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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 Jason Fry on 10 May 2025 10:06 am Hey Mets fans? Which National League teams do you hate?
The most common answer is that we hate — in the operatic sports pantomime sense of the word, you understand — the Braves and the Phillies. This is the way of the world, as those two teams are our principal antagonists in the National League East. But it’s never really resonated with me.
The Phillies are an interesting case — we’ve shared a division with them since 1969, but it’s only relatively recently that both teams have been good enough at the same time for any friction to be generated. That’s a historical quirk on which both Mets and Phillies fans can weigh in, with befuddlement on both sides; for me the Braves are of more note.
To be sure: I am not a fan of the Braves. Last year’s end-of-season showdown with them is one of the great cathartic moments of Met history, an exorcism of innumerable terrors. And it doesn’t take much to get me muttering about Chipper and Bobby Cox, or about John Rocker and T@m Fucking Gl@v!ne.
But these are adult dramas; when I was a kid the Braves were in the NL West, which never made any sense but was how baseball geography worked. Most of the time they were over there doing what they did, and you wanted to beat them when you had to (as the Mets did in the first-ever NLCS) but normally they were a problem for the Giants and/or Dodgers to solve. Hate the Braves? Whatever for?
As a kid I hated the Cardinals and the Cubs, most particularly the latter. I’d grown up on a steady diet of anti-Cubs lore: Leo the Lip, Ron Santo‘s heel-clicking, the black cat. And when I returned to the fold of Mets fandom, it was just in time to see the Cubs of Gary Matthews and Jody Davis and Rick Sutcliffe throw the ’84 Mets down off the mountain they’d not quite finished climbing.
Hating the Cubs, if you were a Mets fan, was as natural as breathing — even if newer generations of Met fans understandably found it a little odd. Weren’t they a problem for the Cardinals and/or Brewers to solve? Hate the Cubs? Whatever for?
These days, in truth, those fires are a little banked. The Mets, one may recall, beat the Cubs as badly in the 2015 NLCS as one baseball team can beat another one: The Cubs never so much as led in a single inning. (It turned out OK for them a year later.) These days you can depend on at least one wind’s-blowing-out donnybrook at Wrigley a summer and an influx of Cubs fans to Citi Field that puts your teeth on edge, but those are mere embers of a once-burning rivalry.
Still, embers can rekindle with just a little puff of breath. The Cubs marched into Citi Field (wearing impeccable road unis, by the way) Friday night to meet the Mets and a big, raucous crowd, with conditions chilly and blustery in a way that almost felt like October, and I felt something atavistic stirring in my Mets-fan soul: Warning! Danger! Intruders!
Which the Mets seemed to sense too. After Clay Holmes put down the Cubs 1-2-3, Lindor sent an 0-2 pitch from Jameson Taillon — the same Jameson Taillon the Mets never seem to square up — out to Carbonation Ridge, sending fans who’d just finished crooning “My Girl” into a renewed frenzy. (We’ll save further thoughts about Lindor and his music for another day.)
It was a welcome opening blow; pretty soon the rout was on. Brett Baty homered. So did Jeff McNeil, whom I realize is almost unrecognizable in those rare moments nothing displeases him and he can just smile. Next came Juan Soto, who annihilated a baseball so thoroughly that patrons out in the distant Citi Pavillon reached up quizzically as little squiggles of yarn and scraps of cowhide fluttered down from the heavens.
Meanwhile, Holmes looked as good as he has in a Mets uniform, muscling the Cubs aside with the exception of Kyle Tucker‘s solo shot. And some of the Cubs’ wounds were self-inflicted: Normally sure-handed Dansby Swanson gifted the Mets two runs by rushing the back end of a double play when he had time to set himself for the throw.
There was a bit of drama in the eighth, but it was all internal Mets stuff: After a debacle-ous debut in the desert, Dedniel Nunez was sent back out to not blow a five-run lead. Nunez started out well, fanning Swanson on three strikes and so reducing his season ERA below infinity. But he walked the next two Cubs and you could see his confidence ebb, and here came Tucker to the plate to try and make the game interesting when what we wanted was 15 minutes of boredom followed by overnight contentment.
Nunez’s control kept flickering on and off against Tucker, who couldn’t square him up (possibly because he had no idea where the ball was headed) but also wouldn’t go away. Until he fouled a slider straight up behind home plate. Deliverance! Francisco Alvarez made a little circle as the winds pushed the ball this way and that above his head, but you felt the fluttering in your stomach even before the ball ticked off Alvarez’s mitt to give Tucker new life.
This was remarkable cruelty even in a sport that specializes in it. But baseball is also very good at false hope: Nunez threw his best slider of the inning, one that Tucker swung through, after which Carlos Mendoza wisely went out to remove Nunez on a high note in favor of Reed Garrett. The Cub threat came to naught and a few minutes later the Mets had won.
If you’re a Cubs fan, you walked away muttering about plays not quite made by a normally capable defensive team, or about how in the world 12 of the Mets’ 13 hits came with two strikes. (The lone exception: McNeil’s first-pitch homer.) Most likely that was just the usual baseball being baseball zaniness that gets visited on some team every night … or maybe there’s something more to it.
 Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. You probably know by now that Leo XIV, nee the Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost, is not only the first American-born pope but also a baseball fan. The Cubs greeted this news with a gesture made perhaps in jest but perhaps in blithe assumption, the kind of thing that older brother teams in shared cities tend to do.
Not so fast Cubs: Even before Internet sleuths found the future pope in the crowd during Fox’s broadcast of the 2005 World Series, clad in classic White Sox regalia, his brother John had put the question of his Chicago fandom to definitive rest: “He was never, ever a Cubs fan. So I don’t know where that came from. He was always a Sox fan.”
If you’re a baseball fan, you get the significance of that added “ever” — it’s shorthand for no way in … well, yeah.
So Leo XIV is most likely the first pontiff able to wax enthusiastic about Scott Podsednik and explain in non-generalizations that yes, Jesus loves A.J. Pierzynski too. I’m not Catholic and in fact not religious at all, but I find this thoroughly unexpected development thoroughly delightful. And hey, right now the White Sox can use as many friends in high places as they could get. (Should he attend another World Series, Leo XIV will probably be easier to spot on TV.)
As for the Cubs, well, I don’t remember anything in the Bible about laying false claim to the allegiance of God’s representative on Earth, but it still doesn’t seem like a good idea. A certain number of Hail Marys might be advisable; I’m no theologian, but maybe one for each enemy two-strike hit would be a start.
by Greg Prince on 8 May 2025 11:07 am On Jay Horwitz’s Amazin’ Conversations podcast this week, Jay reminisces with the SNY booth trio in this, their twentieth year on the mic. The host eventually retells the story of how he first met future color analyst Keith Hernandez…or attempted to meet him.
JAY: In June of ’83, Frank Cashen calls me. “Jay, we traded for an All-Star and MVP, but he hates New York. What are you gonna do?” I said, “Frank, I’m gonna go to Montreal airport, pick him up in the biggest white limo we can, and I’ll soften him.” So I go to the wrong gate.
KEITH: Yes, you did.
JAY: I went to the wrong gate.
KEITH: I went to baggage claim.
JAY: No Jay, no limo.
KEITH: Crickets. So I got a cab.
Moral: when somebody fails to pick you up, it stays with you.
Conversely, whether it’s someone you work with, someone you live with, or someone you hired, little in life is as satisfying as seeing someone come into view to make like Keith Hernandez in the clutch and pick you up. Watching from a nearly transcontinental distance, I know I got very excited to see several different Mets standing in what is known as scoring position get picked up in Phoenix over the course of Wednesday afternoon. For all the Mets had been doing right most of this still young season, it felt like that relatively simple task was going unfulfilled for too long, at least on this road trip.
But in the late innings of the Mets’ Chase Field finale, the picking up commenced in earnest.
Luis Torrens is standing on third in the seventh — Luisangel Acuña picks him up with a single!
Acuña is standing on second in the seventh — Jeff McNeil picks him up with a triple!
Jose Azocar is standing on second in the ninth — Francisco Lindor picks him up with a double and brings Tyrone Taylor, who’d been on first base, along for the ride! Of course he does, because Francisco is always doing something extra.
Lindor then finds his way to third — and he gets picked up by a Juan Soto sacrifice fly!
 No need to get fancy when a base hit or sac fly will do. Soto had already given lifts to a pair of pitches for solo homers, so when you add together all the pulling up to the curb, opening of doors, and dropping off at the plate, you had seven Met runs, a total easily outdistancing the one the Diamondbacks managed. Snappy Met defense (featuring Torrens firing a bullet to Lindor to cut down a thieving Corbin Carroll in the first; and Taylor, Lindor, and Torrens combining on a seamless 8-6-2 putout of Eugenio Suarez in the second) compensated for some Kodai Senga wildness, en route to the ol’ Ghost Forker straightening himself out to transport six scoreless innings. Toss in three frames from the Effective Relief Committee (Members Kranick, Brazoban & Stanek presiding), and you had a six-run win and a happy flight east.
You also had the all-important tying of the now-concluded season series between the Mets and D’Backs. Three for them, three for us. This is all-important in case a playoff berth comes down to these two clubs holding identical records. Actually, there is no telling whether that’s going to be all-important this year, but it turned out to be all-important last year. Last year was last year, but these things live on in your consciousness until something more relevant replaces them. By late September, not having conceded a tiebreaking edge to this one given opponent will likely have receded to the back of our collective statistical mind. Maybe we’ll be far beyond the need to break a tie with anybody. Or we’ll be entangled with some less Snaky rival. Or — though I don’t believe this will be the case, as long as we continue to drive in runs that are begging to be driven in — the postseason for others in the highly competitive National League will be the offseason for us. Shudder at that last possibility.
At the moment, winning the last game against Arizona and splitting six overall with them is as much a pick-me-up as any RBI of an RISP.
by Jason Fry on 7 May 2025 8:09 am 9:40 pm starts are to be regarded with suspicion even when the baseball they produce goes well — surely one could be doing something more worthwhile with one’s time, starting with sleeping.
And when the baseball produced goes badly, as it did Tuesday night? Then one feels like the guy from the old gambler’s adage, looking around the table wondering who the sucker is.
The Mets played butterfingered, uninspiring baseball against the Diamondbacks, with Mark Vientos, Francisco Alvarez and Tyrone Taylor (of all people) undermining David Peterson with misplays and Zac Gallen throttling the hitters for the second time inside a week — the Mets scored their lone run on a bases-loaded walk against Gallen, failing to do further damage when Starling Marte was punched out on three pitches in a depressingly futile AB.
Perhaps the best news was what didn’t happen: Brandon Nimmo came up favoring his knee in the fourth inning and talked Carlos Mendoza into letting him stay out there, though Nimmo looked like less than himself the rest of the way. The same could be said of the rest of his teammates; look back to the D.C. series and the Mets are officially scuffling, with their ledger featuring a split and two dropped series with an afternoon rubber game ahead.
Maybe scuffling was to be expected, given the tough stretch of calendar; the Mets haven’t had an off-day since April 24 and have been ground up by injuries, travel and what may be no more than the usual statistical bumps and bruises of what we’re constantly reminded is a long season. Come to think of it, early May is usually about the time that particular lesson smacks us in the collective face. It’s a long season; few things bring that home more than a dishwater drab game in which you realize, too late, that none of the other people at the table is the sucker. Maybe I should have gone to bed, you think as your money vanishes into other people’s pockets, never to be seen again.
by Greg Prince on 6 May 2025 2:00 pm Thanks, Gare. Like you said, it’s midnight in Manhattan, and this is no time to get cute, yet as we know, every first Monday night of May marks the return of the Met Gala to Manhattan, and whenever the Mets are playing at midnight Eastern Time on that same night, the game is stopped, wherever it’s taking place, in this case Arizona, and the Mets stage their own red carpet walk. Here at Chase Field, it’s more of a Sedona Red carpet, with accents of teal and purple, a nod to former Met skipper Buck Showalter’s influence on the founding of the Diamondbacks franchise in the late ’90s.
And I have to say, Gary and Keith, that after dressing as a Viking when we were in Minnesota, and then visiting the Continent, as we sophisticates call it, during my week off, I have a new appreciation for fashion and am delighted you guys are giving me a chance to show it off.
The theme of this year’s Mobile Met Gala is Stealth Diego, a title chosen to reflect that although the Mets are playing this game in Phoenix, technically the Mountain Time Zone, it might as well be a late night in California. That’s certainly how some of our more sleepy SNY viewers are processing it. For them, it might as well be the 1954 Broadway musical, The Pajama Game, itself a show with something of a fashion motif.
First to stroll by on the carpet is current Met manager Carlos Mendoza, wearing a fresh take on the classic parochial school uniform, very much accenting plaids. This is Mendy’s nod to Mary Katherine Gallagher, the Molly Shannon “superstar!” character. The connection, we’re told, is Mendy’s recurring dugout pose with his arms folded ever tighter, his thumbs burrowing into his armpits. Mary Katherine, you’ll recall, had a bit with her thumbs as well, but I don’t think Carlos is going to do any sniffing, unless it’s of victory.
Next up, Pete Alonso, and Pete’s not surprising anybody with his white tails and top hat, very much the Polar Bear, an enormous animal with enormous statistics, enhanced most recently by what could be called a two-run “moonshot” in the fourth inning had the roof of Chase Field been open. Either way, Pete’s blast, like his tuxedo, was clearly puttin’ on the ritz.
Coming along behind Pete, in blood red, is Griffin Canning, making an ironic comment on how many Mets fans viewed Griffin as a “tomato can” to be knocked around, yet, as we see, guys, he’s the one who’s been canning batters’ hopes all year. That includes five-plus innings of one-run ball in the desert tonight.
Sporting bristle-yellow, it’s Huascar Brazoban. The idea here, guys, is Huascar whisks away potential threats when he comes into a game, and sure enough, the Mets’ most dependable middle reliever thus far this season has done it again in this game with two scoreless innings of shutdown bullpen work.
Will you look at who’s entering the scene for the first time in a year? It’s Dedniel Nuñez, about whom everything was sharp the last time we remember seeing him. The accessory that really catches your eye, Gary and Keith, is Dedniel’s walking stick. Unfortunately, Nuñez, in his first outing of 2025, seems to like his walking stick a bit too much, which we noticed in the eighth inning when he walked three consecutive Diamondbacks on full counts to load the bases. Not as sharp as Dedniel wanted to appear tonight.
You know, none of this haute couture — and you know I’m pronouncing it correctly, because I recently visited Europe — would be possible without the dedicated behind-the-scenes personnel who put it all together, the fashion world’s equivalent of our camera operators and the folks manning director John DeMarsico’s truck. Here, a vested Tyrone Taylor shows his respect, of course, for the tailors of the business, as he weaves a fantastic play in center field to keep a Diamondback rally in check. Tyrone grabs a ball off the wall, gets it back into the infield, and limits the damage, much as any skilled craftsman with a needle and thread would after a rollicking night on the town. Three runs in all score in the Arizona eighth off Nuñez and Reed Garrett, but it could have been much worse. It looked as if the sky was gonna fall in on the Mets there, but thank heaven for Tyrone Taylor…and the roof being closed.
Oh, this is an interesting fabric being put through its paces by Met closer Edwin Diaz, extra absorbent for the unnecessary angst he brings to virtually every outing. Keeping with the theme, Edwin allows the first runner he faces to reach base — it’s scored an E3, but Edwin didn’t exactly cover the bag in glory — and that runner, as almost all runners Edwin puts on do, takes off for second shortly thereafter.
This version of the Met Gala has the imprint of a corporate sponsor this year, Pillsbury, which we see as Francisco Alvarez pays homage to the Pillsbury Doughboy in an all-white outfit topped with chef’s hat. Francisco told me before the game he was going to wear it so any baserunners tempted to steal would be intimidated by his excellent “pop time,” and sure enough, Alvarez was up with a throw as soon as Diaz’s first runner took off in the ninth. I’d say Pillsbury got its money’s worth, as the image the catcher presents is certainly “Poppin’ Fresh”.
Style is no stranger to the area around second base when Francisco Lindor moves over from shortstop to take a throw from either Alvarez or Luis Torrens. Tonight, guys, Lindor makes an incredible grab of his fellow Francisco’s throw and burnishes it with an improbable tag to record the first out of the ninth inning. MLB is so impressed, they’re gonna look at it again in Manhattan after midnight, and, yup, it’s definitely an out. Appropriate that Lindor’s outfit includes a cape, as he is, per usual, a superhero for these Mets. He put the Mets well ahead in the seventh with a three-run homer, and now he has saved them in a nick of time with very fancy defense in the ninth. Diaz fomenting unnecessary angst and Mendoza’s tight embrace of his own upper torso are no match for the super and superb skills of Lindor, a player who always models excellence on the baseball diamond.
Guys, some of what could go wrong did go wrong here at Chase Field tonight, but this Met game indeed turned into a Met Gala all its own, with the Mets topping the Diamondbacks, 5-4, in this, the franchise’s 10,000th regular-season contest played to a decision. The Mets’ all-time record is now 4,839 wins and 5,161 losses, along with eight ties, the last of them coming in 1981.
Hopefully our viewers back home thought this milestone game and accompanying fashion show was worth staying awake through on a late Monday night turned Tuesday morning. Back to you, Gare.
by Jason Fry on 5 May 2025 1:15 am We’ve all heard Keith Hernandez say it, that common word that a California accent (or maybe it’s just Keith being Keith) strips of one familiar consonant. And Lord knows we felt it on a long Sunday that wound up for naught.
The Mets took walks. and the Mets pounded balls all over Busch Stadium against a Cardinals team they’d manhandled to the tune of nine straight wins. But not Sunday — nope, on Sunday they wound up a run in arrears in the afternoon, and then again in the evening.
The first game was more interesting than the second, as it brought the at least moderately heralded debut of Blade Tidwell, who looks about nine years old, with a funny way of repositioning his feet on the rubber that makes it look like he’s sliding sideways along a track built into the mound, like one of those hockey players in an old 70s tabletop game.
Tidwell’s final line was ugly, but I thought he actually pitched pretty well: He was a mess in the first, with his fastball elevated and no location on his offspeed pitches, but that’s to be expected. After that he was better, but undone by dinks and dunks over the infield, and a couple of pitches he put more or less where he wanted them in crisis situations, only to have the Cardinals convert them. Meanwhile, Erick Fedde walked five and got hit hard, but wound up only a little damp while Tidwell got drenched.
The Mets mounted a furious comeback in the eighth against old pal Phil Maton and JoJo Romero, and loaded the bases with one out and Pete Alonso coming up. Alonso put together yet another terrific AB, and on 3-2 Romero threw Pete a slider low and away, the kind of pitch that’s sent the Polar Bear crashing through the ice in previous seasons. This time Alonso spat on it, which was good; unfortunately it caught the tiniest sliver of the plate for strike three, which was bad.
The ninth was even more horrifying: Against Ryan Helsley the Mets got a leadoff single but then saw Luis Torrens miss a hanger, Jeff McNeil hit a bolt of a line drive directly at the right fielder, and Luisangel Acuna pop out to end the game.
Buzzard’s luck, and then we all got two hours to fume about it before watching the second game, which in the early going was like watching two drunks wail away at each other in a roadhouse parking lot. Neither Tylor Megill nor Andre Pallante was any good, leaving the game tied 4-4 after three. Then the Cardinals called on Michael McGreevy, who was wonderful in his season debut, cooling down the Met offense.
That offense ran hot but also hideously inefficient: The Mets left 10 on base and once again kept rocketing balls right at people, with Juan Soto particularly unlucky in this regard. Though not quite as unlucky as the little girl in a front-row seat who wound up flattened by Nolan Arenado through the netting on a great catch in the eighth against Soto. In the aftermath Arenado looked horrified while the girl looked cosmically nonplussed, as you might if a large baseball player suddenly came out of the sky to Panini-press you into your seat. Fortunately all involved were OK, with the exception of Soto’s BABIP.
It was that kind of day. The Mets lost, then lost again, and looked supremely frustrating in doing so. Or, sorry, make that fustrating.
by Greg Prince on 3 May 2025 11:28 am Darryl Strawberry hit 335 homers as a major leaguer. The vast majority of his first 252 flew over the moon. Not coincidentally, I was over the moon for all of them, because a) all 252 deposited runs into the account of the New York Mets; and b) Darryl Strawberry was Darryl Strawberry.
YEAH! HIS FIRST!
YEAH! HIS FIRST AT HOME!
YEAH! HE’S REALLY GETTING GOING NOW!
YEAH! HE’S ON HIS WAY TO WHAT THEY SAID HE’D BE!
And so on and so forth and so gloriously off clocks and roofs and scoreboards and everything else a dinger could ding for eight seasons. Those 252 home runs were essential elements of what a Mets fan lived for between 1983 and 1990.
Darryl Strawberry’s next 83 home runs rarely rose above the level of peripheral concern to this viewer.
Glad he’s having a nice season, I guess.
Good to see him back in the game after what he’s been through.
Three-hundred for his career — hey, that’s something.
Oh look, they began to raise the Apple for him, the only remotely charming thing about his team borrowing our stadium on an afternoon when theirs is crumbling.
For as long as he was becoming and remaining the greatest home run hitter in New York Mets history, Darryl Strawberry connecting his bat to a ball, and that ball traveling far, was cause for at least a little reaction. The first 252 such episodes drew the heartiest cheers. The next 83 incidences, from slugging that transpired between 1991 and 1999 in uniforms that meant nothing or worse in our estimation, elicited a slight smile now and then; a handful of golf claps; and a low hum of regret. Darryl — whose post-playing path surely rates sincerest applause — should have kept connecting as a New York Met, without interruption, and the homers should have flown only for us.
If you heard Pete Alonso hit a big home run Friday night, you didn’t have to wonder for whom he hit it before measuring your response accordingly. It was the 234th of Pete’s big league career. Every one has been hit as a Met. You could just cheer as you had on 233 prior occasions.
YEAH! PETE!
At some point this season, as long as his health and ability hold out, Pete will hit his 253rd, all as a Met, making him the greatest home run hitter in New York Mets history. David Wright stalling out at 242 is a reminder we should always knock wood for health. Ability, certainly in the short term, doesn’t seem to be an issue. Pete was so good coming out of the gate this season that he was named National League Player of the Month for April, which wasn’t just about home runs, but he did belt seven of them amid slashing at a rate that elevated his OPS well into four digits. He put down a marker for May kudos with his eighth long ball of the year on Friday night, blasted in St. Louis, the same town where Darryl once did his best to stop time. Straw struck the old Busch Stadium’s scoreboard clock down the stretch in 1985 to win us a crucial pennant race game. Pete didn’t have to do anything quite so anti-temporal in this Mets-Cards contest. Why would he? He’s having the time of his life right now and so are we.
 About to shout “YEAH!” for the 234th time. Pete put us ahead in the fifth inning at the current Busch Stadium. Juan Soto had doubled (itself a leading indicator that more than one Met might enjoy this forthcoming month), and Pete followed up by taking Sonny Gray over the center field wall. What was a 3-2 Cardinals lead was now a 4-3 Mets edge. Things had see-sawed through the game’s first half. They had led, 1-0. We were up, 2-1. They had pulled ahead, 3-2. With Pete’s swing, the Mets all but announced the teeter-totter was closed for the evening.
The visitors kept coming as the fifth progressed, helped along immeasurably by Cards first baseman Willson Contreras dropping a surefire inning-ending double play relay. Their mistake, but our creating conditions for one that might do them in. Because we had runners on first and third after Alonso homered, the non-DP grounder made it 5-3. Because the hitting continued via the second chance Contreras graciously provided, the Met lead grew to 6-3 before the fifth ended. Eventually, the Mets padded their advantage to a final of 9-3. The last New York run, in the top of the ninth, was delivered on a Luisangel Acuña sac fly. If you like awards bestowed for season segments, Acuña was named National League Rookie of the Month for April. Pete collected a few of those honors when he was a pup.
The Polar Bear is fully grown and still a Met. He’s grown enough so that his game is no longer literal boom or veritable bust, and he’s been a Met long enough to near Darryl Strawberry at the top of a chart where our first truly transcendent homegrown slugger has resided for more than half of the franchise’s lifetime. The list as of this moment reads Strawberry 252; Wright 242; Alonso 234 and counting. The National League’s reigning Player of the Month is No. 3 with a speeding bullet. The satisfaction attached to watching him move up feels unsurpassed.
by Greg Prince on 2 May 2025 1:06 am I and presumably you root for a team that either wins every game or comes very close to winning every game. In 2025, which is now almost exactly one-fifth over in terms of regular-season baseball, the Mets have played 32 games; outscored their opponents in 21 of them; lost by exactly one run in five of them; and came up short by two runs in four of them, including their most recent contest. Mathdoers will confirm that leaves only two games they’ve been what you’d call out of it to date. One was a three-run loss, the other a five-run loss.
No fan ever calculates all the wins his/her/their team shouldn’t have wound up with, but we do allow ourselves the fantasy of obtaining every game that got away. When we do that, the Mets are a conceivable 29-2 thus far in 2025. Anything’s conceivable, I suppose, so why not the bestest-case scenario? We’re indulging in fantasy here. Every scenario is reviewable.
Going down, 4-2, to the Diamondbacks in Thursday’s frustrating series finale qualifies as another coulda/woulda, yet it was also the closest thing we’ve “suffered” to a blowout loss in more than two weeks. Dating back to our final game in Minnesota, we could have — I mean really could have — been on a fourteen-game winning streak to end April. That last Twins game, way back in the middle of the month, came oh-so-close to victory. So did the two losses in Washington. So did Wednesday night’s at home to Arizona. There, four losses by one run apiece to go with the ten wins by however many runs. The wins felt like destiny. The losses felt like mistakes. By Tuesday night, when the Snakes were properly tamed by timely hitting, awesome defense, and as much pitching as was necessary, all the postgame questions for the manager and his players were variations on “isn’t this great?”
Yes. It is great.
The games that don’t conclude with actual wins? Less great. Thursday’s edged close to triumph, but not close enough. Juan Soto hit two home runs, itself a victory, given that Juan hadn’t homered at Citi Field since becoming a Met. His blasts would have been more of a blast had anybody been on base for them or if he had been joined in slugging by any of his teammates. The Mets weren’t much for rallies all afternoon, and none among Kodai Senga, Genesis Cabrera, Max Kranick and Reed Garrett was at his absolute stingiest. Cabrera, a lefty, is here because neither A.J. Minter nor Danny Young is any longer available. Genesis joined Ty Adcock in supplementing a staff that is running a lot of reliever roulette of late. Brandon Waddell and Chris Devenski are already back at Syracuse. Jose Ureña is a free agent.
Wait, these sound like challenges or difficulties or, heaven forefend, problems. Even first-place ballclubs are entitled to sing the blues as applicable. We are the NL East-leading, ten-above-.500 New York Mets, yet we are dealing with injuries, bullpen overuse, starting pitching that doesn’t go particularly long, a spotty offense in clutch situations, and, worst when ranking sins, not winning them all. This season has reminded me that when you’re close to winning them all, your craw gets stuck with the residue of not actually doing that. Before coming up two runs shy on Thursday, we were on a conceivable fourteen-game winning streak. I’m trying to decide whether a rather lifeless loss was simply due or whether it would have been transformed into a 5-4 win just by sheer Met momentum had we been playing for fifteen straight Ws.
In a season whose results have bordered on fantasy, it could have happened. In a season tethered to reality, I think we’re gonna be all right, challenges and difficulties and problems notwithstanding. We’re just not gonna win ’em all or necessarily come achingly close every single day.
by Jason Fry on 1 May 2025 12:33 am As a coping mechanism, I sometimes imagine there’s a series of Anti-Mets Classics — games so variously painful, frustrating and provoking that you’d only watch them again if forced to. In a CIA black site, perhaps. Or maybe in actual Hell.
That’s actually not an unconvincing vision of the afterlife for those of us who won’t gain admission to somewhere better: You find yourself in a drab third-rate hotel, eat a half-heartedly made room-service burger and turn on the TV because there doesn’t seem to be anything better to do. Suddenly things are looking up, because you’ve found Mets Classics! Only as the game unfolds, something starts to nag at you. Something feels … off. And then you realize what it is.
Wait a minute. This is that fucking game against the Diamondbacks, the one from the last day of April in 2025!
Suddenly it all becomes clear. This is Hell, and Anti-Mets Classics are the only Mets games one can watch here. And it will be this way for eternity.
To be fair, Wednesday night’s game was frustrating even before the bottom of the ninth, when everything fizzled against Ryan Thompson (no not that one) and the Mets wound up a run in arrears. Corbin Burnes looked like he was on the ropes in the first but somehow wiggled free. Ryne Stanek faltered again and gave up the lead that had been lovingly tended by emergency bulk guy Brandon Waddell, though fairness compels your chronicler to venture that Stanek was mostly unlucky, done in by a broken-bat hit and a little parachute Jeff McNeil had no way of reaching. (Speaking of unlucky, five of the Mets’ 10 losses have been by one run, including their last four.)
The Mets kept squandering chances big and small: Juan Soto got just under two balls, eliciting Citi Field cries of delight that turned into consternation as trajectories were assessed and found wanting. Carlos Mendoza made the odd decision to send Brandon Nimmo up to pinch-hit for Luisangel Acuna despite Nimmo looking like a shell of himself both at bat and in the field. After starting off with a couple of good ABs in DC, Francisco Alvarez‘s swing looks gigantic again. And in an dizzying couple of days the Mets have gone from feeling lucky to have two capable lefties in A.J. Minter and Danny Young to the possibility that both of them have been lost for the season. (I did a double take when Chris Devenski appeared on the mound, having no idea that something had befallen Young. I believe my exact words were, “Uh-oh, why are you here?”)
The pleasures of the game? Well, let’s see. We got our first sight of 82 worn by a Met in a regular-season game, though I’d prefer that guys making a regular-season roster wear real numbers — act like they should keep you. (Waddell aced that test otherwise, though.)
I also found myself in the best crowd I’d seen in some time — sure, their attention wandered during the long slog of the middle innings, but they locked in for the final frames, cheering madly for each good turn of Met fortune and groaning theatrically when things kept coming to naught. Plenty of today’s crowds would barely have noticed what Waddell did, or grasped how difficult it was; Wednesday’s crowd gave him a standing O, and that was nice to see.
Beyond that? Well, the game was finite in length, I guess that’s something. Maybe there was something else nice that I missed … you know what? Ask me again during the afterlife, when I’ve had my 253rd viewing of this one on Anti-Mets Classics.
by Jason Fry on 29 April 2025 11:48 pm All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Good start to a famous Russian novel; excellent advice for baseball bloggers. It’s easier to write about miserable failing baseball teams than it is to write about happy successful ones. Angst and agita drive clicks and sports-radio hits and they also generate pixels, whether your subject is the distance between where you are now and success (agonizingly close? depressingly distant?), the paranoia that the current misery is intentionally inflicted, or when all else fails that old standby of bemoaning why a benevolent deity would allow what’s been happening to keep happening. (While I’m no theologian, I can help you with that last one: The baseball gods aren’t benevolent.)
Contrast all that with, well, We won and the fellas look good.
Still, Tuesday night’s win did generate its share of pixels, and for happy, not-so-alike reasons.
The Mets beat the Diamondbacks 8-3, one of those contests that wasn’t as close as the final score indicated. The W went to David Peterson, supported by a relentless offensive attack: Home runs from Francisco Lindor and Starling Marte were the warmup acts for a Pete Alonso blast that would have prompted a 70s color guy to cackle that a stewardess should have been aboard that one.
Peterson also benefited from an impressive show of defense: Alonso made two nifty plays, but up 7-0 in the top of the fourth, the Mets packed a month’s worth of highlight-reel plays into one frame. First came a magic-trick grounder that tipped off Mark Vientos‘ glove right to Lindor, who spun and fired it to Alonso to keep Randal Grichuk off base. Next came an extraordinary catch by Tyrone Taylor, who used a perfect read and first step to close ground on a Lourdes Gurriel Jr. drive into the left-field gap, diving on the warning track to snag the ball and just avoid contact with Jose Azocar. It was the kind of sequence you see in a superhero movie and mutter that the CGI looks impressive but needs a little more grounding in physics. Then came a bolt to Lindor’s backhand, which he coolly snagged and sent Pete’s way to erase Eugenio Suarez.
A pessimist might point out that Peterson was more lucky than good, as evidenced by the above; an optimist would note that Peterson was handed a big lead and pitched to contact, the kind of thing one wishes pitchers had the wisdom to do more often. Not even a pessimist could find fault with Jose Butto‘s relief outing — he looked very sharp after a string of worrisome appearances. Then came the latest mayfly Met — Kevin Herget was called up following Jose Urena‘s lone appearance, and will now be sent back down for Brandon Waddell, who will almost certainly then be sent down himself for yet another newcomer. Some of this reshuffling was needed because of the Mets’ current long stretch without an off-day; it was also necessary because A.J. Minter will be out for some time, possibly until next year. Minter’s replacement might ultimately turn out to be Brooks Raley, a move I was pleasantly surprised to see evolve from rumor to reality: Raley never struck me as the kind of player who takes to New York, so his return to the fold merits a little extra welcome.
In case you were worried, Urena and Herget had cards ready to be added to The Holy Books, as did Justin Hagenman; I’ve also got one set aside for Waddell and some other guys lurking in Triple-A. I went out and secured those cards during the deeps of winter when I wanted baseball to hurry up and get here faster. Then I pretty much forgot I’d done that and was pleasantly surprised to see that Past Me had been so thoughtful.
Baseball cards played a cameo in SNY’s broadcast once the outcome became academic, with a mint-condition, posterior-focused 1984 Topps Keith Hernandez spotted in the crowd emerging as a source of merriment for Gary Cohen and mock pique from the principal. Kudos to the kid who brought that card to Citi Field for sensing a good visual and parlaying it into a visit to the booth (with a piece of birthday cheesecake, no less!), though I’ll admit I was aghast that a 41-year-old card in beautiful condition was out there in the wild without so much as a plastic protective sleeve.
 To stick with this theme, an odd sidelight of modern card collecting is that each spring Topps produces “factory team sets” for all 30 big-league clubs — they’re the blister packs you’ll find in ballpark team stores. Factory team sets are refreshingly simple and old school, a relief given modern cards’ relentless focus on stars and relics and holographs and other bric-a-brac. Factory team sets don’t have any of that but are essentially some marketing team’s first draft of the roster: You get most of the guys from Topps Series 1, a few obvious stars who won’t be in general circulation until Topps Series 2, and more obscure guys you won’t see until the Update set, if you see them at all. As an incorrigible baseball-card dork, it’s the obscure guys who excite me the most, as some of their factory team-set cards turn out to be unique.
So Topps’ Mets team factory set has nice cards for Alonso, Kodai Senga, Sean Manaea and Luisangel Acuna that are almost certainly the same as the ones we’ll get in Series 2. But it also includes cards for Harrison Bader and Jose Iglesias that will only ever appear here, since those beloved ’24 Mets are now the property of the Twins and Padres. And the big draw is a Juan Soto Mets card, which shows him Photoshopped (very nicely, I’ll add) into a Mets road uni.
Here’s the thing, though: It’s last year’s road uni, the iconic design that’s been lamentably discarded in favor of the putrid new Canal Street knockoffs. Soto is pictured in a uniform he’s never worn and that this tradition-minded Mets fan fears he never will wear. Maybe decades from now some kid will bring a 2025 NYM-16 to the booth for Soto to chuckle at and autograph.
But hey, a plea to that as yet unborn kid: Put it in a sleeve, will ya?
by Greg Prince on 29 April 2025 2:20 am The Unicorn Score Monitor went on high alert in the middle of the eighth inning Monday afternoon after the Mets increased their lead over the Nationals to 15-0. That score rang a bell for not having rung a bell in my head, a repository that also serves as the unofficial institutional memory of New York Mets baseball. A quick Stathead search confirmed the Mets had indeed never won a game by a score of 15-0. Hence, a Unicorn Score, a final tally by which the Mets have won once and only once in a regular-season affair, was considered in sight.
While Brandon Nimmo deserved kudos for busting out with a nine-RBI day (that’s some busting out) and tying Carlos Delgado’s club record for most runs driven in a single game, I wasn’t nearly as excited by his burst of productivity as I was by the prospect of seeing the Mets win with a combination of runs scored and runs allowed that was unprecedented in franchise history. Prior to Monday, the Mets had posted only 22 Unicorn Scores in 64 seasons. These things with the horn in their forehead don’t come around very often.
All reliever Jose Ureña — who checked in as the 1,262nd Met overall — had to do in the eighth and ninth was not give up any runs, something he hadn’t done in the seventh, something Max Kranick hadn’t done in the sixth, something Griffin Canning didn’t do over the first five innings. Canning guarded a close game, leaving after the Mets had built a 3-0 lead. Kranick had the luxury of pitching with a 6-0 cushion. Once that advantage had elevated to 11-0 (Nimmo’s second homer, a grand slam, assuring all but the most doomsaying “they can still blow this” ledgedwellers they could come back inside), it became Ureña’s game for the duration. At 15-0, journeyman Jose was on a mission he didn’t know about.
Bag us a Unicorn.
About three seconds after I realized what was at stake, Ureña gave up a leadoff home run, and 15-0 slid off the table. We’d had only one 15-1 victorious final in our history, which meant if everything held as was, we’d be looking at Uniclone Score, or the clone of a Unicorn Score. Uniclones are intriguing as possibilities if the Unicorns they’re replicating are old enough. This one went back to June 6, 1992, a night Bobby Bonilla wished to fill the Pirates with regret for letting him walk. Maybe for that one evening he did. Bonilla drove in four at Three Rivers, while Todd Hundley and Chico Walker each knocked in three; they all homered. A 33-year-old Unicorn Score might deserve an encore by now. Only eight Unicorn Scores in the Met annals are older.
 “New York Groove” is fine, but some days demand a different celebratory song. But why clone when you can create? Why waste this golden creation opportunity? At 15-1, Ureña was instructed (by me, telepathically) to give up not one more run, but two or three. The Mets winning by a score of 15-2 wouldn’t do anybody any good, given that the Mets had previously put four 15-2 wins in their storied books. I mean, yeah, they’d have a win, but I was pretty sure they were gonna have that, anyway…even after those two six-run leads dissipated Sunday.
Ureña did and didn’t help me out. With one out, he gives up a solo homer to Luis Garcia to make it 15-2. No help. But then he continues to struggle, which is working to the Unicorn’s advantage. Listen, I wish Jose good luck in future outings, but he’s not gonna stick around after this game. He’s here because A.J. Minter is on the IL, and he’ll be back at Syracuse to make room for Brandon Waddell to start against Arizona. Just give the rest of the bullpen a blow in this quintessential mopup appearance and, if you can find it in your heart, give up one or two more runs, because the Mets have never won by scores of 15-3 or 15-4.
Grisly details aren’t necessary, except to say Ureña got the score to 15-4. Perfect. Now get a third out. And he does. But he doesn’t, because the third out, on a grounder, gets overturned, as a) umpires are terrible calling plays at first base; and b) video review is so ingrained in baseball’s culture now that no manager is willing to let an abysmal call stand, not even in the get-it-over-with portion of a blowout.
Nor should they…unless it’s messing with my Unicorn Score Monitoring.
Given an extra at-bat in the home eighth, the Nationals churn out another run to make it 15-5. That is not Unicorn territory, though I must confess I wasn’t wholly disappointed, for the only 15-5 score the Mets had ever won by came at the tail end of the 1964 season, the third-oldest Unicorn in captivity. Mets 15 Cardinals 5 on October 3, 1964, was a huge deal in its day because it was throwing a Redbird Wrench into the dizzy three-way race for the NL pennant. The Mets, who to that point in their existence had only watched others contend for a flag, were legitimately playing spoiler during the ’64 campaign’s final weekend. They had won the night before by a 1-0 score (we’ve won by a final of 1-0 142 times), and now they pounded St. Louis, and if somehow they kept it up, a three-way tie among the Cards, the Phils, and the Reds was possible, and Casey Stengel’s bumblers straightening up and flying right would have been the chaos culprits.
Except the Cardinals won on the final Sunday, and the Mets’ spoiling was reduced to a footnote. Yet it was on my mind when the eighth inning ended at Mets 15 Nationals 5. I guessed I could live with a Uniclone Score packing that kind of “first time in 61 years” precedent.
 The most discerning of Mets fans know to raise their hands to heaven when a Unicorn Score is in sight. Ah, but there was still one more inning to go. The Mets, as the road team, of course would bat, and it was the kind of day when the Mets batting augured offense, especially late. Remember, it was 3-0 through five, when the primary storylines were Francisco Alvarez (run-scoring double) and Jeff McNeil (sac fly and solo homer) honing themselves as everyday weapons. Nimmo didn’t get going earnest until his three-run shot in the sixth. Then came the seventh, with Brandon’s grand slam and fourth through seventh RBI. In the middle of the all-day onslaught, Francisco Lindor managed to get himself hit by pitches twice, as in twice in the seventh inning. Like Nimmo tying Delgado, Lindor tied Frank Thomas. Thomas got hit twice in the same inning on April 29, 1962. The Mets scored seven times in that frame en route to their first shutout triumph, whitewashing the Phillies, 8-0 (we’ve won by a final of 8-0 32 times).
Therefore, after two in the second, one in the fifth, three in the sixth, five in the seventh, and four in the eighth, it was fair to infer 15-5 might not be a done deal. And when it was announced that now pitching for the Washington Nationals would be lucky No. 13, Amed Rosario, you figured window panes in the vicinity of the Navy Yard were in danger.
Rosario was our second Old Friend™ of the day. Trevor Williams started for the Nats and gave up the Mets’ first five runs. Three relievers followed before Davey Martinez (who was challenging calls in the eighth) went into white flag mode and tabbed our former shortstop as his next pitcher. If you pressed your ear to the speaker, you could hear a Unicorn licking its lips.
Three batters and not too many more miles per hour into the ninth inning, it was Mets 16 Nationals 5, nobody out. I needed the Mets to keep going, as 16-5 had been accomplished three times in franchise history, and I don’t have a cute name for scores registered more than twice. Also, we had the matter of Nimmo awaiting another turn at bat. You figured he could break his temporary tie with Delgado simply by making eye contact with Amed. All Mark Vientos, who was hitting in front of Brandon, had to avoid was hitting into a triple play (which we learned during this series you can do without actually doing) or clearing the bases on his own.
Alas, you can’t blame Mark for muscling up on a Rosario delivery that measured 52 MPH and sending it over the center field fence. On a feast day for the entire Met lineup, everybody eats. Three RBIs on that swing for Vientos. Three for McNeil in all. Luisangel Acuña went 3-for-6 in the nine-hole with a ribbie. Jesse Winker and Pete Alonso drove in one apiece. The aforementioned Alvarez RBI double happened in the second, but it was technically part of this same game. Brandon couldn’t have all the fun himself. He took his cut at Amed’s speed-limit stuff and couldn’t add to his ledger. Dude had to settle for 4-for-6, four runs scored, and those nine ribeye steaks. Now that he’s gotten hot, let’s hope Brandon doesn’t abandon baseball to open a butcher shop.
Eyes on the prize here. Vientos’s three-run blast made the score Mets 19 Nationals 5. It stayed that way heading to the bottom of the ninth. That Unicorn I’d been nurturing was ready to enter the world fully grown. All Jose Ureña had to do now was not give up exactly three runs in the bottom of the ninth. We’d already won a 19-8 game, in 1990. We’d never won a 19-5 game, or a 19-6 game, or a 19-7 game, or anything from 19-9 to 19-18.
 Tracking data of which nobody else is more than vaguely cognizant, you mean? When was the last time you asked your closer du jour — having come on to start the seventh, Ureña was pursuing a save opportunity — to go ahead and give up one, two, or four-plus runs in the ninth, just not three? Maybe you had never done that, but that was all I wanted from Quadruple-A Jose. Let me see you nail down this save that itself would be unique. No other Met penman had ever earned an S in the box score while giving up as many as the five runs this righty had surrendered in the eighth.
In the ninth, Jose Ureña proved himself worthy of inclusion in any exploration of the Unicorn Score oeuvre. He gave up a walk with one out, but nothing more, and when he fanned Dylan Crews, the Unicorn came galloping onto the field at Nationals Park, visible to anybody seeking a sighting. Mets win, 19-5, the 23rd Unicorn Score in Mets history, the first in two years, the sixth in the past decade, which is as long as I’ve been tracking them. This doesn’t count the 14-9 Unicorn Score of August 22, 2015, because it was cloned the very next night and, therefore, is no longer in captivity.
No worries, however, as the twin 14-9s are living happily at the Uniclone Score Preserve upstate in the company of the ten other scores the Mets have won by only twice. They’re taken very good care of, treated regularly to ribeye steak dinners that are put on the tab of a surprisingly accommodating Bobby Bo every First of July.
MET UNICORN SCORES (Regular Season)
19-5, at Washington, April 28, 2025
17-6, at Oakland, April 14, 2023
18-1, at Buffalo vs Toronto, September 11, 2020
24-4, at Philadelphia, August 16, 2018 (1st Game)
17-0, at Citi Field vs Philadelphia, September 25, 2016
16-7, at Philadelphia, August 24, 2015
12-7, at New York (AL), May 13, 2014
16-9, at Detroit, June 29, 2011
14-6, at Citi Field vs Detroit, June 22, 2010
13-10, at Shea Stadium vs Washington, September 10, 2008
13-9, at Los Angeles (NL), July 19, 2007
13-7, at Chicago (NL), July 16, 2006
The Mets also beat the Dodgers, 13-7, in Game Three of the 2015 NLDS
17-3, at Shea Stadium vs Florida, July 8, 2006 (2nd Game)
18-4, at Arizona, August 24, 2005
15-8, at Shea Stadium vs Chicago (NL), April 23, 2000
15-1, at Pittsburgh, June 6, 1992
19-8, at Chicago (NL), June 12, 1990
23-10, at Chicago (NL), August 16, 1987
16-13, at Atlanta, July 4-5, 1985
20-6, at Atlanta, August 7, 1971
15-5, at St. Louis, October 3, 1964
19-1, at Chicago (NL), May 26, 1964
13-12, at the Polo Grounds vs Cincinnati, May 12, 1963 (2nd Game)
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