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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 Greg Prince on 29 September 2025 2:43 pm “This summer, the Mets suffered so many difficult, late defeats in close games that no one on the team, surely, could have escaped the chilling interior doubt — the doubt that kills — whispering that their courage and brilliance last summer had been an illusion all the time, had been nothing but luck.”
—Roger Angell, in the wake of the 1970 season
The New York Mets have achieved baseball’s state of intermediate grace, a slot within MLB’s postseason matrix, eleven times in their 64-year history. In every one of the seasons that followed, their subsequent won-lost record paled in comparison to that which merited celebration. On average, Mets teams in those years after won twelve fewer games than they did during the preceding years when champagne flowed at least once.
1969: 100-62
1970: 83-79
1973: 82-79
1974: 71-91
1986: 108-54
1987: 92-70
1988: 100-60
1989: 87-75
1999: 97-66
2000: 94-68
2000: 94-68
2001: 82-80
2006: 97-65
2007: 88-74
2015: 90-72
2016: 87-75
2016: 87-75
2017: 70-92
2022: 101-61
2023: 75-87
2024: 89-73
2025: 83-79
As you can see, not all falls from graces are created equal. A couple of times, the tumbles were modest and hardly mattered — twice the Mets returned to the playoffs in those years after; once they advanced further in those playoffs than they had the year before. This was when playoff spots were more accessible than they had been when the Mets first earned one, if not as accessible as they would become in the most recent season in which the Mets failed to grab one, the season that ended Sunday in Miami with a 4-0 loss to the Marlins.
In 2025, the Mets’ record was 83-79, six games off the pace of the 2024 Mets of increasingly sainted memory. Unlike 2000 and 2016, despite the availability of more postseason berths than ever, this presented a problem. Had the Mets gone 89-73 as they did a year earlier, they would have cruised into the 2025 playoffs. Had they won a single game more, they would have eked in, but that would have been fine, at least until an 84-78 Mets squad was eliminated in due order, because very few teams with so few wins get very far in a postseason. Yet it’s been known to happen, and we were willing to find out if it could again.
Had 83-79 qualified us, we would have taken that, too. It came damn close to doing so. The 83-79 record with which the Mets completed their business was the same as that which will be carried into the postseason by the Cincinnati Reds, a feisty bunch that backed into clinching, pushed giddily into their bubbly by the feistless Mets, ass over teakettle, despite their own last-day 4-2 loss at Milwaukee. The Reds, a couple of hot weeks in September notwithstanding, were no great shakes in 2025. Actually, they were the same shakes as the Mets, except along the way to shaking out with an identical 79 losses, they won the season series between them and us, and that represented the difference between getting to go on or having to go home. There was a time when a tiebreaking game would have been played to determine postseason entry, but that’s simply not done anymore. And, honestly, if we’re determining which 83-79 team deserves to not be a league’s sixth postseason entrant, maybe baseball’s powers that be shouldn’t sanction spending one more minute on it than necessary.
I seem to be obsessing on the won-lost record rather than the game that sealed it. Yes, the Mets played nine more futile innings on Sunday. Yes, it boiled down to one panicked inning of middle relief and one scorching bases-loaded line drive that landed in a glove. Yes, it was the Marlins, official doer-in of last-ditch Met playoff hopes, who did in last-ditch Met playoff hopes once again. Yes, it was the Marlins’ World Series, except unlike in 2003, I wasn’t pulling for them to beat New York.
Give the Marlins credit for coming to play the role of spoiler with zest. Give the Mets another demerit for barely showing up when everything was on the line. Or maybe the Mets played to the best of their 2025 ability, which is a frightening thought. Then again, we were just presented 162 games’ worth of evidence that the Mets weren’t able to get done the minimum that needed doing to get where it once seemed there was no way they weren’t going. Their ability as a unit apparently topped out at 83 wins and 79 losses.
If I may be Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man character for a moment, in my day, our team didn’t play mediocre baseball for the vast majority of six months and still have a chance on the final day to be eligible to win the World Series unless somebody shouted in our face that we had to believe. If we were going to finish barely over .500, we’d simply give up before the last week of September and we liked it — we loved it!
Maybe we didn’t love it, but we lived with it. Flibbity-floo, I grew up rooting for Mets clubs that fell short of falling just short. The 1970 Mets, the first team I ever followed from the beginning of a season to its end, went 83-79. They made the bulk of September painful by discovering ways to lose to the eventual division champion Pirates and almost everybody else down the stretch, a stretch in which their chances expired four days before the season did. When their world title defense got them no higher than third place, I processed third place, even at seven years of age, as where they belonged. Finish first, keep playing. Finish third, keep walking.
Eighty-Three and Seventy-Nine locked in as the Mets trademark record in my mind a year later, 1971. At the last home game of this season, while my friend Ken was still ruing how September 1970 got away (gently ask him about Willie Montañez when he was a callup on the Phillies, I dare ya), I drifted to the next July. The 2025 Mets, as every schoolchild by now knows, started 45-24. Only the AP History classes probably mention that in 1971, the Mets sat in first place with a record of 45-29 on June 30. The next thing I remember — and I really do remember this — was the Mets went out and lost 20 of their next 27 games, exiting the NL East race as they spiraled. At 83-79, they finished tied for third, no tiebreaker of any kind applied to decide whether theirs was the best 83-79 record extant.
The Mets won 83 games in a 156-game strike-shortened season in 1972. It made for a better winning percentage than the previous two years, but proved irrelevant to the pennant race’s conclusion. The Mets won 82 games in 1973, the aberration of all aberrations in the four-division era. In 1975, the Mets won 82 games again, and they had a chance when September started, but by losing significantly more than they won after September 1, they transmitted to their loyalists that 82 wouldn’t be enough. The 86 wins of 1976 were stitched mainly from window dressing that materialized when the lone playoff spot on the table was too many seats up from where we’d positioned ourselves to stay by Memorial Day.
A slightly OK record, shorn of any given season’s context, was always a slightly OK record. You could be disappointed. You could be a rationalist. You could tell yourself next year would be the year we’d get back to where we were in 1969. You would be absolutely wrong about that last one throughout the 1970s, especially the late 1970s, but you recognized that a team that posted a record of or something like 83-79 was probably not going to be a playoff team, and if a team with a record like that did make the playoffs, you were entitled to use the word miracle like it was used in ’69.
That was all before Wild Cards existed. Wild Cards, from the mid-1990s on, have served roughly the same purpose the Mets did in 1962, per what the old Dodger Billy Loes said then upon his brief springtime dalliance with the expansion club:
“The Mets is a very good thing. They give everybody a job. Just like the WPA.”
In the modern baseball sense, the Wild Card makes every half-decent also-ran a potential contender while in the course of also-running. In the Wild Card era, prior to this season, the Mets had one 83-79 finisher, in 2005. That was the first year of this blog. We got our hopes up as August was becoming September, and we had our hopes quashed as the Wild Card we were seeking slipped from even theoretical reach. Still, it was a mostly fun year. The arrow was pointing up from the seasons before, and our next stop was first place in 2006. We didn’t necessarily know it was coming, but we could settle for finishing a little out of the race if we could be convinced better times were directly ahead. The 83-79 Mets of 2005 added Delgado, Wagner, and Lo Duca to Wright, Reyes, Beltran, and Martinez en route to becoming the 97-65 Mets of 2006. It was a very convincing transformation.
The 2025 Mets had something their 1970, 1971, and 2005 predecessors in 83-79 finishes didn’t. They had four shots to make the playoffs. They could win the division, or they could win one of three Wild Cards. Three! They drew none.
None!
Roger Angell wrote of the 1970 club, “Why the Mets failed to survive even this flabby test, falling seventeen games below their record of last year, is easy to explain, but hard to understand.”
Leonard Koppett wrote of the 1971 club, “You couldn’t fairly pinpoint any one fact, or one person” that would help explain or understand why a team that was once sixteen games over .500 landed only four above the break-even point, but he did lament, a couple of seasons later, “Everything considered, 1971 was probably the least satisfying year the Mets had ever experienced.”
Adam Rubin quoted Fred Wilpon on the subject of the 2005 club, “We had times where we were in similar positions in years past, and you didn’t see the same vibrancy on the field I think you do now. I think it’s progress. I’m not sure it’s success unless you are in the playoffs, and we’re not in the playoffs. So that part is a disappointment.”
These were all pretty measured, realistic responses to Met seasons whose records were slightly OK. Conversely, I’m not sure how to respond to this Met season with the very same record, this Met season that echoed the audible post-1969 sighs of 1970 and the post-June swoon of 1971. Despite maintaining the services of several extremely able players for the season and seasons ahead, I don’t sense palpable progress outside of the stuff flashed by a few very inexperienced pitchers, and after the way 2025 didn’t build off 2024, I’m not about to, at this instant, elevate my hopes for 2026. Although there is no more 2025 for the New York Mets, it’s too soon to tell myself next year will be the year we get back to where we were in any of those eleven years that extended into postseason. If I thought about it, I’d think they could, but I thought about it this year and thought they would, and I was dead wrong.
When the Mets won on Saturday via a 5-0 shutout and kept themselves alive for one more day, I did tell myself that no matter what happened Sunday, I’d be at peace with however it ended. I stopped telling myself that by Sunday morning, but it really was gratifying to watch the 2025 Mets one more time — for the 83rd and, as it turned out, final time — be the Mets we thought they’d be. The Mets who did have that Amazin’ start; the Mets who did fill their ballpark and elicit honest enthusiasm; the Mets who intermittently quelled our doubts. Those Mets didn’t show up for Game 162. It was fairly predictable, based on what the Mets had become, but it was still baseball season then, and during baseball season, we do like to imagine somebody is shouting in our face that we have to believe, even if it’s only an irrepressible inner voice we’re straining to hear.
Life is better when it’s baseball season, no matter that some baseball seasons yield nothing better than a slightly OK record, no matter that some baseball seasons crash rather than fall from grace. I didn’t much care for this Mets baseball season within the context of hoping for more Mets baseball, but I hoped for it, regardless. And I cared down the season’s last swing, which generated a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of Francisco Lindor, who cautioned us that this year might not contain the wonders of last year when this year was still next year.
“Nothing’s promised in this game,” Francisco told reporters who gathered around him in the visitors’ clubhouse at Dodger Stadium minutes after the Mets were eliminated from the 2024 NLCS. “Every year, whether you have the same guys or not, it’s a different year.” Lindor and his teammates could do no wrong then. They just couldn’t do everything. In 2025, Lindor and Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo and Edwin Diaz, joined by Juan Soto, did much, but they could do only so much, and nobody else could do very much. Or if the lot of them could, they didn’t. Still, for Game 162, I put that learning aside. On the final day of a season when everything’s on the line, nothing that happened before the final day matters…except everything that went right or wrong for 161 games is why the final day plays out as one of those final days when everything matters.
This final day, Closing Day of 2025, played out as its own kind of horrible. It produced precisely the same record as a few seasons that came along way back when, but it felt worse, probably because something was on the line at the very end, probably because it just happened. Give it time. It might not get better, but next year forever remains next year.
Thanks for sitting alongside us for however many seasons you’ve sought out our section since 2005. Last year, this year, next year — we’re always gonna finish here.
by Jason Fry on 28 September 2025 10:21 am What is it with the Mets, the Marlins and Game 161s? (Games 161? Anyway.)
I’m generally allergic to tidy narratives, but this one was undeniable: John Maine in 2007, Johan Santana in 2008 … and now Clay Holmes in 2025.
No, Holmes didn’t go all the way. But that’s nitpicking — he’s a converted reliever who’s way beyond his innings allotment, and has looked gassed in recent outings. Saturday night was his best outing as a Met, and the one his team so desperately needed.
And the Mets backed it up in the other phases of the game, unlike innumerable nights during which they’ve failed to take care of one or all aspects of business. Pete Alonso punished Eury Perez, Jeff McNeil added key insurance, and the lineup gave Edwin Diaz some space late. The relievers were sharp — Diaz has been particularly effective of late — and the defense was sound. And the Mets looked focused, as opposed to whatever it is they were doing Friday night.
It was a complete game for the team if not for Holmes, made even sweeter by the odd spectacle of some 20,000 Mets fans packing Soilmaster Stadium so that the soundtrack would have made you swear you were at Citi Field.
Now here come the caveats.
With the Mets no longer in control of their destiny, they needed help — which the Brewers, already playoff bound and locked into their seeding, did not provide. (And while things like this don’t motivate teams, I doubt any of the Brewers are too broken up about it, seeing how the Mets wrecked a dream season 11 months ago.) Give the Reds credit too — they’ve been a monster down the stretch.
And all this talk of Game 161 inevitably leads us to the Mets, the Marlins and Game 162s. (Games 162? Anyway.)
2007’s Game 162 saw T@m Glav!ne lay an egg and torch his reputation with Mets fans in the clubhouse scrum, earning the unique formatting his name will bear at Faith and Fear forevermore. (BTW, I vote we retroactively give his 300th win to the Braves, seeing how it’s a milestone nobody here wants to remember or celebrate.) 2008’s Game 162 was handed to Oliver Perez, who didn’t pitch badly but wound up on the wrong end of a workaday 4-2 loss that wound up feeling like 40-2. (My lasting memory is of an ashen Howard Johnson enduring the closing ceremonies at Shea before a shocked, mostly silent house.)
No, Game 162s (or is it … oh let’s let this one go) haven’t gone well for us where the Marlins are involved. And, once again, we need help from entities that may prove less than motivated and perhaps even not wholly disinterested.
But that’s where the Mets have put themselves, and us. And at least there’s a last day that matters, a final carousel of desperate wild hopes and superstitions and exhortations and pleas to the baseball gods and everything else brought to the proceedings by us, the fans — who simultaneously care so deeply and can do nothing to affect the outcome of something that means so much to us.
That’s cruel, but it has always been thus.
One more guaranteed day of baseball. What will be will be.
by Greg Prince on 27 September 2025 12:10 pm As a connoisseur of postgame media scrums, I recognize a no-win question when I hear it. No-win questions are asked after brutal losses that carry almost definitive consequences. It almost doesn’t matter how the question is answered. The question just has to be asked.
The no-win question that was asked of Carlos Mendoza following the Mets’ mostly self-inflicted 6-2 loss to the Marlins on Friday night in Miami (though, to be the fair, the Fish did some inflicting, too), regarded the mistakes the Mets made, not only in the preceding innings but for weeks on end and how they have gone uncorrected. Carlos Mendoza prefaced his answer with, “That’s a good question, obviously.”
Unless Mendoza had an actual solution and an explanation for why it wasn’t implemented, there is no good answer…obviously. Then again, the question wasn’t asked to garner a rating of how good the inquiry was.
Mendoza continued:
“It’s on me, it’s on all of us. We continue to make the same mistakes, and it’s costing us games.”
Obviousness won that round, but what do you want from a skipper sinking with his ship? The manager is official spokesman for his team’s shortcomings. To Mendoza’s credit, he doesn’t always try to put a happy face on them. There are no happy faces where the 2025 Mets nearing their end are concerned. There is nothing to be happy about. Maybe for a minute, but just wait until the next minute. To paraphrase Felix Unger’s promise when he served as Oscar Madison’s announcer when Oscar hosted a sports call-in show, the team with the frown is coming around to drag you down to the ground.
As these Mets occasionally do, they got our hopes up early, or at least didn’t dash them for a while. They were coming off a solid win in Chicago that followed a crushing loss that followed an exhilarating win that followed two kicks to the midsection that followed a couple of romps that we might have thought negated whatever had been going wrong before. This is a pattern we should be used to by now. The Mets fell to four games over .500 on September 12. On September 26, Friday night, the Mets dipped again to four games over .500. They were famously 21 games over .500 in this very same season. Perhaps we should be impressed that they’ve stopped plummeting and are now merely bouncing around.
Francisco Lindor led off the game by homering against former Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara. Two pitches in, we’re up, 1-0. You want to take this as momentum. Lindor being Lindor in the final days of a season is a wonderful thing, we learned during last season’s final days. We’ve seen reminders of it during this season’s final days. The reigning MVP runner-up reaches 31 home runs, besting a recently great pitcher in the process, as the Mets shoo away the best the Marlins have to offer. If we take care of Alcantara on Friday night, we have no reason to fear whoever they throw at us on Saturday and Sunday. Hell, if the Brewers cooperate, maybe we’ll clinch by Saturday night. Then Juan Soto singles and steals, because if Juan Soto is on first, he can’t stand still. He wants into the 40/40 club. He’s at 43/37 as of the first inning and will up his membership bid to 43/38 by the third inning. As long as he doesn’t get thrown out pursuing his individual goal or take the bat out of somebody’s hands while doing so, the extra ninety feet are usually welcome. Two batters later, Pete Alonso doubles Soto home, collecting his 124th RBI for his efforts.
Are you seeing these numbers? Lindor, Soto, and Alonso are posting what they’re supposed to be posting. If superstar statistics electrified the lineup from the first inning to the ninth, Mendoza would be lobbed questions like, “How about those three guys?” That wasn’t the talk of the scrum.
Brandon Sproat went to work, and it was working out great from the first through the fourth. No hits allowed until the fourth. No serious Marlin threats at all. Nolan McLean gave the Mets what was needed Thursday night at Wrigley for a reasonable period of time, now Sproat seemed to be doing the same. Jonah Tong not so much on Wednesday, but two-thirds of Generation MST3K keeping us in orbit is better than none. The Mets looked poised to score some more off Alcantara in the second and third, but a little bad luck was hit into here, and an opportunity was not made the most of there, and going to the bottom of the fifth, the score remained Mets 2 Marlins 0.
In the bottom of the fifth, nothing good happened, except it ended. The season may have ended, too, but that will require hindsight. Give it a day or two. We will know soon enough.
Sproat was hit hard.
Alonso did not make a makeable play.
Gregory Soto was hit hard.
Gregory Soto did not pay enough attention to what was happening on the basepaths.
Ronny Mauricio did not pay attention in general.
I could go into details, but by the time six runs scored to transform a game a Mets fan could see as a continuation of progress into a game that confirmed every Mets fan doubt, details were almost beside the point. Except that the bullpen had to be called on earlier than desired, per usual (meaning we’ll ask another kid, Dylan Ross, to come up and save a portion of our bacon ASAP), and, oh, that part about Mauricio materialized because Brett Baty felt something in his side and had to exit the game and possibly the season, whatever is left of it.
Alcantara found his groove and the Mets didn’t disturb it. He pitched into the eighth without giving up another run. I guess he’s still great. The Mets mounted their final challenge once Sandy departed, loading the bases without a hit, until it came down to closer Tyler Phillips versus pinch-hitter Mark Vientos. Phillips seems to be workshopping a John Rocker or at least Brad “The Animal” Lesley persona; the dude slaps his face on his way in from the pen. If he’s not afraid to inflict punishment on his own visage, you think quelling Vientos is gonna be a problem for him?
It wasn’t. Mark struck out, and, one inning later, it was over. The game, for sure. The brief retention of the third Wild Card would be done when the Reds’ 3-1 lead in Milwaukee went final. (The Diamondbacks lost in San Diego and got themselves altogether eliminated.) Met hopes of making the postseason hang in the immediate balance. We have to win today to stay alive. If we lose, we need Cincy to lose to ensure Sunday isn’t mere bookkeeping. A school of thought suggests that making these intricate calculations are simply motions a fan goes through en route to reaching a glaringly apparent conclusion, and that the team such a fan roots for is going to make these motions and calculations academic by finding a way to bow to the Marlins at least once in these final two days.
This school of thought may not be the school in which we wish to enroll, but I’m pretty sure I hear a bus rumbling down the street to pick us up for the winter semester.
by Jason Fry on 26 September 2025 10:41 am Here’s an interesting exercise: consider how we would have assessed Thursday’s Mets-Cubs finale if it had come in June, or even mid-August.
I probably would have led with an acknowledgment of how much Brett Baty has grown as a player, on both sides of the ball. Baty’s three-run homer off Shota Imanaga in the third made it 6-0 Mets, which seemed like a comfortable margin at the time, though oh just wait. That was significant enough, but it was also an episode of welcome lefty-on-lefty violence. And Baty chipped in a nifty defensive play as well, making a barehanded grab of a little roller and following it with a strong throw.
Baty still has ABs where he looks out of kilter, but all MLB players do and confirmation bias plays a huge role in what we notice and what we don’t; he’s grown into a reliable complementary player in a year that’s seen Mark Vientos deal with growing pains, and that’s a very positive development for the future.
Yep, I might have led with that. Or maybe I’d have dissected Nolan McLean, and waxed philosophical about young pitchers specifically and how maddening the art of pitching is in general. McLean looked electric against the Cubs in the early innings, befuddling them with his sweeper and curve — with two strikes Cub hitters knew what was coming and it didn’t matter, as the horizontal break of McLean’s breaking stuff is just too difficult to track: An apparent middle-middle pitch turns into a dart boring in on the back foot, your bat slashes through where the ball was a second ago but no longer is, and it’s too late.
Given a big lead, McLean started pitching more aggressively, another key starter’s lesson he seems to be learning early — including not to get too flustered if this kind of aggressive mound work yields a solo homer or two. He also looked like he’d ride to the rescue of the beleaguered bullpen — until with one out in the sixth it looked like the tank went from about a third full to E and blinking red all at once.
Seriously, that was a little weird: McLean started the inning by fanning Nico Hoerner on a sinker and then everything decayed, with his location off and the zip on his pitches noticeably diminished. Ten pitches later, there’d been a walk, a ground-rule double and a three-run Seiya Suzuki homer that let the Cubs back in the game and left McLean in the dugout contemplating a start that suddenly looked like a Rorschach test.
But we still have storylines left to go. Maybe I would have given thanks for Tyrone Taylor, who chipped in a two-run double and his usual crisp outfield play. I’m sure Cedric Mullins is a nice guy, but I’d be happy spending the rest of 2025 without seeing him in center again.
Or how about Francisco Lindor? A 30-30 season is something to savor, and Lindor’s career arc in New York is one we’ll talk about for generations. Those thumbs-down gestures and the rat-raccoon nonsense seems so blissfully long ago, with Lindor now a perennial MVP candidate and becoming a civic institution in blue and orange.
I’d like to think I’d have found time to offer a salute to Gary Cohen: Besides his usual sterling play by play, he knew the any-runners-move-up-a-base rule immediately when Dansby Swanson toppled into the stands to corral a first-inning pop-up from Vientos that gave the Mets an unlikely 1-0 lead and Vientos an even more unlikely RBI. Plenty of players and a good number of fine announcers don’t know the rulebook the way Cohen does; his preparation lets him instantly move past sorting out what’s happened to what it means. (I’m still awed by his call of the long ago game-ending unassisted triple play against the Phils: That’s a play no announcer expects to witness in his career, you can’t rehearse it, and it happens instantaneously. Cohen nailed it.)
Yes, all of these things would have been fun building blocks from which to build a recap in June or even mid-August. But not in Game 159, with the Reds breathing down the Mets’ necks and tapping that “We Have the Tiebreaker” sign menacingly.
No, Game 159 meant 6-0 and 8-2 leads still felt too small. It meant bemoaning the incredible defensive showcase put on by the Cubs and swearing emphatically because the Mets could easily have scored 10 or 12. It meant sweating 11 outs to get and exhorting Ryne Stanek and Brooks Raley and Tyler Rogers and Edwin Diaz to get them while feeling spikes of anxiety about how necessary outs will possibly be obtained against Miami. (For the record: All four did their jobs, with Raley looking unhittable and Rogers the best he’s been as a Met.)
It also meant that the joy of a must-win lasted about six seconds before curdling into worry about these three remaining games in Miami. The Marlins are eliminated, a lot later than most anyone thought they would be, but even a late-April game at Soilmaster Stadium feels like a bad idea, and God knows the Marlins have ruined the end of seasons before.
But hey, that’s what happens when you’re pushing through Game 159 with destiny still to be determined. Plenty of good storylines, but right now they’ll wait. Survival is the only thing.
by Greg Prince on 25 September 2025 11:27 am So often tempted to refer to any given Met loss as a “microcosm” of the portion of the season that has been defined by the club’s long, gradual decline from surefire playoff participant to accidental late-September survivor, I wondered if the bigger picture from which microcosm is derived is technically referred to as a “cosm”. It is not. The word I was looking for was “macrocosm,” though cosm would be more satisfying, given that it is a four-letter word, and certainly these Mets inspire a string of those.
I found Wednesday night’s 10-3 debacle versus the Cubs at Wrigley field just another piece of the Met macrocosm that has expanded out into the universe day by day, defeat by defeat, debacle by debacle, interrupted only by the anomalous wins that have — along with various Red and Diamondback inadequacies —mysteriously kept this 81-77 Met team clutching the final Wild Card position in the National League.
The final Wild Card position in the National League is a diplomatic way to say sixth-best record in the circuit. This is what is being fought over. Or actively eschewed by three so-called contenders, if we were suspicious types. The Reds lost in eleven innings Wednesday night. The Diamondbacks also lost in eleven. The Mets didn’t bother making it look close. If trying not to win is the actual aim of this clumsy scrum, the Mets haven’t yet proven themselves quite good enough to intentionally blow it.
We’ll take it on faith they were trying to win on Wednesday night and were not up to the task on almost any front. Starting pitching, via the Jonah Tong from a couple of outings ago, was not viable. Relief pitching, which included a couple of starters, was not effective. Defense, save for one sweet throw home from the reactivated Tyrone Taylor, was mostly absent. Hitting, sans Francisco Alvarez’s best longball efforts, lacked even momentary impact. The manager said some version of “we’re going through it right now” afterwards. That’s one of Carlos Mendoza’s pet phrases, like “traffic” to refer to baserunners and “we’ve got to be better” to refer to the state of things. All the Mets do is go through it. They’ve yet to come out of it.
A microcosm implies the elements of a situation have been distilled into a handy snack pack that allows closer examination and deeper understanding. Nah, losing as the Mets lost on Wednesday night is just one more glob of erratic futility that should have ended the Mets weeks, maybe months ago. But the sixth-best record is still out there for the taking, and the Mets still inexplicably hold it. Stave off explanations for four more games, accidentally win enough of them, and, in the face of the mysteries of the macrocosm, this baseball team actually becomes a bona fide playoff participant.
Will the wonders of the universe every cease? I guess we’ll find out by Sunday.
by Jason Fry on 24 September 2025 12:25 am In the bottom of the fourth, the Cubs tacked on a run when Pete Alonso couldn’t get properly set to take a Jeff McNeil throw from second. The error properly belonged to Pete but went on McNeil’s ledger, becoming his second miscue in as many plays.
More importantly, it made the score 6-1 Cubs, with what looked like a lot of bad road ahead. The Mets hadn’t exactly covered themselves in glory so far Tuesday night: David Peterson was terrible, looking again like a pitcher whose tank is on E, and didn’t make it out of the second; Juan Soto misplayed a flyball into a two-run double; and Francisco Alvarez allowed two steals while concentrating on framing and/or looking for rulings on checked swings.
It was not a crisp game, to say the very least — in fact, it looked a lot like too many games the Mets have played of late, lackadaisical and dispiriting. If you turned it off then and found something better to do with your night, hey, no judgments — that certainly looked like the right call.
I stayed with it, for a few not necessarily related reasons.
- The Mets had hit some balls hard, only to be victimized by buzzard’s luck and solid Cub defense, and I stubbornly thought that might prove important somehow.
- I was keenly aware that just six games remained on the regular-season schedule, and that getting to watch a bad game is marginally better than having no game to watch.
- I was mad at the Mets — my default state since mid-June — and figured I’d glower and mutter at them as long as they were around to absorb my wrath.
- I’m a Mets fan, which one could argue is a terrible life choice, but it’s too late for me. Watching the Mets is what I do.
Seiya Suzuki hit a grounder to Francisco Lindor, who flipped it to McNeil, who didn’t do anything requiring glowering and muttering this time. The Mets came out for the fifth and didn’t look all that different than they had so far — McNeil popped up with Starling Marte on first and then Alvarez hit a grounder to Dansby Swanson at short. A tricky hop, but one Swanson had corralled innumerable times before. It was going to be a double play, ending the inning and leaving the Mets with more misfires behind them than chances left ahead of them.
Except the ball went under Swanson’s glove.
With the Mets given new life, Lindor grounded out to cut the Cubs’ lead from five to an “eh that’s a little better” four; Soto walked; and Pete Alonso hit a sizzling drive to right that struck just below the basket for a very long RBI single that shrunk the deficit to a “hey maybe” three. Craig Counsell summoned Taylor Rogers, twin brother of the Mets’ confounding Tyler Rogers, to face Brandon Nimmo.
Nimmo has become something of a funny hitter since he made the decision to trade OBP for power. He can look hopelessly out of sync for a string of ABs, seemingly constantly on the back foot, but then one swing reminds you of how dangerous he can be — witness his bolt against the Braves in the Day After Game last year, or the one he hit off Wandy Peralta last week. Rogers’ second pitch to Nimmo was a sweeper that sat middle-middle; Nimmo connected for one of those line drives that’s immediately and obviously gone, with its trajectory suggesting it was struck by someone standing on a high-dive platform.
Just like that the Mets had tied it; an inning later they untied it on a Lindor single off Drew Pomeranz that capped a two-out rally. The Mets somehow had wrested a 7-6 lead away from the Cubs; the question now was whether they could keep it.
The answer, alas, was no: In the bottom of the inning Tyler Rogers relieved Gregory Soto with two out and a runner on first; Rogers then allowed a walk and an RBI single to Suzuki for a 7-7 tie. You may recall that the Rogers twins were traded on the same day ahead of the deadline, with Tyler going from the Giants to the Mets and Taylor going from the Reds to the Pirates, who then flipped him to the Cubs. “Mom was having a day,” Tyler said, which was amusing; one assumes Mrs. Rogers had a less amusing day Tuesday, as she had to watch both twins spit the bit in key spots.
It was 7-7, and given the Mets’ serial failings on defense and in relief, I was just holding on for dear life. The seventh passed without events of note and in the eighth Alvarez came up against Caleb Thielbar with Luisangel Acuna as the go-ahead run at first.
Alvarez has looked far more patient of late, largely resisting the urge to expand the strike zone. He ignored two Thielbar pitches just off the strike zone, took a called strike as Acuna stole second, then watched a four-seamer just outside, or at least that’s how it was called. Thielbar’s next four-seamer was in the middle of the plate and Alvarez didn’t miss it, sending it screaming into the bleachers and doing a little screaming of his own before show-ponying his way around the bases.
The Mets led 9-7, and the question was how they were going to get six outs. I hoped they’d go back to Brooks Raley, who’d thrown only five pitches in escaping the seventh, but the top of the Cubs’ lineup was nigh, and Carlos Mendoza opted to ask Edwin Diaz for a six-out save. It was the right call: Diaz looked borderline unhittable, riding a sharp slider to strike out two in the eighth and all three in the ninth.
The Mets won and the Reds finally lost, which puts the Mets back in the wild card, one up on Cincinnati and Arizona. A wonderful win, goodness knows — the team fought back instead of folding their tent, showing a defiance too little in evidence in this strange season. Even a win like that can’t erase everything that we’ve endured: The Mets remain fundamentally untrustworthy, both unpredictable and unreliable. But at least they’ve earned another day to try and change our minds.
by Greg Prince on 22 September 2025 1:47 pm Sunday’s victories were small, specific, and personal. Taking the train in from a different station and everything clicking as a result. Passing through the gate unaccosted and being handed the day’s “first 15,000” premium. Instigating several pregame encounters with total strangers, reminding me fans at a ballpark share a special bond when we start our day in proximity to one another. An unexpected hi and how are ya to a couple of familiar faces. A few planned hellos that came off hitchless. Nine innings alongside someone who totally got what I was talking about and vice-versa. Understanding summer was ending, fall was coming, and dressing to handle both. Going to the final regularly scheduled Mets home game of the season for the thirtieth consecutive non-pandemic year.
Check, check, check. Except it’s not really a matter of fulfilling tasks on a to-do list. I’ll shepherd a streak to keep it alive, but the streak has to be something I want to ride until I can’t no more. Every Closing Day since 1995 still going as of 2025 is my streak of streaks. I wouldn’t have envisioned that stretching out thirty years ago on the Sunday I simply decided I had to be on hand for Game 162. I wouldn’t have thought to think about it.
 -30- The Mets of the moment as a ballclub are the essence of meh, and that might be a charitable interpretation. The Mets as an entity continue to lure me to their environs year after year, multiple times per year. This year, it was nine games, not a lot historically (I peaked at 44 in 2008), but it was enough. Besides, I finished strong, with three during the final homestand. Before Sunday, the Mets had gone 4-4 since settling in at Citi Field for a week-plus. Before Sunday, my 2025 record at Citi Field was 4-4.
We each needed a win to get over .500. Neither of us got it.
The Mets have bigger problems than righting a small sample size. The Mets have a chance to stop playing baseball by the end of this week, which, if that’s their goal, they made considerable progress toward it Sunday. And Saturday. And too many days to catalogue at the moment. From however many games ahead they’d been however long ago it was, the Mets have fallen an invisible percentage point behind the Cincinnati Reds for the last Wild Card spot available to them. They’re tied with the Reds, but Cincy has the tiebreaker based on the Mets having played too many games versus them the way they played too many games versus the Nationals, the way they’ve played too many games versus everybody, regardless of what the standings suggest a team is.
The standings suggest the Washington Nationals are a last-place club. Wouldn’t have known it this weekend, let alone in the series we played against them last month. The Mets treat everybody like a contender. Everybody except themselves.
That the Mets would find several bizarre ways to effect a 3-2 loss to the Nationals did not seem out of the realm of possibility Sunday morning. I wasn’t counting on it happening, but had I been informed in advance that…
Jacob Young would rob Brett Baty of an extra-base hit by letting a ball bounce out of his glove and off his foot before securing it cleanly…
and later Jacob Young would rob Francisco Alvarez of a home run with a leap and grab that appeared relatively mundane compared to the Baty play…
and earlier Cedric Mullins would get on base because the previous day’s designated dasher of destiny Daylen Lile would not hold onto a ball Mullins hit, yet Mullins would not advance while on base, because he had no clue at all what was going on (the ball was loose and Lile was down)…
and that Mullins, stuck at first rather than advanced to second, would get himself doubled off imminently (had he only been on second, he could have gotten himself doubled off there)…
and that the Nationals would see the Mets’ piggybacking efforts from Sean Manaea and Clay Holmes and raise them — and squelch Mets batters — with two starting pitchers with far higher ERAs than ours…
and whatever else the Mets were going to do badly or not do adequately…
well, I wouldn’t have been surprised, but I wouldn’t have stayed away.
We do love our Mets, for whatever reason we love our Mets. The Mets say 3,182,057 of us loved them or what they were supposed to do enough to buy a ticket to see them in 2025, the highest paid attendance in Citi Field history. We loved giving Pete Alonso, Starling Marte, and Edwin Diaz extra hearty ovations, aware, whether for business reasons or competitive reasons, we might not see them in front of us as Mets again. We nodded empathically at the surprisingly fresh recollection of the 1970 Pirates opportunistically trading for Mudcat Grant while the 1970 Mets added only Ron Herbel and Dean Chance (though that might have been just me responding to a very particular and appropriate prompt from my buddy Ken, who always has a few veteran moves up his sleeve). We allowed ourselves to get our hopes up in the ninth despite the previous eight innings indicating our hopes should stay stashed in our hoodie pockets. We lived up to what George Vecsey wrote about us in 1989’s A Year in the Sun:
“Met fans can be vulgar and unruly, but they have endowed that franchise with amazing goodwill and energy since the team was dropped on New York’s doorstep in 1962.”
Citi Field has mostly tamed the Shea Stadium out of us. We have our outbursts, but they’re not sustained. We mutter rather than maraud after our cheers prove less than inspirational. We show up willingly and joyfully. We go home undefeated. Thanks to a torpid stairway trudge from Promenade to Excelsior dovetailing with construction-altered LIRR timetables, my train strategy on the way out couldn’t execute as well as it had on the way in. Hence, I rode the 7 Super Express past Woodside all the way to Times Square and opted for the 1 to Penn Station before heading east. Lots of Mets fans did more or less same. There weren’t riots in the concourses over the Mets losing by one and the Reds winning by one. There wasn’t audible snarling before our tracks were announced. I did find a couple of empty mini vodka bottles on the three-seater I chose to plop myself down in, but I strongly believe those had been consumed by somebody else with a different agenda (perhaps Meadowlands-bound pilgrims in preparation for the evening’s Giants loss).
Yeah, the Mets are still a fun entity, especially when you share them with the likes of those with whom I shared them at Citi Field Sunday and throughout the week and all season. The Mets as a ballclub will be more fun if they commence a six-game winning streak in Chicago Tuesday night and cross their fingers the Reds lose once. I think they know that. Now they should just go do that.
by Greg Prince on 21 September 2025 10:05 am Having had them imposed on the game we love for only four seasons, we National League fans remain mostly unfamiliar with the behavior of designated hitters during games. We know they come to bat once per order, but unlike their teammates in the lineup, they disappear from our view and our thoughts until they stroll to the plate again. Most DHs, according to my sources (you can do your own research), hang back in usually restricted areas behind the dugout. The word their guild has put out is they’re in the batting cage, swinging away, staying loose, preparing to unleash one mighty swing. In fact, they’re usually playing solitaire, or checking their messages, or filing their nails. A few considerate ones arrange a postgame snack for the guys who’ve played hard in the field all day. David Ortiz was legendary for that, blending sweet and savory flavors that tasted just right, whether the Red Sox had won or lost.
Like any self-respecting designated hitter, Daylen Lile was going about his personal business in the clubhouse of the last-place Washington Nationals early Saturday evening, in his case catching up on his reading — the massive works of Rick Perlstein have been his seasonlong project — when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He figured Miguel Cairo had sent one of his coaches in to remind him he was scheduled to hit in the top of the eleventh. Daylen Lile didn’t need to be reminded by one of the manager’s lieutenants. DHs come equipped with a special pager that vibrates to alert them to their appointments, similar to what restaurants hand patrons when their table is ready. Like the iPads on the bench, it’s a dedicated MLB technology.
The tap, however, did not come from a Nationals coach. It was a figure in a faded orange and blue golf shirt who addressed the visiting DH.
“Daylen Lile?”
“Yes?”
“I require your help.”
Daylen Lile thought this was a misunderstanding. “You must want one of the clubhouse kids. I’m a ballplayer with the other team. Well, I’m a designated hitter. It’s like a ballplayer, but I only play half-ball.”
“No,” the figure said. “I know who you are, and I know what you do. You’re the one I need.”
Daylen Lile slipped a bookmark into his massive copy of The Invisible Bridge and stood up. He was confused.
“What do you want from me?”
“Daylen Lile, I am Destiny.”
“Destiny? Like that’s your name? Isn’t that more a girl’s name? I mean no judgments, man…”
“Destiny is just an identifier I introduce myself with so a ballplayer, even a designated hitter like you, can understand me completely. Consider me, Destiny, something akin to a state of mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“Daylen Lile, I am the Destiny that has been in the Mets’ own hands all season, and I am thisclose to slipping out.”
Daylen Lile wasn’t any clearer on what was going on.
“Look, Mr. Destiny…”
“No need for formality. You can just call me Destiny. Call me Des if you like.”
“Destiny, I don’t even know if you’re supposed to be in here during a game. I only get to be in here during a game because I’m a DH and half the time I serve no purpose.”
“Daylen Lile, you are to serve a great purpose to baseball in the coming minutes. You might even say it is your destiny.”
Daylen Lile looked around. No other Nats personnel or Mets staff was in sight. He saw no choice but to listen.
“Daylen Lile, I am the Destiny that has been in the Mets’ own hands all season…”
“Yeah, you said that.”
“And now I shall continue to say it. The New York Mets have treated me with utter disdain.”
Daylen Lile didn’t have any fewer questions as a result of this explanation.
“If you’re in the Mets’ own hands, Destiny, what are you doing in here right now?”
“Major League Baseball instructs clubs to put their destiny aside once a game starts, so I snuck over from across the way hoping to find you. And now I have found you to ask you to do me a favor — a solid, if you will.”
“What’s that?”
“Get me out of the Mets’ own hands.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t want to be in the Mets’ own hands anymore. At first, I was willing to go along with them happily. I have had a good relationship with the Mets historically, at least in small spurts. These current Mets are not a bad bunch of guys and they’re not a bad bunch of ballplayers.”
“I can see that. We usually have trouble with them, especially up here.”
“Fine, fine gentlemen, really. But when it comes to me being in their own hands, they are clumsy, they are mindless, and it is clear to me that they just don’t care about what their destiny will be.”
“Well, yeah, I guess they have had a tough couple of months, and certainly today’s game…”
Destiny slapped its forehead. “Oh, Daylen Lile, if you only knew. The record the Mets have had since the middle of June! The recurring seven-game losing streaks! The sense that ‘everything’s gonna be fine now’ when they win a couple, the constant refrains of ‘we know we’re better than this’ when they don’t, excusing themselves because the ‘other team’ has good players, too.”
“You know, other teams do have good players,” Daylen Lile interjected. “I mean our record might not show it, but we have good players.”
“Of course you do, Daylen Lile, but does your team have Juan Soto?”
“We used to, I think.”
“Do you have Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor?”
“OK, I get your point. I guess that is a good team they have over there, or at least they have some big-name players. It’s not surprising that they might go to the playoffs this year.”
“Might? MIGHT?”
Daylen Lile didn’t mean to upset Destiny but apparently had. “Did you know this same New York Mets club your Washington Nationals are playing at this very moment used to lead this division.”
Daylen Lile couldn’t remember back that far, but it was true. Once upon a time, the Mets were comfortably ahead of the Philadelphia Phillies, the same Philadelphia Phillies who clinched the National League East earlier in the week with little stress.
“And, Daylen Lile,” Destiny continued. “Did you know that the teams that have taken turns closing in on the Mets for the third — not the first, not the second, but the third — Wild Card were once each so distant in the Mets’ rearview mirror that no Mets fan except for the most paranoid among them bothered to monitor the scores of their games?”
This was news to Daylen Lile, who played for a team so far out of contention that he had to confess he didn’t exactly know who was where in the standings. As a designated hitter, he tried not to bother himself with the details of a baseball season, but he had thought he’d heard some of the players who play the field saying something about the Cincinnati Reds, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and the San Francisco Giants apparently gaining ground on the New York Mets lately. And when he was in the dugout, Daylen Lile had noticed the Mets not playing a very crisp game this very Saturday.
“Oh, Daylen Lile,” Destiny implored. “Consider what has gone on around you only today.”
“Yeah, we’re playing ’em tough!”
“Young Daylen Lile! I’m talking about the Mets! Their wild pitches!. Their errors! Their wasting of another fine effort from young Nolan McLean! Their failure to generate a single run until the eighth inning! Their tying the game in the ninth but failing to win it when they had the bases loaded and one out! Daylen Lile, how many times this season do you suppose the Mets have entered a ninth inning trailing and came back to win?”
Daylen shrugged. “Gotta be a few, right? That’s a good ballclub, and besides, everybody lucks into one of those now and then.”
“NEVER, DAYLEN LILE! NEVER HATH THE 2025 NEW YORK METS COME BACK TO WIN A BASEBALL GAME IN WHICH THEY HAVE TRAILED THEIR OPPOSITION AS THEY ENTERED THE NINTH INNING!”
Daylen Lile could see this was a big deal to Destiny. “It was right there for the taking in the bottom of the ninth,” Destiny detailed. “Mendoza was being uncommonly aggressive. Pinch-hitting his backup catcher because he saw a better matchup. Pinch-running for his backup catcher when that worked. Getting lucky when Lindor was hit, but not hit too much. Soto placing the ball perfectly. Siri…”
With that there was a female voice audible in the Washington Nationals clubhouse.
“Yes, I’m Siri. What can I help you with today/”
“HUSH SIRI, I WASN’T ADDRESSING YOU!” Destiny demanded of the Artificial Intelligence application that only wished to assist. “Sorry, Daylen Lile. Jose Siri has played so little this year, that the devices at Citi Field still think we’re asking for the other Siri when we invoke the little-used outfielder. Anyway, where was I?”
“Um, Soto placed the ball perfectly…”
“Yes, thank you, Daylen Lile. Juan Soto singled, Jose…you know his last name…dashes home from second, the game is tied, the Mets have runners on second and first, then Lindor and Soto execute a double-steal, Alonso is intentionally walked. How did they not win it then and there?”
“Our pitcher is pretty good.”
“Daylen Lile, your pitcher is not the point. The point is I am Destiny, I have been in the Mets’ own hands throughout this endless season of dismay and disappointment and downright disgust, and the Mets still don’t know how to deploy me. Nimmo strikes out! Marte strikes out! They don’t win in the ninth! Even with the inane automatic runner and getting away with what was probably batter’s interference in the tenth inning, they couldn’t score!”
“Listen, I feel ya, Destiny. But I’m still not sure what this has to do with me.”
“Daylen Lile, you are due up second in the top of the eleventh inning.”
“I know. Hitting against Diaz is gonna be tough.”
“Daylen Lile, you will not hit against Edwin Diaz.”
“Miggy’s taking me out? But I’m slashing better than eight-hundred!”
“No, Daylen Lile, you remain in the game. Carlos Mendoza has taken out Edwin Diaz.”
“What? But that dude threw only…couldn’t have been too many pitches.”
“Edwin Diaz threw only seven pitches in the tenth inning.”
“He was nasty, from what I could tell on the monitors in here when I looked up from my book. Did he pitch last night or something? You can’t overuse your closer, you know.”
“He got up in the bullpen briefly. That will be Carlos Mendoza’s excuse eventually.”
“You can tell the future, Destiny?”
“I can tell what Carlos Mendoza is going to say. He says the same things all the time. And I can tell you now that you will face Tyler Rogers in the eleventh inning.”
“Rogers isn’t bad.”
“Daylen Lile, this is not a matter of one reliever being adequate on a given day. This is about a journey in which I, Destiny, would gladly be with the Mets if the Mets would have me, I mean REALLY have me and embrace me as theirs. But they mishandle me so. I want nothing more to do with them.”
“Did you bet on the Reds or something? I keep noticing commercials where a lady in a bubble bath says you can do that.”
“This is not about the ‘Reds,’ Daylen Lile. The Reds are only a vessel for what is due the Mets for how they have approached 2025, for how they have shamed me while all but letting me go of their own volition.”
“Fine. I’m gonna hit against Rogers. What am I supposed to do.?”
“It is your destiny, Daylen Lile.”
“Huh?”
“Swing hard, Daylen Lile. A runner will be on base. Swing hard, Daylen Lile. Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.”
“Am I gonna hit one out of the park?”
“You don’t have to, Daylen Lile. Just hit it to deep center, and your destiny will take care of itself. Someday, The Daylen Lile Game will be spoken of in varying tones up and down the Northeast Corridor.”
“Um, OK.” Daylen Lile felt his DH pager vibrate, so he grabbed his batting gloves and prepared to return to the visitors’ dugout. “One thing, though, Destiny…”
“Yes, Daylen Lile?”
“Even if I do what you say I am destined to do in the top of the eleventh, the Mets will have a chance to bat in the bottom of the inning. We already used our best reliever for two innings. Isn’t it possible that my teammates in the field won’t stop them from winning?”
“Daylen Lile, how long have you been in the league?”
“I’m a rookie.”
“Oh, Daylen Lile. You have much to learn in the way of the New York Mets and their conduct within seasons like 2025. Now just go out there and help release me from the Mets’ own hands. I am Destiny, and at the rate they are going, I cannot be there for them much longer.”
by Jason Fry on 20 September 2025 8:57 am Defiance isn’t really in our wheelhouse as Mets fans.
Hope? Sure. The sunny version sometimes, though generally that’s only seen in the abstract. Stubborn, scared, trampled but still inexhaustible hope? Now we’re talking — whenever Tug McGraw‘s famous YA GOTTA BELIEVE is invoked, I hear not just the hope but also the desperation — the burden being carried by GOTTA. (To say nothing of the snark — McGraw was totally mocking the highly mockable M. Donald Grant, and despite later mythmaking, at the beginning that’s all he was doing.)
But hey, we contain multitudes. Sometimes defiance gets its day.
In the top of the third Monday night against the Nats, the Mets turned in the kind of inning that contributed to their long post-June swoon. Brandon Sproat started off taking aim at his own foot, walking Paul DeJong and throwing away a little swinging bunt by Jorge Alfaro, with DeJong scoring after Juan Soto didn’t show particular interest in backing up the play. That tied the game, but just wait: CJ Abrams doubled to bring home Alfaro; Josh Bell hit a drive to left-center that hit Jose Siri in the glove and popped out, scoring Abrams; and someone named Daylen Lile hit a single to center that Siri approached with the kind of route generally taken by foraging rodents or bees. That scored Bell, and everything Siri did from that point on was generously doused in boos by the Citi Field faithful.
(Poor Siri. I mean, he’ll now almost certainly lose his half-job to Tyrone Taylor, just spotted rehabbing at Syracuse, and that’s not unjust. But up until now he was the Met whom fans would probably forget on a Sporcle quiz, and by the middle innings he’d thoroughly failed to do the only things he was on the roster to do and being forgotten would have felt like bliss. Also: It’s not good when something happens in center field that makes you pine for Cedric Mullins.)
4-1 Nats, and on Bluesky I offered a digital boooo but added this: “Fuck them, we’re still gonna win.”
Not as t-shirt worthy as YA GOTTA BELIEVE, but you roll with what the dice give you.
Part of my defiance was the Mets have been hitting and the Nats’ pitching has been execrable. Part of it was that the Nats were also having a burn-the-tape game on defense, with poor Dylan Crews playing every ball in his vicinity like it was a live grenade. And part of it, I suppose, was that the season’s down to a week and change, so why not spit in the eye of fate?
The Mets took a run off the Nats’ lead in the bottom of the third, aided by some more shaky defense, then unleashed hell in the fourth, with the culmination a three-run homer from Soto to dead center. I’m closing up the house in Maine, so I bounded around the living room hollering FUCK YOU! over and over again, with no neighbors to bother except possibly a querulous chipmunk or two. (Squeaky little voice emerges from a burrow: “It’s sleepy time … actually fuck you!”)
A shaky Huascar Brazoban outing aside, that fourth inning killed the Nats, a young team whose tank looks like it’s on E despite innings left to travel. Brooks Raley cleaned up for Brazoban, Ryne Stanek looked good, Tyler Rogers looked great, and Ryan Helsley had an honest-to-goodness solid inning, a 1-2-3 inning with no asterisk needed for line drives or other red flags. Chris Devenski had some trouble finishing up, but by then I’d obeyed the chipmunks and was out cold on the couch, so all was well from my perspective.
The Reds won, reshuffling the deck of wild-card pursuers to move ahead of the Diamondbacks (who lost), the fading Giants (ditto) and the at this point mostly theoretical Cardinals (who won). We’ll keep an eye on all that of course, but if the Mets keep winning — or just win enough — all should be well, or well enough to move on to the next existential fan crisis.
Eh, that sounded a little mealy-mouthed. Will work on getting back to defiance before the afternoon game.
by Greg Prince on 19 September 2025 11:30 am There was a midweek day game peeking out at me from behind a corner. That’s usually how I peek in at midweek day games. The TV in my office isn’t something I can watch full-on directly from my desk; thanks to the modern-enough set’s placement inside an ancient, undersized “entertainment center,” I can only be so entertained while I’m working. It’s probably better that way. When 1:10 PM rolls around, even if the Mets are playing, I’m usually supposed to be engaged by what’s on this screen, not distracted by what’s on that screen.
Yet once in a great while, you have to leave behind both screens and see what’s going on from whence the images are emanating. That is to say that for the first time in a couple of seasons, I allowed myself a midweek afternoon game in person.
In September, no less. This September, which isn’t just any September, because no September is just any September when something is riding on the outcome of every game, whatever day it’s scheduled, whatever time it starts. In other Septembers, it’s almost a badge of honor, however perverse, to engage in your team’s evaporation from sight. “You’re gonna go see the Mets today? Why? They’re out of it!” In those Septembers, the horizon is barren. You’ll miss baseball when it’s gone, you’re pretty sure, but you won’t miss this team that’s playing out the string.
In this September, the 2025 Mets of right now are still figuring out what tableau will fill their immediate horizon — emptiness or October. Every game all year counts the same. These games in late September suddenly count more than anything else. Hence, what could have been one last fun detour from the everyday mundane became what we within our obsession call important.
I don’t know if the kid on the platform at Jamaica understood the Wild Card implications of the Mets and Padres at 1:10 on a Thursday afternoon. He just knew his dad was taking him to a game when other kids’ dads weren’t doing the same for them. The kid, 5 or 6 years old at most, wore a jersey that said deGROM 48 on the back. The dad wore HERNANDEZ 17. As we awaited the connection at Woodside, the dad asked my advice regarding the next transfer. Would I be on the LIRR that takes you to Mets-Willets Point, or the 7 that takes you to essentially the same place? I recommended the 7 in this case, given the wait time for the Port Washington train whose stop near Citi Field is convenient only if it gets you there for first pitch. The next one of those wouldn’t.
When this game loomed on the calendar, and my friend Jeff told me he was coming up from the DC area and suggested we get together for it, the LIRR’s availability took center stage. There was talk of an engineers strike starting on September 18. How the hell do I get to a game without the LIRR? I studied bus routes and road maps, and wondered if I was capable of driving to a ballgame for the first time in twenty years. But then the LIRR issues were submitted to some sort of panel in Washington, and if there’s going to be a strike, it won’t be this season. The trains, as they say, are being made to run on time, or as close as the LIRR ever gets to it. Either way, I told the dad that he and his kid were better off taking the 7. The dad asked if they could follow me. I said sure. It’s just a flight of stairs here and a flight of stairs there, but I don’t mind being my fellow Mets fans’ pregame commuting security blanket.
The kid, I noticed, was making like the midweek day game itself, peeking out from behind a corner, specifically one of the pillars on the platform on Jamaica, while his dad and I spoke. He seemed more excited than wary of his day at the ballpark, but a stranger is a stranger and a kid is a kid.
“Is this his first game?” I asked the dad.
“No, not his first, but it’s our first ‘just the boys’ game,” meaning him and his son. The dad delighted in telling me of his scheme. He snuck out to the car and left the deGrom jersey inside. Then, when the kid got in the vehicle and saw the jersey, Dad informed him, “You’re not going to school today.” The kid had been asking all season to go to a game. His wish was coming true. The dad’s dad did this for him once, surprising him with sanctioned truancy at Shea Stadium, and now it was his turn. The dad loved the story so much, he repeated it to a pair of young women who wandered by a moment later.
Me, I got chills just thinking about it. My dad never pulled me out of school to take me to a game — we weren’t “boys,” exactly — but he got me home from a serendipitously arranged eye doctor appointment the morning of October 16, 1969, so I could see clearly the conclusion to Game Five of the World Series. Oh yeah, I’d lead these boys up that first flight of stairs at Woodside, wait for them to get their OMNY cards, wait for them to tap themselves through the turnstiles, and then lead them up that second flight of stairs until they were on the same 7 train as me. That kid was going to go a Mets game on Thursday if I had any small thing to do with it.
Getting to and inside the ballpark for a day game is a string of small things, from clearing one’s own decks, to divining and achieving transit connections, to negotiating the entrance labyrinth (security plucking and confiscating my sealed 20-ounce bottle of diet carbonated beverage product in May appears to have been a one-time affront to my soft drink sensibilities, as it and I were left alone this time) to deciding whether, in a day when everything’s a little rushed, if I have a minute to stop off at a lineless concession en route to the seats. It was past one o’clock. I wanted to make first pitch, but I didn’t want to greet Jeff emptyhanded. Plus, you know, it’s a ballgame. “Two hot dogs, two pretzels, please.” I can miss a batter. I prefer not to miss lunch.
When I met up with Jeff, I quickly sat down so nobody behind us would have to strain to clearly see Jonah Tong working to Padres batters. Sounds unremarkable, right? You’d think. In the next half-inning or the half-inning after that, somebody in the row in front of us decided that rather than swiftly finding his seat, he’d greet his friend who rose to meet him with a good, lengthy standing conversation. Jeff first, then I, requested a lowering of their bodies into their chairs so we could witness the hitting and the pitching down below. The late arriver among the two of them gave us two backwards flicks of his right wrist, the not necessarily universal symbol for “just give us a sec, OK?” It was rather rude, but it did gift us a handy gesture to activate every time he walked by us the rest of the day.
Pete Alonso’s own gesture involves swinging a bat mightily and sending a ball far. One-nothing in the bottom of the first. Tong’s right hand in the top of third was busy putting Fernando Tatis in scoring position via a single, an errant pickoff, and a wild pitch. Tatis came home on a Luis Arraez sac fly, facilitated by a ragged throw from Brandon Nimmo. The next sound you heard was Manny Machado whiffing on strike three for the third out and Jeff and me applauding heartily.
In the bottom of the third, something approximating a Met attack gets underway versus Randy Vasquez. The lately useful Cedric Mullins singles. Francisco Lindor singles to right. Mullins races to third. Lindor trails to second. Tatis believes he’s going to nab Lindor at second. He does not. Juan Soto makes the most of a groundout. He makes it into his 100th RBI of the season, scoring Mullins and pushing Lindor to third. Pete’s gesture is limited to a silent thank you toward Vasquez for a full-count walk. Nimmo is about to come up with runners on first and third and a chance to make us forget about that throw.
“How many runs do they get out of this?” Jeff asked me. “Zero, one, two, or three?”
I was thinking zero, but I said two to be optimistic.
We got three. Nimmo homered. We were up, 5-1, and to the extent Mets fans can relax in September of 2025, we almost did. Jonah apparently did. That one silver-platter run he served up to the Padres in the third stayed lonely. Whatever loss of confidence in his fastball that overcame him the previous Friday was restored in the interim. Tong went five and positioned his team and himself for a win. He positioned us to leave our seats with enough faith that the lead would still be there when returned.
 A couple of the boys, peeking around one of the corners at Citi Field and seeing a Mets win. Why get up from a game going well? Because somebody asked me to. About ten minutes after Jeff told me he’d be getting us tickets to this game, I heard from another good friend, Matt, that he had come into a pair for September 18, and would I like to join him? Couldn’t be in two seats at once, but we could say hi. Matt suggested the Shea Bridge for a stop ‘n’ chat. It was a real throwback. In the early days of Citi Field, when nobody knew anywhere else to go, it was “let’s meet on the bridge” in some appointed inning. I’ve mostly stopped doing that in recent years partly because now Citi Field is as familiar as the back of my dismissive wrist-flicking hand, partly because my fascination with getting up midgame and walking around has faded. That was the one thing I immediately embraced about Citi when I wasn’t resenting it for not being Shea, that you could meet somebody and stand somewhere and follow the game and not have people unleash their own trademark gestures at you.
One thing I’d forgotten about Shea Bridge during a midweek day game is, if it’s not bitter cold, it’s unbearably hot. Ah yes, the many climates of Citi Field. Where Jeff and I sat, in Greg-endorsed 326, we reveled in shade and comfort, wrist-flicking jerk notwithstanding. On the bridge, the sun beat down on us like that Twilight Zone episode where there are two suns. The meeting with Matt was delightful and, by unanimous consent, brief.
It was the kind of day when five splendid innings from the starter — this starter in particular — would bring about no regrets that it wasn’t six or more. Tong recovered so nicely from his prior meltdown, it was like it never happened. He struck out eight Padres before Carlos Mendoza opted to trust his bullpen. What choice did we have but to trust those relievers, too? Tyler Rogers in the sixth, Brooks Raley in the seventh, Gregory Soto (who got dinged but not dented by balls hit at him) in the eighth, and, with the lead up to 6-1, Edwin Diaz in the ninth to close it. The “Narco” entrance doesn’t really hit as hard in daytime as it does at night, but Alonso and Nimmo had hit hard, and Diaz didn’t take anything off his pitches, no matter what time it was. It was a one-two-three save in everything but name, a win for the boys in orange and blue, whether they wore their own names down on the field or were the father and son cosplaying hooky as Hernandez and deGrom on the train.
Jeff and I flicked our wrists and high-fived before finding our own respective trains, his the LIRR back to Penn Station en route to Amtrak, mine the 7 to Woodside for the 4:24 eastbound. I encountered a later-in-life version of my friend from the Jamaica platform on my brief ride west. There was a guy, probably a little older than me, wearing a contemporary road jersey stitched with AGEE 20 on the back. I complimented him on his choice of player. “My favorite,” he said. He was part of a group of other men of a certain age. Midweek day games seem to bring out such crews en masse. This one was in a good mood after the Mets’ 6-1 victory and all its playoff chase implications, even the one Padres fan in their tribe. His role was to absorb good-natured ribbing over his choice of team, which he did with a smile. Boys being boys, regardless of age, their self-imposed mission was to decide whether they wanted to make the same train I was aiming for at Woodside, or if they wanted to extend their good times at a bar in Woodside. Something about me on Thursday emitted “he looks like he knows where he’s going” vibes, because like the dad asking about the 7 train, they looked to me for advice.
“How far to Woodside?”
“Two stops.”
“Are there bars in Woodside?”
“There’s nothing BUT bars in Woodside.”
“We’ll just follow you.”
I wasn’t going to take them to Donovan’s, but staircases were my specialty, so I shrugged, “sure,” and didn’t flick my wrist at any of them. When we landed at Woodside, the Agee guy found his way down the stairs and into the station on his own. The others were behind me last I looked. I reached the concourse level and nodded at the Agee guy. The other fellas had not yet emerged from the crowd. Or maybe they spied a bar through a window and bolted down the back staircase to 61st St.
“Hey,” the Agee guy asked me. “Where did they go?”
I shrugged again. The game was over and I had the 4:24 to catch.
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