Spinning Wheel

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.