I would like the Mets to be loaded with nothing but stars who win every game by lots of runs, pitched daily and/or nightly to victory solely by stalwarts of the starting rotation. Sounds ideal enough.
Now for reality.
The Mets don’t win every game. Nor does anybody else, but the Mets have gotten out of the habit of winning most of their games. Four Fridays ago, they entered their weekend series 21 games above .500. On this Friday right here, they are twelve games above .500. In nearly a month’s time, they’ve gone 8-17, including Thursday’s afternoon [1] and evening [2] losses at Camden Yards. That’s roughly a sixth of the season played at a pace that would win you 52 games out of 162. Good thing the part where they went 45-24 counts just as much (more, actually) toward their overall record of 53-41, but this is not a positive trend. The Mets are not only a game-and-a-half out of first place in a division they once led by five-and-a-half, they are no longer the National League’s top Wild Card, and their edge over the nearest provisional non-Wild Card contender is a mere two-and-a-half games.
Keep losing as often as they have for the past month, and 162 games may be all the Mets play in 2025.
This is despite the Mets being relatively star-spangled. Before getting swept by the Orioles, they were going to be represented in Atlanta next week by three All-Stars. After losing the daytime portion of the split-admission doubleheader, they learned they’d send four. In addition to Pete Alonso, Edwin Diaz, and Francisco Lindor, we’ll see David Peterson [3] make the Midsummer Classic scene, a surprise in that he was overlooked in the initial knighting phase, yet very reasonable given how he’s pitched. Congratulations are in order for the fifth Met to earn a first-time nod in his sixth season as a Met. (To find out who the others were, check out this comprehensive rundown [4].)
Peterson gave the Mets one of his better performances of the year in Thursday’s opener, taking a shutout into the eighth inning, nursing a 1-0 lead. The one run was provided when Tyrone Taylor [5] doubled home Brett Baty [6] from second in the fifth. Taylor had helped make certain the Orioles would still be carrying a zero at that point when he gunned down Jordan Westburg attempting to go from first to third on a Ramon Laureano single in the fourth. Taylor’s no star, but he is capable of playing like one a hit or a throw at a time. That’s the kind of contribution you need when your stars disdain clutchness for an entire game. The recently branded [7] Fab Four of Lindor, Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, and Juan Soto combined to go 2-for-14.
It was a little surprising to see Peterson start the eighth. Not unwarranted, just surprising. David had thrown 87 pitches through seven. For some pitchers, this would be enough. For some managers, this would be cause for a handshake and an ass slap. For Carlos Mendoza, it was gray area. He wanted Peterson to keep pitching in the eighth, but he didn’t want to fully trust him. When Petey gave up a well-placed single to start the eighth, Mendy’s trust dissipated. Could the man who scattered five singles and walked nobody get out of a one-on, no-out situation? The manager decided to not find out.
Ryne Stanek [8] was the new pitcher. Gunnar Henderson was the pinch-hitter. Orioles 2 Mets 1 was the score after Henderson, in for the Orioles because Mendoza had gone to a righty, swung and connected for a two-run homer. A splendid day of All-Star work had flown practically into a vat of Boog’s BBQ sauce. Fortunately, Stanek didn’t give up any more hits. Unfortunately, he walked four, which, with a sac fly mixed in, led to another run.
Baltimore carried a two-run lead to the ninth and kept it, winning, 3-1. The Mets are a pretty good 18-12 in one-run games in 2025. I forget whether that’s supposed to mean the Mets are gritty or lucky. There’s a school of thought that says teams that win more one-run games than they lose show the intestinal fortitude and superior talent to be champions. There’s another school of thought that suggests every close result speaks to the random nature of baseball and perhaps life. Whichever it is this week, I’ve come to lumping together one- and two-run games as pretty much the same thing. Each kind is close. Each kind feels as if it can turn on one swing or pitch or bounce or judgment call or managerial decision. This kind of two-run loss felt like it turned on just enough going wrong to stick the Mets with the L.
In two-run games this season, the Mets are now 8-10. In one- and two-run games this season, the Mets are now 26-22. You’re welcome to Rorschach that data as you wish. Me, I see too many potential wins that have wound up losses. A few more swings or pitches or bounces or calls or decisions that go the Mets way — some within the Mets’ conceivable control, some the product of this or that going here or there — and the Mets are still in first place, still comfortably planning with an eye toward October.
The second game Thursday did not have a close final score. It went Orioles 7 Mets 3. Not a blowout loss, but not so competitive that one or two pivot points gnaw at you. Perhaps the game was decided when the Mets opted to start Brandon Waddell [9]. I’ve just cast an aspersion Waddell’s way, but didn’t mean to. Brandon Waddell has been useful in middle and long relief this season when given the chance. I applaud anybody who is useful in middle and long relief. I applaud anybody given the chance to flourish in that role being given more of a chance. Brandon Waddell has been optioned three times this season. It’s tough to build up momentum when you don’t know how long you’ll be around.
After four relief stints totaling 9.2 innings spread out over 11 games between June 25 and July 6, the Mets handed Brandon the ball to start the nightcap on July 10. By my count, this marked the eighth time in 2025 that the Mets have gone with what I’ll call an unplanned starter. You have your rotation. You have what you consider your rotation depth. Then you have instances when pitchers fall out of your rotation, usually from injury, and pitchers you thought would provide you depth get hurt or prove too ineffective to try again. That’s when you roll the dice that one of your steadier relievers (Huascar Brazoban thrice) can be as effective in the first and maybe second inning as he usually is later. That’s when you tap a less than fully ripe prospect (Blade Tidwell twice) to get here ASAP and try his luck. That’s when you all but shrug and hope you can get a handful or more of outs from a Justin Hagenman or a Chris Devenski or a Brandon Waddell, and by then, there’ll be fewer outs to get, and maybe somebody else can get the bulk of those. If the lineup is hitting, you’ll make it through the day. If the lineup isn’t hitting, the day will be over eventually.
The Mets are 2-6 in games when they’ve turned to unplanned starters, including Waddell’s attempt to plow through innings at Camden Yards. Brandon notched three of them, giving up three runs in the process. If the Mets were producing, the shrug would have paid off. The Mets weren’t much hitting. In the first inning, they were. Nimmo singled, and Lindor doubled to put Nimmo on third. What a perfect setup to get things going. True, in the first game, the first inning began very similarly. Nimmo had singled, Lindor had walked, and a passed ball advanced them each a base. In that first inning, 41-year-old Charlie Morton sipped from the fountain of youth prior to striking out Soto and Alonso and popping up Jesse Winker. And that, except for Taylor doubling in Baty, was that for the Met offense.
But that was the first game. Doubleheaders, like baseball seasons, are packed with opportunities for redemption. Second games need not follow the trajectory of first games. And in the second game, the Mets did not leave the first inning emptyhanded. Versus Tomoyuki Sugano, Juan Soto and Pete Alonso each drove in a run. Huzzah? Well, a run is a run, and the Mets had two of them. But to killjoy the buzz, Soto’s RBI came about via a groundout and Alonso’s arose from a flyout. Jeff McNeil made the third out. The rally was over. The threat evaporated. Its likes would be seldom seen again.
Waddell left after three, trailing, 3-2. In the fourth, the Mets pieced together a tying run. A walk. A steal. Another walk. An honest-to-goodness two-out single with a runner in scoring position, from Baty. That was something.
That was all. Another dribble of activity, in the top of the fifth, culminated in Alonso leaving runners on first and second. Hagenman, in his second inning of work, gave up two runs. In the sixth, Justin, Dicky Lovelady, and Rico Garcia — unplanned relievers are a given with this team — combined to allow two more. The Mets stopped bothering Sugano by the sixth, and the rest of the Oriole bullpen didn’t have to sweat a whole lot en route to Baltimore’s 7-3 win.
It’s tempting to pin Met shortfalls on those paid the most to come through the most. In the first inning, the Fab Four functioned adequately. Later, maybe not so much. Overall, however, it takes a village to drop a doubleheader, whether day-night or traditional. The Mets went 2-for-19 with runners in scoring position across eighteen innings of futile baseball. No, not enough production from Nimmo, Lindor, Soto, and Alonso. But also not enough anything on a consistent basis from anybody else. The Mets are not solely a starshow. What’s been nagging at me is there’s a hollowness to the supporting cast this year. When everybody’s healthy, which isn’t now (Winker seems destined to join Starling Marte on the IL), the Mets offense appears plenty bolstered by above-the-marquee [10] bona fides. The NL didn’t say so this year, but Soto is a star. The NL has never said so, but Nimmo qualifies in our eyes as a star. Alonso and Lindor have those stellar credentials. McNeil and Marte have had them in reasonably recent memory.
That leaves three other categories of Met position player: those who are working their way up to whatever their level will be; those who have found their level somewhere south of stardom but north of disposable; and those who are clearly reserve types. A fourth category is fringe player, but the fringe player (à la the DFA’d Travis Jankowski) isn’t really intended to be here any more than Brandon Waddell is intended to start games let alone salvage nightcaps.
As they continue to work their way up to whatever their level will be, patience will be required to shake out the fates of Baty, Ronny Mauricio, the lately returned Luisangel Acuña, and the mostly flailing Mark Vientos. You can throw starting Syracuse catcher Francisco Alvarez into that stew, too. Baty was the most promising and productive of the kids — yes, they’re still kids — on Thursday. Mauricio has looked the liveliest in all facets of the game, though that shipment of polish he desperately needs must be tangled up by supply chain issues. Acuña is tantalizing, but his role is murky in the present. Alvarez’s Broadway revival is TBD. Vientos is the true enigma of the bunch. So good when it mattered most in 2024. So invisible in 2025. When Winker had to sit with a tight back in the opener, Vientos was thrust into sudden DH duty, and all at once, he was stinging the ball. Maybe this was the push he needed to get back to where he once belonged. In the second game, he was a nowhere man.
But let’s leave the kids be for a moment, and think about the roster’s hollow middle. You have Taylor, who’s the best defensive center fielder the Mets have brandished since Juan Lagares. His RBI double in the first game was especially encouraging because it felt practically unprecedented. Even following his spiffy Thursday afternoon, none of the components of Tyrone’s slash line are flattering; his OPS of .575 reflects that he’s very much in there for his glove. His bat is why McNeil is so frequently a center fielder.
Anybody else in the middle? Winker (2019 All-Star selection notwithstanding) comes to mind when healthy. He hasn’t been. Jose Siri comes to mind when healthy, but when was the last time he was healthy? Luis Torrens does wonderful defensive things behind the plate, but in the best-laid Mets-hatched plans, he’s clearly a reserve type. Given the job full-time, or as full-time as any catcher can be, you’d get used to his Tayloresque .583 OPS in exchange for all those runners he throws out and tags, especially if most among the eight other guys in the lineup were responding to runners on base consistently.
They’re not. So Torrens’s and Hayden Senger’s shortfalls when batting can’t be easily dismissed. Or Taylor’s. And that’s the extent of the Met middle class on the current roster, assuming Winker will be out a while. Like America, the Mets’ middle class is shrinking, and there’s not a lot the elites are doing to raise tides and lift all boats.
My attempt at analysis is a response mostly to getting swept by an underachieving Orioles team on a Thursday, and partly the other realities cited. The Mets haven’t been awesome at winning close games since the season commenced. The Mets haven’t been awesome at deploying confidence-inspiring starting pitchers from the get-go, but enough of them won us over to let us forget the depth wasn’t that deep. The healing of Kodai Senga and Sean Manaea might change attitudes fast on that count. They, with All-Star Peterson, mostly consistent Clay Holmes (pending his innings ceiling), and semi-dependable Frankie Montas reads like an actual rotation. Still, the Mets haven’t been and still aren’t awesome at driving in baserunners, whatever the caliber of the batter not coming through. And bullpens are bullpens. Some days you’re thrilled that a Ryne Stanek pitched. Some days you’re satisfied that a Brandon Waddell got a chance. Other days you’re left to rationalize that bullpens are bullpens, especially days when your All-Star closer is not asked to further burnish his reputation. Falling behind by two in the eighth in the first game. Losing by four heading to the ninth in the second game. No rising to meet the moment in either game. Diaz will be well-rested for Kansas City.
Of late, it’s been a bit of a mess. On the whole, it’s a team that’s done very well sometimes, can be doing better other times. In the long term of 2025, we wait to find out for sure who the Mets really are. It’s like that as most seasons creep toward the break. Promotions percolate. Trades loom. Unknowables get known. We know that, yet we also kind of want to know in advance how everything is going to turn out.