On July 12, 2015, a curious Met void was filled when Kirk Nieuwenhuis homered not once, not twice, but thrice at Citi Field, leading his team over the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks, 5-3, in the final game before the All-Star break. Until that Sunday afternoon, no Met had ever hit three home runs in a home game. Met sluggers had periodically gone deep in triplicate across the National League map, from St. Louis to Los Angeles (twice in L.A.), from Chicago to San Diego, from Houston to Philadelphia, and from Denver to Phoenix. Yet no such dice were rolled when it came to the two summers the Mets spent at the Polo Grounds, their 45-year Shea Stadium tenancy, nor the first six-and-a-half seasons getting used to Shea’s successor facility. It lingered as one of the “go figure” mysteries in franchise history, not as vexing as the lack of a no-hitter, but a little too weird just the same. All it was gonna take was three powerful swings from a Met who slept in his own bed the night before. We’d certainly had our share of sluggers capable of delivering three longballs in front of their adoring public.
Somehow, it fell to the epitome of a bit player to come through, come through again, and come through yet again. Nieuwenhuis entered the action of July 12 eleven years ago having come to the plate only 73 times. He had recorded a mere seven hits and no homers, and was so not a part of the 2015 Mets’ plans that they sold his contract to the Angels in late May. The Halos quickly grew Kirk-uncurious and put him on waivers. The Mets Recidivized him in mid-June, but he wasn’t hitting on either coast. That changed one glorious afternoon. A line that had been missing since 1962 was at last etched into the Met record book, courtesy of a certified .106 hitter.
Once Kirk broke the seal on three home runs by a Met in a Met home game, he established a precedent. Three other Mets since Nieuwenhuis — Lucas Duda later that same month; Robinson Cano in 2019; and Francisco Lindor in 2021 — have equaled the feat. But Kirk was and always will be the first. He hit only one more home run as a Met, but it was huge, a pinch-job off Jonathan Pabelbon in Washington in September, essential to the series sweep that all but clinched the Mets the division title. Soon after, Kirk and the 2015 Mets would sew up the NL pennant.
What a happy ending this utterly random Kirk Nieuwenhuis recollection has! Except this is 2026, and you know damn well there’s a seamy Met underbelly to any invocation of anything happy, so here it is:
Kirk Nieuwenhuis tips his hat for something we’d never seen before on a day the likes of which we haven’t seen since.
The Mets have not won the game before the All-Star break since Kirk Nieuwenhuis’s day in the sun. They haven’t won it at Citi Field and they haven’t won it on the road. They haven’t won it in seasons when they were legitimately pursuing a postseason berth and they haven’t won it in seasons that were competitively finished by July. They sure as hell haven’t won it when a rookie starter of theirs has thrown seven brilliant innings of shutout ball, then handed matters off to one of the most reliable eight-inning specialists they’ve ever employed, a reliever who continued to do his job customarily well. They definitely haven’t won it carrying a 2-0 lead into the ninth over an opponent that was about to have its eight-game winning streak snapped.
Sunday’s eventual outcome, in which that 2-0 advantage over the Red Sox transformed into a 3-2 ten-inning loss for the Mets, would vie for Worst Loss of the Season honors in any Met season. Had this been one of those seasons in which every game matters in the standings, it would constitute a crushing blow, all the worse because now the Mets and their fans would have multiple days to think about it. It having happened in a season when the standings no longer matter makes it a different kind of kick to the solar Metsus. We’re seventeen games under .500 instead of sixteen. We’re twelve games out of a Wild Card spot instead of incrementally less than a dozen.
It’s a kick, nonetheless, and not the kind of kick it was to watch Kirk Nieuwenhuis hit three home runs in one home game. I could scroll the 2026 schedule from March 26 on down and revisit this defeat’s grisly predecessors in a duly diligent effort to determine if this was truly the worst loss of the season, a season making its case as the worst of the current century. But my gut advised me, “Don’t bother looking for worse, you know what you just experienced,” so I’m going to take it on faith, at gut level, that this was, by far, the worst Met loss of 2026. That the Mets managed to manufacture it on the day before the All-Star break (the eleventh anniversary of The Kirk Nieuwenhuis Game, no less), and therefore ensure it would remain the most recent game in our collective memory until Thursday night, and extend the inexplicable Mets Always Lose The Last Game Before The All-Star Break Streak to ten years (excepting plagued 2020)…I was gonna say “go figure,” but, no, this was perversely appropriate.
Why would these Mets do anything to leave us with a positive impression?
Why wouldn’t these Mets cement their reputation as the kind of team that doesn’t just snatch defeat from the jaws of the victory, but applies for a patent on what they claim will be the most effective defeat-snatcher available on the open market?
Why, after 97 games encompassing 57 losses, did this one seem so much worse than however many of the previous 56 I would have sworn were unmatchable for pits and depths?
Zach Thornton is the main answer to the last question. Zach Thornton made his third major league start of the year on Sunday. His first, in May, was understandably shaky. His second, in June, surpassed solid. I no longer recall the reasoning for why the interregnum between his second and third needed to last sixteen days, nor why Thornton was dispatched to the minors. I know it wasn’t because the Met staff overflows with capable starting pitchers. The young lefty’s very good start on June 26 should have earned him a spot in what we’ll loosely term the Met rotation. His transcendent start on July 11 practically qualifies him as our ace.
For six-and-two-thirds innings, Thornton’s slate was all but spotless. A walk in the second. A double in the fifth. A single in the sixth. Each inconsequential. Zach was in command. He was about to finish the seventh utterly unscathed when, with two out, a simple foul pop lofted by Andruw Monasterio, bounced out of Eric Wagaman’s mitt, a strike ruled an error for extending the time at bat. Wagaman was playing first base. Most days it’s Jared Young. For a while it was Mark Vientos. Brett Baty took a few turns there some time ago. Jorge Polanco was the Opening Day starter. It used to be you knew who was playing first for the Mets each game, but I digress. Foul pops get dropped on occasion. It’s a fact of first base life. Thornton signaled to Wagaman that it was no big deal.
But Thornton wound up walking Monasterio on a full count, and it crossed my mind that in a game between the Mets and Red Sox, an E-3 isn’t a good sign for the team whose first baseman commits it. Then Jarren Duran grounded out to end the inning, and I decided, like Zach a moment earlier, that it was no biggie. Still, Thornton’s heretofore minuscule pitch count had risen to 82. It had been so low before the extra pitches required to finish out the seventh that I thought maybe the kid would get the eighth and (heaven forefend!) the ninth. How many shutouts do Met starters steer through seven with an indisputably manageable pitch count?
No, Zach was to be done after seven, but the lead was still 2-0, and it was in good hands for the eighth with Luke Weaver coming on. My gosh, Luke Weaver has been good for months on end. Why he is confined to a setup role isn’t exactly a mystery along the lines of No Met Homering Three Times at Home for 53½ years — a closer is under contract — but it feels like we are limiting what we can get out of a genuine resource. We probably won’t be doing that come the trade deadline, but for now, Weaver is a Met reliever, and Weaver the Met reliever set aside the Red Sox in order in the eighth.
Which brings us to the ninth, the inning that was going to end both the Red Sox’ winning streak and the Mets’ game-before-the-break losing streak, plus confer upon Zach Thornton his first major league win. All we needed was for the closer who’s under contract to close.
The first thing Devin Williams does upon entering is give up a leadoff single to Ceddanne Rafaela. It doesn’t have to be a harbinger of what’s to come, not after Wilyer Abreu pops up to Zack Short at second. Romy Gonzalez is the next batter and it takes only one pitch from Williams to effect a ground ball to shortstop, as 6-4-3 a double play in the making as you’ve ever seen.
The 2-0 lead Williams was protecting was built on the bat of one Met, Francisco Lindor. It was Lindor who doubled home A.J. Ewing in the first inning. The double was of the booming variety, off the base of the left field wall. Through four-and-a-half, it remained Mets 1 Red Sox 0, raising my hopes that Thornton was en route to authoring a 1-0 shutout. The Mets haven’t won a 1-0 game behind any pitcher(s) in going on two years. What a story that it would be the rookie to blank the opposition, and what a sidebar it would be that the lately fallen-idol shortstop, the Met for whom the captaincy was widely clamored in the wake of his MVP-caliber season in 2024, provided the one run. But then, in the bottom of the fifth, Francisco did himself one better and twice as good as a double with a fly ball onto the Fiesta Deck, slugged oppo-style. An RBI from each side of the plate for the switch-hitter who hadn’t been hitting much in any configuration since returning from the injured list.
At that moment, I wished to change Francisco Lindor’s walkup music from “My Girl” to “The Bitch is Back”. Lindor’s impact on the Mets winning, 2-0, was so profound I hadn’t even noticed that his teammates on the offensive side of the ball had come together to contribute next to nothing to the Met cause. But we were gonna do this thing, anyway, because Francisco drove in that first run with a double, and that second run with a homer, and the pitching of Zach and Luke had stifled all opposition. And now, with one out in the ninth and one on, there was a grounder headed right to the co-star of the game, the kind of ball Lindor has looked into his glove thousands of times. He’d grab it, toss it to second for the second out, it would be zipped to first for the third out (where surehanded Young had taken over for whoopsie Wagaman), and we would at least derive from the 97-game first half of 2026 one warm and sunny win to tide us over for a few Metless nights. It wouldn’t change the standings, but it would be something to smile about as we counted down the nearly 100 hours remaining until the next time the Mets played.
Except, as noted, this is 2026. Lindor could not pick the ball cleanly. He could not pick the ball at all. There is no double play. There is no single play. There are runners at first and second. There is still only one out. Williams will continue to go about his save opportunity.
He will go to a full count and walk the next batter, Caleb Durbin, to load the bases.
He will go to another full count and walk the batter after that, Monasterio, to force in the Red Sox’ first run.
He will tease a short fly ball to right from Duran. The Met infield is playing in. The Met outfield isn’t. Carson Benge will race and will dive and he will not catch the ball. It falls in. The Red Sox’ second run scores.
We are tied at two. Zach Thornton will not collect his first major league win. Francisco Lindor will not be asked first and foremost about his fine day at the plate. Whether Devin Williams will be charged with a loss in addition to a blown save remains to be seen. He won’t be, as he induces Masataka Yoshida to line into a 4-6 DP. The Mets bat in the bottom of the ninth in an effort to get Williams one of the most vultured wins fathomable. They don’t, and the game that had flown along until Wagaman dropped that foul pop, and was well in hand until Lindor bobbled that grounder, will trudge into extras.
The Red Sox take advantage of their free runner by bunting him ASAP to third. It’s the wrong play for this analytical age, yet it’s the right play Sunday. A sac fly sends him home and the Red Sox take a 3-2 lead off Brooks Raley. In the bottom of the tenth, the Mets go by the New Age book. Instead of trying to move their free runner, speedy Tyrone Taylor, to third by letting scheduled hitter Luis Torrens bunt him over (something Luis can do, because Luis can do what is needed when it is most needed), the interim manager sends up Jorge Polanco to swing for the fences. Polanco, whose biggest swing since recovering from injury enough to be activated produced a foul home run the other night, swings and misses. There is one out and Taylor remains on second. Baty comes up and produces the sac fly that would have scored a runner from third, except the Mets have no runner on third. The last Met chance is in the hands of pinch-hitter Bo Bichette. Bichette hasn’t been totally healthy. He also hasn’t been as ineffectual as he’d been early in the season, when the tone for this ballclub was being set. Quietly, Bichette’s put together a robust last six weeks, slashing .331/.354/.515 since June 3.
Quietly, Bichette grounds to second for the final out of the worst Met loss of this dreadful Met season. We should be used to this crumminess, but I have to admit this crumb struck me as more rancid than all the others. It could have been so much better. It had been so much better. Then it got as bad as one would have hoped against. I was gonna say “as bad as you could imagine,” but we’re Mets fans in 2026, and our imagination for bad baseball contains no ceiling. Or floor.
I’ve long chafed at calling the portion of the season that precedes the All-Star break “the first half,” because the season is 162 games long and the Mets generally play more than 81 games prior to the break. I’d prefer to refer to what we just witnessed as the final number of the season’s first act. After all, the second acts of musicals tend to be shorter than the first acts. With the curtain coming down Sunday on the first act of the 2026 Mets, we have mercifully reached intermission. Go out to the lobby, get yourself refreshed, and when the lights are dimmed, come back in for…
Hey! Where ya going? The 2026 Mets’ show is not over yet! Technically, I mean.
