The Mets held a Christmas in July promotion the other night, which apparently inspired a sequel of sorts on Friday when they conducted their business a little like it was the end of March. They had a starting pitcher slated to throw, but then decided they better not let that starting pitcher be seen, lest somebody get too good a look at him. That’s the thought process you hear about as Spring Training is coming to an end. You’re playing the Marlins in Jupiter or St. Lucie, but you know you’ve got the Marlins in the first series of the year, thus you don’t want to overly expose whoever’s lined up to face them for real in five days.
Friday night was something like that, except it was the end of July when such thoughts shouldn’t circle an organization’s head. And though the Mets were playing the Marlins for real, this had nothing to do with the Marlins. The Mets were concerned that somebody contemplating trading for Freddy Peralta [1] would get too good a gander of Freddy Peralta and adjust their contemplation. Or, one supposes, they wanted to figuratively bubble-wrap Peralta, keeping him from harm’s way on his way out the door.
Too bad it didn’t occur to the Mets’ brain trust to deploy the Hide Peralta strategy shortly after breaking camp. A season in which Freddy Peralta had been kept from pitching for the Mets likely wouldn’t have been any less successful than the one in which he took the ball 22 times and gave up five earned runs every nine innings.
If this really were the final days of Spring Training, the Mets would have grabbed a minor leaguer from a back field to take Freddy’s Friday start. Instead, they checked that storage unit they maintain on College Point Blvd. to double-check that they had never gotten rid of Kodai Senga [2]. Senga hadn’t pitched in about two weeks. For a team that’s made a habit of shuttling fresh and used arms back and forth from the minors, ever conscious of overuse, it’s quite a feat for a presumably healthy pitcher to go completely unused for a discernible stretch of time. An unsightly ERA might have had something to do with it, but it’s not like giving up runs discouraged the Mets from repeatedly using Peralta.
So Senga was the self-inflicted emergency starter Friday night and he was, for four innings, the best version of himself, certainly a damn sight better than any version of the Freddy Peralta Mets Experience. Only one Miami baserunner, no Miami runs, impeccable efficiency. The Mets weren’t doing anything on offense versus Janson Junk, but that was OK. Who pays attention to the score when you’re just trying to get through these meaningless games ahead of Opening Day?
Oh, that’s right. This was July 31. The season’s been going on since March 26. Yet it was hard to remember that for the Mets this counted as much as any regular-season game counted. Because it’s July 31 and the trade deadline is August 3, everything about this team that exited contention prior to April 30 is provisional. We kind of know who’s going to be traded, but except for A.J. Minter [3], they haven’t been traded yet. Shouldn’t use Peralta. Probably done using Brooks Raley. Luke Weaver is in limbo. Tyrone Taylor was hot for a few days, so he’ll be gone, maybe. Luis Robert, if he stays in one piece, might be a piece that gets moved. Really, there’s more roster certainty in St. Lucie in the final days of camp most Marches.
Senga got hit a bit in the fifth, and the luck that had been pressed evaporated. Xzavion Curry [4] came on and didn’t budge, going five innings to finish out the 5-2 defeat accompli [5]. Good for Xzavier Curry, who wasn’t a Met when the day began. He, along with the sticky Jonathan Pintaro [6], replaced Minter and the injured Cionel Perez [7] in the bullpen. Pintaro is intermittently sent down but never seems to be gone. Perez was the bullpen’s answer to Jared Young for a couple of months, climbing from “hey, who’s that?” to “say, he’s not bad.” Sadly, Perez suffered a left forearm strain. Whatever plans the Mets had for him — higher-leverage innings or everybody-must-go inventory — had to be shelved.
Conceptually, the 2026 Mets fancied themselves buyers by the end of July. That was toward the end of March, when they had no idea they wouldn’t be one or two clever deadline deals from shaping a playoff-ready roster. The end of July has become the beginning of August. There will almost certainly be new players here soon. The story will remain the same. The Mets might win a game. The Mets might lose a game. The result will show up in the standings. There are Grapefruit League standings, too, but it rarely occurs to a sane person to look at them.