On Saturday afternoon, the Mets saw rain. A start time accelerated by an hour and an eventual 48-minute delay didn’t keep them from appearing all wet.
The James Taylor series concludes today with the 100th game of a season that has proceeded as the spiritual opposite of a sunny day that one thinks will never end. But the skies over Citizens Bank Park look pretty good.
 Mets have seen it all in Philadelphia. Such could not be said of the visiting team that lost on Saturday, 6-1. Not good with the catching the ball, nor throwing the ball, nor hitting the ball. Pitching the ball didn’t amount to much, either. Tyrone Taylor, no relation to James Taylor as far as I know, homered in the second inning for the Mets’ sole run. By then, the Mets trailed, courtesy of the unfailingly polite Kyle Schwarber. Schwarber is almost always courteous enough to provide a fan in some seat with a souvenir. The one he launched to the stands in the first off Sean Manaea furnished the Phillies with a 2-0 lead. Tyrone cut it to 2-1. No more trimming would ensue.
Sean Manaea’s outing could go into a Semiquincentennial time capsule for when people of future generations wish to know what a Mets start looked like in 2026. He threw 99 pitches. He didn’t get out of the fifth inning. He gave u four earned runs. He wasn’t really that bad, nor was he all that good. Manaea was succeeded by wild card reliever Kodai Senga, the erstwhile rotation rock who now lacks a role. Senga came in trailing, 4-1, with two on and two out. He walked his first batter on a full count to load the bases. He struck out his second batter. Throw that in your time capsule, too.
Kodai followed Sean’s example of eluding effectiveness without totally imploding. In the sixth, he allowed a leadoff triple that led to the bases being loaded again. Two runs would score with nobody out. Then Senga bore down and got the next three Phils in order. By then it was 6-1, a small Met victory when none was forthcoming. Philadelphia stranded a dozen runners. The home viewer intuited the home team could have scored more had it really mattered to them.
While Manaea and Senga weren’t razor sharp, and nobody besides Taylor (Tyrone) did anything against Jesus Luzardo & Co. to manufacture a run, this game’s time-capsule curiosity factor will stem from its defense. The Mets dropped a ball at second base, costing them an almost certain double play; batted a ball in right field with a glove rather than a bat, turning an opposition single into a double; flung a ball from home plate into right field, clear past its intended landing spot within the first baseman’s mitt; and allowed a runner who had no intention of advancing from first to second to advance from first to second when the shortstop threw a relay to third base in a hopeless attempt to nail the runner who was practically standing on third after advancing from second.
Somehow none of that contributed to any unearned runs, but it was all abysmal to absorb. Marcus Semien was the second baseman that dropped the DP ball, but on the transfer, so he wasn’t charged with an error, getting a forceout at second for his troubles, if permitting the batter to reach first. Semien was back in the lineup for the first time in several weeks, so maybe it was rust. And maybe his lethargy around the bag before that was his achy hip. And maybe there’s some other convenient explanation for why the Gold Glove second baseman brought his credentials rather than his ability to Flushing from Arlington. Carson Benge was the right fielder who couldn’t pick up the single that became a double. His misplays seem to be of the overly anxious — head ahead of his glove, or glove ahead of his head — variety, and hopefully experience aligns his approach. Francisco Alvarez was the catcher who thought he’d work a clever pickoff at first. Either a little too clever or not clever enough, for Eric Wagaman didn’t seem to be in on the plan, and as the ball Alvy zipped into right field, the runner, not stealing anytime soon Schwarber, plodded from first to third.
As disturbing as any of the Met misplays was Francisco Lindor thinking it wise to throw to third as that man again, Schwarber, was tagging from second to third on Alec Bohm’s very deep fly ball to center. Schwarbs may be slothlike, but he was gonna be safe. More critically, Bryce Harper was on first, behind Lindor. As Francisco’s heave to third went wayward, Harper zipped ninety feet to second. Had the shortstop just held the ball A.J. Ewing had delivered him, Harper would have been planted on first. It’s an elementary baseball play.
 One rarely wishes Steve Blass would spring to mind. One wishes to extend a little grace to a player who missed months due to injury, but several weeks since his return, Francisco Lindor seems to be rapidly turning into an everyday version of Steve Blass. Blass was the top-notch Pirates pitcher who, all at once, went from being an ace to incapable of registering outs. A 19-game winner in 1972 when he was 30, he was done by 1974, his age only 32, his ERA (majors and minors) nearing 10. It’s an extreme comparison, but Lindor, 32, isn’t hitting a lick, which doesn’t much separate him from his teammates, but, nevertheless, his offense is glaringly lickless, to say nothing of lifeless. Defensively, he might as well be Ellen Burstyn portraying Alice Hyatt, for Lindor doesn’t field here anymore. He could be processed as simply a typical 2026 Met having a lousy 2026 Met season, except, dammit, he’s Francisco Lindor. He was the MVP of the non-Ohtani portion of the National League in 2024. He was the starting shortstop, on merit and reputation, for the National League All-Star team in 2025. He is nowhere currently, with “currently” growing uncomfortably longer daily.
Rain, and not just the metaphorical or Met-aphorical kind, eventually arrived at Citizens Bank to pause the miasma. It didn’t shorten the game, also dammit, but it did seem to sap the motivation from the Phillies. We got to see Xzavion Curry complete two strong innings of mop-up relief and, as of this morning, continue to avoid the SPROINGGG!!! of the bullpen ejector seat that designated his myriad predecessors — Guillo Zuñiga, Matt Seelinger, the undeployed Dan Hammer, to name three — for assignment. Maybe someday Xzavion will be excised and outrighted to Syracuse the way all Met bubble relievers are, but that day is not today.
Maybe someday the Mets will properly handle the ball and consistently hit the ball and do all the things that win a ballgame. Thursday they did. Saturday they decidedly did not. Always a new day awaits with this team, if not a new story. Take this one to your time capsule and bury it.
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