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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 25 June 2026 1:31 pm Wednesday started, more or less, with Michael Conforto robbing A.J. Ewing of a potential extra-base hit. Conforto was playing right field for the Cubs eleven years after he began playing left field for the Mets. He was the hope of outfield future in the summer of 2015, a first-round draft pick whose elevation to Citi Field was accelerated by a combination of his progress and the organization’s desperation. Hope was beginning to abound in small bursts that season. Conforto’s arrival preceded those of a few others, most notably that of Yoenis Cespedes, and hope exploded with a thunderclap all over Flushing. Three months later, the kid Conforto was playing in the World Series. For us.
The hope of outfield future from a pennant-winning year taking a double away from one of our hopes of outfield future from this last-place year was probably a sign of the day and night to come, though at the moment Conforto made his catch, it just meant other current hope of outfield future Carson Benge, who had doubled ahead of Ewing’s at-bat in the bottom of the first, had to tag up if he wanted to advance to third base. Over the next ten pitches, Bo Bichette and Jared Young each struck out, stranding Benge at third.
Signs, signs, everywhere some signs if you insisted on discerning them. But why bother? It was a lovely afternoon, a contingent of Norwegian soccer fans, on a break from their World Cup rooting, populated the center field seats usually identified with the 7 Line Army outings, joyfully gesticulating at the baseball game in front of them, making motions and noises that had nothing to do with the likes of Conforto Ewing, and Benge. Are you gonna tell 500 chanting, rowing Norwegians they’re doing a day in the sun wrong?
The Mets weren’t yet erring all over Wednesday. That would come later. Oh, it would come, all right. You might have let Conforto’s catch slip to the back of your mind. You might have focused on all Nolan McLean was doing well as he kept the Cubs shut down through four. You might have rowed and cheered yourself into a Viking-inspired frenzy when Canadian Jared Young homered to put the Mets on the board in the fourth, and you might have ratcheted up your approval when Francisco Alvarez of Venezuela also traveled beyond the fence. The Mets were ahead, 3-0, and appeared en route to their GOOOOOOOOOAL!!!!!!!!! of winning the matinee.
Appearances can be deceiving as hell. The Mets appeared to be a playoff contender before a single game was played in 2026. The 2026 Mets were at their best theoretically and hypothetically. Reality has been has been a Dansby Swanson-sized pain in their ass. McLean, himself an avatar of youthful hope and dreams, cracked in the fifth, giving up a run-scoring double to Conforto and a two-run homer to Michael Busch. The Norwegians seemed to like that as much as the home runs from Young and Alvarez. Their allegiance was mostly to having a good time. Mets fans with an interest in the score were now tied up in a tie game, though that unraveled with two out in the sixth when, with two on, Swanson made like a hungry man, and devoured a fastball, depositing the aluminum tray on which it was served up over the left-center field wall. McLean’s start had devolved from promising to gritty to six earned runs allowed over six innings.
The Mets stopped scoring somewhere along the way, which made overcoming a 6-3 Chicago lead difficult. Deploying Jonathan Pintaro in the seventh and eighth would make it impossible. The seventh was fine. The eighth was when Swanson came back for seconds. Still hungry, he launched a grand slam halfway to Scandinavia. Pintaro was up as the day-nighter’s 27th Man. I’d hate to see who constitutes the Mets’ 28th Man.
The Mets wound up losing, 10-3. The Norwegians moved on. The Mets were mandated to stick around play another game in the evening. Too bad they couldn’t have set sail on the Seven Seas or taken up another sport, like soccer. They were about to show how much they could kick a ball around.
In the nightcap, the Mets technically came closer to winning than they did in the first game. They lost by only five runs, but it was much worse. The headline was six errors committed by four Met infielders, including rusty Francisco Lindor at short, newly out-of-position Bo Bichette at third, DH who infrequently plays the field Mark Vientos at first, and the most overrated former Gold Glove winner in the history of “he’ll improve our defense up the middle” fielders Marcus Semien (whose offense is non-existent and veteran leadership is invisible to the naked eye) at second. Vientos and IL-bound Semien each totaled two miscues. The quartet’s errant exploits summoned the statistical ghosts of 1962, specifically the opener of another doubleheader, at Colt Stadium in Houston, when each among Marv Throneberry, Rod Kanehl, Charlie Neal, and Felix Mantilla committed a flub apiece. When you’ve not only matched but outdone the Original Mets at something so quintessentially Original Mets…fellas, you’re simply Amazin’.
Six infield errors overshadowed the four home runs the Mets hit Wednesday night (Bichette, Vientos, Ewing, and Alvarez); the Mets’ failure to do any other hitting of note; Sean Manaea lasting only three innings; some solid relief from Husacar Brazobán and Luke Weaver; a misplay by miscast right fielder Brett Baty; the back tightness that sidelined Juan Soto for both games; and even more helpings of Swanson. Holy crap, Dansby Swanson — making our lives miserable for practically a decade — drove in four more runs, giving him FIFTEEN for the first three games of this four-game series. That’s right, more Mets-Cubs on tap tonight!
If you followed Warner Wolf’s advice and turned off your sets right there (anywhere), the Mets lost the nightcap, 10-5. They fell to a dozen games below .500 for the first time this year. They sit nine games out of the Wild Card. And, as if to emphasize their also-ran status, after the sweep, they traded their longest-tenured player, David Peterson, to the club on the other side of the field. Petey, like Conforto a former No. 1 draft pick (and the 1,100 Met overall, coming along exactly 100 Mets after Michael’s debut), goes to the Cubs for a first base prospect named Cole Mathis. With a name like Cole Mathis, the youngster will presumably be assigned to the Mets’ Genoa City farm club, where he will learn to climb the corporate…I mean minor league ladder at the hand of the venerable Victor Newman.
Peterson’s reign as our latter-day Ed Kranepool — a.k.a. The Dean of the Mets — was short. He inherited the title last November once Brandon Nimmo was traded to Texas in that clever deal to snare the services of the aging Semien. It was a nice reward for a pitcher who grinded us through the stretch drive and playoffs of 2024, giving us his blood, sweat, and tears, making us so very happy when he emerged as an All-Star for a splendid first half’s work in ’25. Sadly, Petey peaked with that honor. It’s been all downhill since then for the senior Met. His spot in the rotation was never more than tenuous. His last outing, on Sunday, was disastrous. And now he’s to 2026 what Eduardo Escobar was to 2023, the first suddenly extraneous veteran to be sent to a team that believes itself to have a chance to get somewhere in the months ahead. The Mets have a chance to get to the end of the season, if they don’t drop it. Don’t count on that not happening.
Succeeding the once young and restless David Peterson as The Dean of the Mets is Francisco Lindor. The All-Star shortstop from Cleveland was once the newest of Mets. It is as if he alighted in town on April 5, 2021, a well-dressed stranger; looked around at those who held sway before showed up in town; rubbed his hands together; and thought to himself, “Soon enough, I will eliminate all my rivals, and it will be me, Francisco Lindor, they refer to as The Dean of the Mets!” Fast-forward five years, and all who preceded him in orange and blue have been whisked away.
Coincidence that Lindor returns from the IL just in time to watch the last of his predecessors be shown the door? Yeah, probably. I’m just trying to stay entertained here.
by Jason Fry on 24 June 2026 7:51 am The email came from a work colleague: We’re planning our annual Mets outing, please RSVP.
My instinctive response: Oh God, do I have to?
That’s where this death march of a season has brought us: A free ticket to a Mets game feels like a burden.
The Mets have gone from confounding to infuriating and finally to the place marketing people pray their team never reaches: embarrassing.
Witness Tuesday night’s all-you-can-eat buffet of horrors. Kodai Senga was front and center, resuming his quest for the not particularly cherished distinction of Most Exasperating Starter Ever. Senga blazed through a promising first inning, pitching aggressively and annihilating the Cubs. But in the second he reported for duty with his velocity noticeably down, nibbled on the corners (without hitting them) and got strafed for five runs. I have no idea what’s wrong with Senga and no longer care: I just want him to be somebody else’s problem.
The Mets did some other embarrassing things we’ve grown used to, such as look inert on offense — no, ninth-inning lipstick on the pig of a lost game doesn’t count. And then there was whatever they were up to in the seventh inning: Down five, they made us sit around for eight minutes or so to win a challenge on a ticky-tacky overslide by Pete Crow-Armstrong of second base, which came on ball four to the batter. (Never forget: PCA was a Met farmhand whom we traded so we could watch Javy Baez sulk for two months of garbage time.) Craig Counsell‘s disgust was palpable; so was mine. By God, is that ever not what replay is for: The Mets not only shouldn’t have won the challenge, they also should have lost their right to challenge for the rest of eternity.
I felt sorry for this year’s kidcaster, who had to endure an endless half-inning of Senga being terrible before getting to call a few plays by himself. The Mets of course supplied a one-two-three half-inning with nothing worth calling; by then the poor kidcaster was in his late thirties, wild-eyed and bearded and shouting out warnings of the apocalypse from his fetid lair under a bridge. So it goes with the 2026 Mets.
Oh, and Juan Soto left with a side/back ailment. Though perhaps the real injury is to his pride from having to be a party to this shambling horror show.
By that metric, we should all be on the IL.
by Greg Prince on 22 June 2026 10:35 am In the spirit of Norm Macdonald in 1994 on the subject of Kenny G’s new Christmas album, NBC and the Mets teamed up last evening to say, “Hey, happy Sunday night, baseball fans — hope you like crap!”
 “In related news, David Peterson will be starting a baseball game tomorrow night on this very network.” Folks tuned in to enjoy the exploits of Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper, and Zack Wheeler may have been satisfied with what the broadcast network version of Sunday Night Baseball presented them from Citizens Bank Park. Folks who left their televisions tuned to their local NBC affiliate after the U.S. Open ended at Shinnecock Hills and then tended to other matters were presumably tuned out. Anybody who actually expected much enlightenment regarding the baseball game playing out on their screen — or be spoken to as if the baseball game playing out on their screen was the reason they were watching it — was going to be disappointed.
Anybody who looked forward to the Mets competing let alone winning on Sunday night was courting dismay, but anybody paying attention to this team in 2026 probably knew enough to temper expectations. The matchup pitting Wheeler versus David Peterson was the first clue. Wheeler now qualifies as one of the venerated masters of his craft. He made his first major league start, as a Met, this month in 2013. He missed two full seasons due to injuries, but has compiled a ton of innings since getting healthy in 2017 and mostly staying healthy in the years that have followed. Very good innings. More Phillie innings than Met innings by far. Zack hasn’t been a Met since 2019. He last started for us in Game 159 of that year.
Peterson, who’d been working his way up the Met chain, was called up to start in the fifth game of the next year, which means he and Wheeler just missed overlapping within a Met rotation. Eight starts separated them…along with an offseason, a change of uniform for Wheeler, a promotion from the minors for Peterson, and a global pandemic that shifted and shrunk the 2020 season. Their near-proximity as staffmates is of the horseshoes and hand grenades variety, yet given that Wheeler has been around practically forever and Peterson is the senior Met in terms of service, you’d be forgiven for thinking they crossed clubhouse paths at Citi Field. Surely they nodded at one another in St. Lucie.
The two were both named to the National League All-Star team last summer. Wheeler opted out of going. Peterson was somebody else’s replacement. Only one of them figures to be considered for another invite next month. Wheeler keeps rolling along. Despite a touch of sixth-inning wildness, Zack has little problem raising his record to 7-1, which tracks with his ERA of 2.11. David, who usually has an opening act warm up the mound for him, came on cold to begin the bottom of the first. The Phillies nicked him for two runs pronto. In the second, Schwarber scorched him for a three-run homer. Down, 5-0, Petey settled in for a couple more innings. Or the Phillies got bored with hitting. Our longstanding lefty left with his ERA sitting above six.
So the ad hoc NBC crew of Jason Benetti, John Kruk, John Franco, and Anthony Rizzo would have something to do besides feign interest in and amusement with one another’s forced observations, Harper greeted Austin Warren with a leadoff homer in the fifth. National TV voices love to prattle on about Bryce Harper. The Mets, already dead, were buried. Their one modest rally followed the orange-and-blueprint with which we’ve grown familiar. Three walks led to a run-scoring groundout. Earlier, Juan Soto turned a two-out single to center into an easy out at second by inexplicably attempting to stretch his hit into a no-chance double. It was replayed and noted but not exactly analyzed, despite the presence of three analysts. Also, Carson Benge socked a homer to left, which gave the yakking quartet a few giggles when it was noticed the kid who seemed to fling the ball back onto the field in protest of the isolated Met success was actually throwing a different ball. Either way, it didn’t take the run off the scoreboard. Either way, the Mets were en route to a 6-2 loss.
After years of dreading Met visits to the ESPN Sunday night spotlight, I was curious to see how NBC would handle the assignment. The network had the Mets and Pirates on Opening Day, which now seems as long ago as 36-year-old Zack Wheeler’s major league debut representing a changing of the demographic guard. Opening Day was a Thursday afternoon, it was the first game of the season, and we were more intrigued by our new players than a new telecast. I’ve since consumed bits and pieces of NBC’s baseball coverage (sometimes on Peacock) and had been neither overly impressed nor totally repelled. Their decision to team the generally admired Benetti with voices connected to whoever was playing struck me as a good idea. I guess I was thinking of Lindsey Nelson partnering with Curt Gowdy.
Franco, bless his resilient left arm, tried his best. Now and then, when allowed to expand on pitching strategy, I came close to learning something. But then we needed to hear from Kruk, whose main selling point is his Krukness, and Rizzo, who sits near the field, and before we knew it, what a pitcher might be thinking when behind in the count got steamrolled by a critique of the local cheesesteak scene. All national broadcasts suffer to some degree from its producers deciding in advance that the audience can’t have its attention held by baseball. Let’s wander off and maybe it will be entertaining. Benetti probably isn’t helped by the panoply of parachuting partners. The viewer isn’t helped at all by any of it.
To be fair, the Mets hardly constitute compelling viewing. Since snapping their aberration of a 12-game losing streak, they have gone 27-27. If you wish to infer that a third-of-a-season’s worth of play indicates this is a .500 team rather than the one nine under in the actual standings covering the 77 games thus far completed, go ahead. Two months of win-one/lose-one haven’t gotten this team anywhere. The last two games in Philly indicate how far this team is from getting anywhere. The upward blips are instantly negated by the downward dips. Eventually, the Mets will win a game here, two games there, and it will be suggested their intermittent success is a sign that prosperity is just around the corner, what with multiple missing pieces coming off the IL and three Wild Cards in every pot.
You’ve still got to win more often than you lose over a lengthy stretch of the season. Isn’t that right, Anthony Rizzo?
by Jason Fry on 21 June 2026 12:06 pm I was right to be wary of Bryce Harper after a lousy game Thursday: BOOM Harper hit for the cycle.
It’s always a good call to be wary of Kyle Schwarber: BOOM two home runs in the third inning alone, 913 feet worth of pain, and then a homer to a more mortal distance later on. Funny how they all count the same.
Freddy Peralta was on the mound, and did nothing to make me revise my lukewarm “him again?” opinion. The 2026 version of Peralta springs from a special precinct of Baseball Hell: the guy touted as reliable in that he’ll take the ball every fifth day, only to have you realize you’d be better off if he took the ball less often. Peralta’s season has decayed to the point where he’s meh in the rotation and useless as a trade chip. If the Mets fall out of contention — which they’ve already thoroughly done, who are we kidding ourselves? — what are you getting back for a couple of months of Freddy Peralta? A failed prospect stuck in high-A whom nobody wants to talk about anymore? A case of stale Big League Chew? A wallet of Myanmar cryptocurrency?
Besides chronicles of labor strife, the offseason will be chock full of “How to fix the Mets” plans. Here’s the start of mine:
- Mark Vientos is never allowed to challenge — a sniper will be in the on-deck circle with a dart gun, ready if Vientos’ hand so much as approaches his head.
- David Stearns is forbidden from acquiring any more Brewers. Not even if Jacob Misiorowski becomes available in some dodgy MLB lottery, or a mad scientist with a vat full of bubbling DNA clones Robin Yount.
Anyway, once the score got to “Is Zack Short going three innings or just two?” territory, I turned the game off, which I make zero apology for. Instead of watching the Mets get pummeled, I watched The Killers, an awesome film noir with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner that has a wonderfully twisty plot and some jaw-dropping tracking shots. Highly recommended instead of the next Mets game.
Hmm. I see Short only went one inning — but was somehow unscored upon. Anyone opposed to him taking Peralta’s next start?
by Jason Fry on 19 June 2026 10:05 am Welcome to a sunny Friday without a baseball game, which is so weird that I know that come early evening I’ll be poking at my TV remote in consternation until I remember: “Oh yeah, stupid World Cup.”
At least that gives us extra time (see what I did there) to marvel at the Mets’ 6-4 win over the Phillies from Thursday, a thoroughly ridiculous baseball game that came out the way we wanted it. Seriously, it was ridiculous, and it was ridiculous from the jump — though not the familiar “Citizens Bank baseball Pachinko” ridiculous, but more “Are you sure you’re tall enough for this ride?” ridiculous.
The Mets got off to an immediate 1-0 lead when Juan Soto banged a home run off the facing of the second deck, one of those homers you knew was gone the second you saw the improbable launch angle, then added another run on an A.J. Ewing double that was a double because Brandon Marsh took a Jeffy in the Family Circus-style route to its vicinity, a misplay that followed Aaron Nola tagging Jared Young near first only to discover the baseball was in the grass behind him. Whoops!
The Phillies immediately halved the lead in the bottom of the first when Alec Bohm — who, lets recall, is suing his parents — singled home Trea Turner. But Sean Manaea escaped further harm when Bryce Harper was thrown out on a strike ’em out, throw ’em out steal attempt. (Harper came up small repeatedly in this game, which makes me reflexively brace for impact as we move forward — but that’s a Saturday problem because, again, stupid World Cup.) It looked like the Phillies would tie the game in the second, as certified annoyance Edmundo Sosa hit a leadoff triple, but Manaea sandwiched two grounders around a pop-up to escape harm.
Soto led off the third and hit a fly ball to the outfield, one that saw him begin the mildly disgusted trot of a hitter who knows he’ll hit first and then make a left for the visitors’ dugout. But Gary Cohen saw the danger before any of the principals did — Soto had hit the ball high if not ominously far, and the wind was whipping out. The ball kept going and going and plopped into the seats above an unhappy Justin Crawford‘s head, with Nola looking disgusted and Soto looking pleased but a little sheepish.
(Yeah, this is a lot of detail. But a) we’ve got time, because stupid World Cup; and b) it was one of those games where you kept going, “Wait, what in the world is happening now?” Which is always fun to try and recreate.)
The Phillies got closer in the bottom of the inning thanks to another dose of ridiculousness: Kyle Schwarber reached first on a strikeout/passed ball/throwing error, with the umps not calling him out for running inside the baseline as they should have. Schwarber came home on an RBI double from Bohm, one Carson Benge came within a whisker of making a terrific catch on in the right-field corner near the groundskeeper’s little hobbit house, a feature of Citizens Bank Park I’ve always found endearing, and a definite improvement over the Vet’s unfortunately emblematic in-house jail. The Phils then tied it an inning later when Ewing’s throw home hit not just the mound but also the rubber, caroming over a helpless Francisco Alvarez‘s head.
That drained the reservoir of ridiculousness for a time: Manaea gave way to Huascar Brazoban, whose newfound reliability continues to startle me, while Nola handed his duties over to Seth Johnson and then the hulking, mercurial Jose Alvarado. There’s no Phillie reliever more satisfying to get to than Alvarado, and in the seventh the Mets got to him. It started relatively conventionally: leadoff single for Benge, two-out walk for Mark Vientos, clutch pinch-hit RBI single for Eric Wagaman. But then things got weird again: Marcus Semien appeared to have struck out on a 2-2 cutter, with Alvarado and J.T. Realmuto walking off the field. But Semien thought he’d tipped it — channeling Gil Hodges, albeit without the shoe polish or dugout chicanery, he asked home-plate ump Brian Walsh to look for a smudge where the ball had hit the dirt before Realmuto secured it.
Smudge detected! Semien went back to work, and an understandably deflated Alvarado delivered a sinker that was more of a sitter. Semien mashed it to left-center, into the wind again. Crawford’s first step was a bit tentative, and the ball wound up off the wall above his glove for a two-run triple. The Mets got more good relief, with Luke Weaver fanning Harper, Bohm and Marsh in the eighth, and turned a three-run lead over to Devin Williams.
I don’t think I have it in me to trust Williams — ironic, since it was his close encounter with Pete Alonso that seems to have knocked his career off-kilter — but let it be noted that Bo Bichette misplayed a two-out grounder that should have ended the game. Someone named Gabriel Rincones Jr. singled, Crawford singled in a run, and oh boy here came Schwarber with a chance to hit a walkoff. In Citizens Bank Park. With the wind blowing out.
Williams’ 2-2 pitch had too much plate, and Schwarber belted it — but it was a low line drive out to right, not a high line drive destined for Mets Hell. In fact, it was just a couple of steps from where Brett Baty was patrolling. Baty secured it, first blood had gone to the Mets, and our reward is to wait around for a day.
Stupid World Cup!
by Greg Prince on 18 June 2026 11:57 am Welcome back to NBC 4 New York’s continuing coverage of this unforgettable day. We now go live to Bruce Beck, who has word of an unforeseen development, as the massive downtown celebration of the NBA champion Knicks takes an unexpected turn.
Natalie, since Lower Broadway was already set up for an UNBELIEVABLE procession, New York City is now proud to welcome to its legendary parade route the 33-41 New York Mets, winners of a 9-1 game over the Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday afternoon! A little-known fact: the Mets wear orange and blue, just like the Knicks, so the color scheme here is a PERFECT match. And despite wallowing eight games below .500, the Amazins linger a mere FIVE-AND-A-HALF games from the third and final National League Wild Card spot. Keeping up the pace they established Wednesday in Cincy looms as the KEY to the CITI Field security staff potentially unlocking their gates beyond Game 162.
Leading the way up the Canyon of Heroes, emerging from his own canyon of ZEROS — seven innings pitched with no earned runs allowed and nine Reds struck out — is Nolan McLean. The fans go tentatively WILD, given how excited they were about McLean when the 2026 season started, only to scale back their fervor when the staff’s prospective ace hit a rough patch. But now that the Mets are ROLLIN’ with Nolan, the shouts on his behalf are becoming DEAFENING again!
A familiar face fronts the next float. It’s the SIXTY-SECOND Recidivist Met in franchise history, Zack SHORT! Zack, who started at the position named for him Wednesday, left the Mets early in 2024, and about a month later, the 2024 Mets took flight. The 2026 Mets are 1-0 since Short’s return to the team. No wonder the utility infielder is practically DROWNING in ticker-tape. The Recidivist Met float on which Short stands tall is sponsored by eBay, where you can probably find that item you suddenly have second thoughts about having gotten rid of years ago.
The strains of Counting Crows accompany the entrance of not Boo, but BO Bichette, who would probably like everybody along the parade route to eat some crow. No, folks, Bo Bichette’s career as a productive major league hitter is not over. Since dropping to a nadir of .213 early this month, Bo has batted .436 in his past thirteen games, definitely the sign of somebody who is more than simply ‘hangin’ around’. On Wednesday, Bichette chipped in another three hits and scored three more runs. This crowd seems to have set a record for thunderous applause building from NOTHING.
 One of these days… Ooh, it appears one of the fans along the route has broken loose of the police barricades and may be looking to cause a stir. But wait! A.J. EWING has caught that fan! A.J. catches EVERYTHING, folks, as exemplified by his diving grab of J.J. Bleday’s bid for a bases-loaded double or something even more lethal in the third inning Wednesday. It became a sac fly and the only run Cincinnati would plate. A.J. also drove in a couple of runs in the rout and the fans are showing their appreciation for all the rookie can do.
As for that interloper Ewing caught, the cops are going to let Luis TORRENS throw him out. What an arm! Luis has shot down twelve of sixteen baserunners trying to steal so far this year. And what a bat we’re seeing waved to the crowd from his backstop buddy Francisco Alvarez, who had three hits as designated hitter on Wednesday. Ooh, the throng starts booing at just the mention of “designated hitter,” but it may be Francisco’s best position. Mets pitchers’ earned run average when Alvy is behind the dish is almost FIVE, whereas when Luis goes into his crouch, it falls to just above three.
Now here comes a vehicle you can’t miss: Juan SOTO’S luxury ride. It’s taking its time coming up the parade route, because that’s just the way it goes. As soon as it moseys the length of Broadway, it will be showered with confetti and adoration in acknowledgement of the three hits, two runs and two runs batted in Juan contributed to Wednesday’s victory. Natalie, to opposing pitchers, Juan is unsafe at any speed. Even with the time he missed due to injury in April, Soto’s Baseball-Reference WAR is more than twice that of any other Met position player. Leading Mets pitchers in that category? Clay HOLMES, who’s been out for more than a month. Folks, sometimes Wins Above Replacement really tells you the score.
You won’t want to miss the rest of this repurposed 2026 Mets parade, just in case it’s the last one that happens this year. We’ll be back in a minute to see if we can find any sign of Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert, to name just TWO of the several Mets who we don’t think have shown up yet.
by Jason Fry on 16 June 2026 11:58 pm Well, they didn’t lose 12-0.
Nope, on Tuesday night the Mets fell behind 4-0 in the first, but then won the rest of the game 3-1, which is a roundabout way of saying they lost 5-3. Kodai Senga somehow only gave up two hits over four innings, but those two hits came in the form of 800 feet worth of first-inning home runs; saying Senga settled down after that is like saying he attended to barn doors with aplomb once equine residents were no longer present to pose distractions.
Senga’s struggles were dispiriting enough, but the Mets also continued their recent tic of being mind-bogglingly hopeless with the bases loaded, collecting zippo for their sacks-drunk efforts in the third and the fourth innings. Their runs came on an RBI single by Bo Bichette, who seems to have turned back into the hitter we thought were getting in April (hey it’s something), and a moonshot by Mark Vientos, whom it still feels like damning with faint praise to say has looked better of late. But you know what? Mark Vientos has looked better of late!
So no, not a 12-0 loss where the only suspense was if Luis Torrens was going to be frog-marched out to the mound. Still, it never really felt like the Mets were coming back — a bloop and a blast seemed as unlikely as the Mets scaling Everest without oxygen. Insult to injury: What in the world was Marcus Semien doing squandering the Mets’ last challenge with two outs and a four-run deficit in the second inning? Francisco Alvarez‘s slightly earlier challenge was at least psychologically defensible, as he was trying to get a spooked pitcher back in harness, but what was Semien thinking?
While not fuming about miscellanous Mets misdeeds, I kept coming back to Senga. We’ve forgotten, amid so much that’s gone wrong, just how good the 2023 edition of Senga was — dart of a fastball, evil ghost fork, no chance for opposing hitters. 2024 was a lost season, but 2025 was going swimmingly until an errant throw by Pete Alonso brought everything crashing down, yet to be reassembled.
Now? I don’t know who the Kodai Senga out there is — and I doubt the man himself has an entirely firm grasp on answering that question. He couldn’t land his breaking pitches Tuesday night, with the ghost fork only occasionally flickering to life, like a flashlight plucked off a basement shelf and whacked into fitfully working order. No pitcher in today’s game is terribly effective with just a fastball — well OK, maybe Jacob Misiorowski is — but Senga’s looks like it’s lacking the bite it used to have, and which he sorely needs.
So what’s wrong with Senga? You’ve got me.
Maybe it’s the latest in a cascade of injuries — a lot of pitcher maladies are, with the game’s dopey omerta preventing us from hearing what exactly was wrong until it’s been fixed. (Unless, of course, whatever’s wrong isn’t fixed at all for some baffling reason. Cough, Sean Manaea, cough.)
Maybe it’s that Senga’s persnickety near-obsession with his own mechanics has sent him down a rabbit hole he can’t escape — sometimes Senga reminds me of Ron Darling, a smart pitcher who might have been better off as a baseball player if he’d been a little dumber.
Maybe it’s something else — at several points over the last three seasons, the Mets have let slip a certain degree of exasperation about what page they’re on versus what page Senga is on, the kind of disconnect teams rarely allow to be seen in the modern game, and which therefore speaks volumes.
All I know is it’s been like this long enough that a bleak weariness has settled over all involved: the team, the fans, Senga himself. The Mets could sure use a healthy, happy Senga, but does that pitcher exist anymore? Maybe all the Met voices have become so much Peanuts adult noise for Senga; maybe he needs to hear other voices to get back to what he was. You hate to think it — it’s a long-winded way of saying “OK, we give up” — but sometimes giving up becomes best for all involved.
by Greg Prince on 16 June 2026 12:38 am Twelve runs allowed.
Twelve-run margin of defeat.
Twelve runners left on base.
Twelfth shutout suffered with twelve or more runners left on base in a nine-inning game in franchise history.
You could say 12s were wild for the Mets on Monday night in Cincinnati, except there was nothing that screamed or even whispered “wild” about their 12-0 loss to the Reds. Maybe it is wild in retrospect that management thought bringing back Tobias Myers from Syracuse to start would be helpful. It wasn’t. Myers lasted an inning-and-a-third. Jonathan Pintaro, another minor league returnee (did you notice he was gone?), soaked up the middle part of the game, which is usually one of those yeoman tasks a fan is inclined to applaud. Pintaro gave up a grand slam, so hold your applause. Later came David Peterson, whose work did not inspire a boomlet dedicated to his rotation reinstatement.
That was the pitching that permitted a dozen runs. The dozen runners the Mets put on became no runs, one of those broad offensive misfires that might be seem unprecedented, but the very same total of runners was left to loiter in a shutout inflicted upon the Mets by the Rays just last year, on the very same date, in fact. Time flies when you’re plating none. Had the Mets stranded the bases loaded in the ninth without scoring — as they did in the fourth, fifth, and seventh — they would have set the team record for most LOBs in regulation, topping the club record for spectacular futility from August 2023, shortly after the Mets waved an enormous white flag on their season. Alas, these Mets, presumably still endeavoring to compete, went out in order. So much for breaking new if sodden ground.
Any upside to losing, 12-0? Well, had the Mets scored 11, how aggravating would have a 12-11 loss been? And had the Mets allowed just one run, imagine the frustration in losing, 1-0. Do all your ineffective pitching and ineffectual hitting together, get both out of your system, and greet the next day (with its game to be started by Kodai Senga in place of IL-assigned Christian Scott) as a new day, because it is.
No, not much of an upside. What do you want from a 12-0 loss?
by Greg Prince on 15 June 2026 2:39 pm Freddy Peralta has joined Harry Parker and Jerry Koosman in that very exclusive club of Mets pitchers who have started and won on the day after the Knicks have clinched an NBA title. It’s a small sample size, but the Mets are 3-0 in those situations.
May 9, 1970: The Mets and Giants are embroiled in a 4-4 tie until the bottom of the fifth at Shea, when the home team busts out for nine hits, scoring eight runs to tie the franchise mark for most in an inning. Ex-Giant Dave Marshall drives in two. Art Shamsky drives in two. Kooz himself — who will effectively disperse 10 hits over seven-and-two-thirds — drives one in. So does Tommie Agee on the afternoon he extends his Mets-record hitting streak to 20. Ron Taylor comes on in the eighth and retires the five hitters he faces to seal the 14-5 win over San Francisco.
May 11, 1973: It’s another tight game, this time at Three Rivers Stadium. Mets 2 Pirates 2. Again, the fifth inning provides the turning point, albeit with less explosiveness than three years earlier. Against Dock Ellis, the Mets string together a hit-by-pitch, a two-out single, and one more hit besides from Jim Gosger to take the lead. Gosger is 46 years from being declared dead at the 2019 Citi Field reunion of the 1969 Mets despite continuing to live. Here, in another of his fortuitously timed cameos (Jim was a Met for slices of 1969 and 1973, but not at all in between), he is very much alive and well, and so are the 1973 Mets. Bud Harrelson works out a bases-loaded walk in the seventh to extend the Mets’ edge to 4-2, giving Parker the breathing room to withstand a Willie Stargell RBI double in the bottom of the inning. Harry hands the ball to Tug McGraw, who stays in the rest of the way. In the ninth, the Buccos will load the bases, but the Tugger will wriggle out of it, and the Mets come away 4-3 winners.
The Mets game of June 14, 2026, was also a win. Mets 8 Braves 1, a romp unlike the post-Knick successes in that it was taking place right in front of me. I was 7 in 1970 and not being taken to Mets games. A few Knicks games, it so happens, that first championship season, but not the Mets. At age 10 in 1973, I wasn’t making a habit of flying off to Pittsburgh for the weekend, though I can say I had been at the Garden for Game Three of those NBA Finals the Knicks finished off in five in Los Angeles. Here, it was no aberration to find myself situated in toasty warm Promenade with my friend Mark Simon on Sunday afternoon. It was my third Mets game in five days. I haven’t gone to see the Knicks since 1995.
Things change. The day-after victory habit hasn’t, I’m happy to confirm. We (the Mets) were down after a half-inning by a run. Peralta was, per usual, making the least out of the most pitches possible. After he’d thrown 26 of them, the Braves had a run in and the bases loaded. Somehow — and until he demonstrates some consistency, Freddy gets the “somehow” treatment when things go well — he escaped the jam.
Then the Mets, perhaps inspired by the blaring of the public address system to remind us the Knicks had emerged champions the night before in San Antonio (you could hear the hype all the way to Texas), went out and trampled Bryce Elder for four runs in the bottom of the first. Mark and I were able to settle into our annual game of trivia, where the goal isn’t to answer correctly on the first swing but suss out what the questioner is looking for after a series of largely inscrutable hints. My questions tend to be asked in sixteen parts. I’m loads of fun to sit next to at Mets games.
Mark was unGosgerian in his timing when it came to excusing himself in the middle of the fifth inning. He missed A.J. Ewing’s home run, which is to say he also missed Marcus Semien’s home run on the very next pitch. The bottle of water he went off to refill, however, appeared superbly refreshing, and they do show replays. They showed the home runs a lot. They showed Knicks highlights a lot. They showed special celebrity visitor and Cardinals fan Jon Hamm sitting in a fancy seat down below pointing to himself wearing a Knicks cap. Why they didn’t show the Mad Men clip of him as Don Draper singing “Meet the Mets” to Freddy Rumsen (or at least the time he’s out for drinks telling someone Bill Bradley’s having a helluva year) is beyond my Mets A/V comprehension. My week at Citi Field exposed me to unprecedented amounts of sanctioned rah-rah for a non-Mets team. If the Mets were being supportive of their fellow local athletic squad, good for them. If the Mets were glomming onto someone else’s orange-and-blue ascent, good for them, too. Steal that valor. Distract us from the tenor of the baseball campaign to date.
Not that we needed to have our attention diverted from the Mets on Sunday. The Braves never got it going, the Mets just kept on coming, adding a couple of runs to secure an 8-1 triumph. The PA remained too loud the entire day. The Knicks were still champions. And I could stop keeping track of something I’ve been monitoring since 2015.
Every time it became mathematically certain no New York-and-immediate vicinity team would win any among a Super Bowl, a Stanley Cup, an NBA Finals, or a World Series, I would do the math. By November 1, 2015, when the Mets opted out of that year’s Fall Classic sans trophy, it had been 1,365 days since the Giants had won Super Bowl XLVI, or 46 for you non-Romans out there, on February 5, 2012. In the interim, the Devils in nearby Newark had lost a Stanley Cup in the final round of 2012 (127 days) and the Rangers had done the same in 2014 (859 days). Even the 2015 World Series going not the way a significant percentage of the Metropolitan Area population wished hardly indicated we were in a title drought. But it was beginning to get a bit parched in these parts.
There hadn’t been a yawning gap from New York championship to New York championship since the white space that filled October 16, 1962 (Yankees win World Series) to January 12, 1969 (Jets win Super Bowl). I come along as a sports fan in the ensuing months, and I soon got the idea that New York might be Titletown, USA. Only 277 days elapsed between the Jets setting the standard and the Mets matching it on October 16, 1969. The city and suburbs needed a mere 204 days to get its fix once again, courtesy of the 1969-70 Knicks, the first championship team I lived and died but didn’t really have to die with on a daily and nightly basis. The 1969 Mets I joined already in progress. I was ready for the Knicks from their opening tip on October 14. My parents went to Opening Night at Madison Square Garden — hours after Agee made his two immortal catches — and reported back that the Knicks had beaten the Seattle Supersonics. We (the Knicks) got off to a 5-0 start, lost one to the San Francisco Warriors, then won their next eighteen. I was hooked for the foreseeable future.
 Banner from a championship season. We (the family) had season tickets. Mom and Dad would go the Garden on Saturday nights and some Tuesday nights. My father would use them for business in the ways one used tickets for the hottest game in town otherwise. I remember a lot of sitting at the dinner table listening to Marv Albert. Dad was into it. Mom was into it. I was into it. My sister put up with it. A few times we got to go. I still have the felt KNICKERBOCKERS pennant from my first non-circus trip to the Garden. No wonder that by May 8, 1970, the night we listened anxiously for Marv to let us know if Willis Reed was gonna play Game Seven (ABC’s telecast was blacked out in New York), it meant the world that the Knicks beat the Lakers. It absolutely did to this 7-year-old.
it meant maybe a touch less but still loads 1,098 days later when the Knicks beat the Lakers again, on May 10, 1973. Toward the end of the 1970-71 season, after close to two years of hanging on every jump shot and rebound, I found myself caring tangibly less, as if I had just come out of a hypnotic spell. I went from “the Knicks are on!” to “oh, the Knicks are on.” Maybe it had something to do with my parents giving up the season tickets. They got them back in 1972. The seats weren’t as good, but my sister and I got to go a little more frequently, including to one game per each round of the playoffs. After the Knicks took a 3-1 lead and headed to L.A. in the 1973 Finals, Suzan and I calculated we’d get to go to the potential clincher if the Knicks had the decency to lose Game Five on the road. Yet I was too much of a fan at age 10 to mess with karma. I was quite delighted to watch the second Knick championship get won on TV.
The family kept the season tickets for one more year. Going to the Garden never got old, but the Knicks had. Willis, Dave DeBusschere, and Jerry Lucas were all on the verge of retirement. The last of our games in person, against the Celtics in the 1973-74 Eastern Conference finals, was the kind of loss that told a person who paid attention, even if that person was only 11 years old, that an era was ending. The Knicks were eliminated in Boston.
New York’s title bounty continued apace, anyway, with the other professional basketball team for whom I had developed an affinity, the Nets of the ABA, winning their first championship, exactly one year after the Knicks had won their second. In 734 days, the Nets would do it again. Hence, from January 12, 1969, to May 13, 1976, New Yorkers had been party to six champagne celebrations, almost one per year. Then came the Yankees of 1977 and 1978; the Islanders of 1980 through 1983; the 1986 Mets; 1986 Giants; the 1990 Giants; the 1994 Rangers; the 1995 Devils; the unwanted but undeniable Yankees of 1996 and 1998 through 2000; the 2000 and 2003 Devils; the 2007 Giants; and the last gasp of the Core Four in the 2009 World Series. When Eli Manning bested Tom Brady for the second time, on February 5, 2012, the New York-area sporting public had a chance to revel in its 26th title in just over 43 years. Understandably, few people would have said “YAY!” 26 times, for we differentiate in our sporting loyalties, given that these are four sports and they encompass are nine local teams, spawning direct and/or emotional rivalries. I can think of seven titles right away I could have done without. But they were there if my neighbors wanted them.
Then, following the 2011 Giants’ trip into the history books, nothing. Some close calls, à la the 2015 World Series, and some ancillary trophies, like those earned by New York FC in the MLS in 2021 and the New York Liberty in the WNBA in 2024, but nothing in what one might by ingrained habit refer to as The Big Four. The longest the Metropolitan Area had to wait between 1/12/1969 and 2/5/2012, was the 1,700 days that spanned the Devils on 6/9/2003 and the Giants on 2/3/2008. We passed that shortly before the 2016 Mets lost their Wild Card game. The title drought was in full effect.
It grew and grew and grew until it threatened to surpass the granddaddy drought of them all, the 5,843 days between the New York Giants winning the World Series in 1905 and the New York Giants next winning the World Series in 1921. Professional sports basically had the Big One in those days. The Yankees were kept from the World Series in those days. Those days had something going for them. As of Saturday night, June 13, 2026, the title drought had grown to 5,242 days. We were less than two years from making John McGraw feel not so bad about the outcomes of the 1911, 1912, 1913, and 1917 World Series (not to mention getting robbed of the 1908 National League pennant). But that stuff’s for ancient history now.
Saturday night, the Knicks put an end to all the counting. New York — along with, one supposes, Raleigh, N.C., home of the newly crowned Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes — can lay claim to Titletown honors. The Knicks are the NBA champions. I lived it in 1970 and 1973. I drifted away from them in 1974. I feinted back toward them now and then in succeeding decades, but not at all in this century. The Nets maintained my affinity, from Long Island to New Jersey to Brooklyn. Strangely enough, it’s stronger than ever. When it comes to basketball allegiance, I am Moe Szyslak explaining to Homer Simpson why his tavern lacked that hot new attraction every sports bar in the country was featuring by the early 1990s. “Well, it was either cable or the mechanical bull. I made my choice and I stand by it.” Cut to Moe’s mechanical bull, covered in cobwebs. I’m a Nets fan. They won 20 games this year and came in sixth in the draft lottery.
I used to be a Knicks fan. Their run through the 2025-26 playoffs moved me little, except for a touch of resentment every time I read or heard that they were unlike any other local sports franchise because they alone in their sport represent everybody in New York. Echoes of October 1996, when “everybody in New York” allegedly pulled for the “Miracle” Yankees. Except this time, I didn’t have an October of 1986 to present as evidence of short municipal memories. May of 1976 was a long time ago. The ABA disappeared that month. I’m still waiting for the Nets to totally get the hang of this NBA thing.
 Searching old haunts for new enthusiasm. Couldn’t find it. I know how being a Nets fan works. I know I exist, even if relatively few others of my ilk do as well. Yet when the Knicks verged on winning it all and then did win it all, I was…honestly…not as annoyed by it as I thought I’d be. New York needed a championship of the first order (as long as it wasn’t captured by the Yankees). I’m genuinely happy for whoever’s genuinely happy about this. Sheesh, 53 years is too long to begrudge anybody, except the Yankees. I tried to gin up Knick enthusiasm on behalf of my younger self, but nah, this one isn’t for contemporary me. It doesn’t have to be. I’ve got the Nets and their No. 6 draft pick to maybe do something useful with. I’ve got the Mets beating the Braves two out of three. I’ve got sixteen-part trivia questions to craft for the next time I see Mark Simon. I’ll always have what the Knicks did in 1969-70 and 1972-73 and what those teams meant to me then and still mean to me now. I’m good with all that.
I know from experience how great it is to be with a champion. I’m satisfied to be proximate to one for a change.
Mark is writing an Amazin’ weekly newsletter commemorating the 40th anniversary of the greatest championship of all, that of the 1986 Mets. Learn more about it here. And if by some chance you were at Game Four last week for the comeback of comebacks AND at Shea for Game Six and THAT comeback of comebacks, let us know, because Mark would love to talk to you.
by Jason Fry on 14 June 2026 1:40 am A few hours before the Knicks turned New York City into the world’s largest block party, the Mets lost a humdrum game against the Braves by the told-you-it-was-humdrum score of 3-1.
To be fair, the biggest positive of the game was actually worth noting: Sean Manaea got the start and turned in six effective innings, a performance good enough to have translated into a win if only the Mets had offered him any offensive support. Manaea has worked patiently through any number of mechanical issues in coaxing his velocity to return to the point where his fastball can be an effective counterpoint to his sweeper; I still wish he’d taken an opportunity to surgically repair the loose bodies in his elbow, but then it’s always easy to recommend surgeries for other people. Manaea earned a start, showed he can pitch effectively, and ought to get more starts.
Manaea aside, though, there wasn’t much worth one’s time. The Mets could do little with Martin Perez, got racked by Ronald Acuna Jr. fill-in Eli White, and fell short. Though there are worse things than a humdrum loss, I suppose. Consider, if you dare, what would have happened if Austin Warren hadn’t allowed a Michael Harris II home run in the eighth to give the Braves an insurance run. Juan Soto led off the Mets’ ninth with what was initially ruled a home run and then downgraded to a double after a crew-chief review detected … well, to be honest, hours later I’m still not quite sure what was detected. Soto never advanced beyond second, as Mark Vientos struck out, Marcus Semien walked and Francisco Alvarez rapped into a game-ending double play.
The difference between Braves 3, Mets 1 and Braves 3, Mets 2? Merely cosmetic. But if it had been Braves 2, Mets 1 before Soto hit a ball over the fence that was then ruled to be something else? That would have been an unhappy recap indeed — one I’m pretty glad I haven’t had to write.
* * *
 If you remember the name Rick Sweet, well, I’m impressed … and you must be a monster at Mets-related Sporcles.
Sweet appeared in three April games for the 1982 Mets, pinch-hitting in all three — he never even got to wear his catcher’s gear as a Met. His big-league career consisted of parts of three seasons. But that thin Baseball Reference entry belies the fact that Sweet is a baseball lifer, having managed 36 minor-league seasons, and is closing in on the record for wins by a minor-league manager. Writing for the Athletic, Tyler Kepner has a wonderful profile of Sweet, a momentary Met you’ll enjoy learning more about.
(Accompanying this post is my own Sweet custom card.)
* * *
The most fun part of the Knicks’ run? It’s been the jubilation in the city. Today I was walking over to help with our kayak program in Brooklyn Bridge Park and passed person after person in Knicks garb, witnessed strangers high-fiving and exchanging good wishes, and overheard conversations about the upcoming Game 5 that covered the entire sports-fan gamut, from strutting confidence to naked anxiety.
I’m merely a basketball tourist: I watched the NBA Finals, enjoyed them and will now go back to worrying more about the Mets’ bullpen construction than I ever will about the Knicks. But the significance of what the Knicks did wasn’t lost on me: They ended a 53-year drought for their fans.
I was born five months, one week and one day before the Mets won their first World Series; I must have seen some of it from on laps and in bassinets but obviously have no memory of it. I was 17 when they won their second one, ending a drought that was coincidentally as old as I was.
I was raised properly: I didn’t assume the Mets would win another title in 1987, let alone feel entitled to one. But it’s now been 40 years, and the current incarnation of the team doesn’t exactly offer hope of ending that drought before we start talking about 41 years.
I found the Knicks’ citywide block party delightful, and I’m thrilled for their fans. But as Emily and I passed knots of fans outside bars, on our way home to watch the game ourselves, one thought and its variations kept pushing out all the others in my head: I want to feel if winning a title is as sweet as it was at 17. I want Mets fans under 40 to know that feeling. I want this for us.
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