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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 17 September 2025 11:27 pm Here’s a sign of progress: The Mets lost, and I wasn’t mad at them.
Last week? I was incensed to an unhealthy degree by everything they did wrong, waiting with teeth bared for them to shoot themselves in the foot again. But Wednesday night? Yes, David Peterson gave up a grand slam to turn a 2-2 tie into a 6-2 Padres lead that would prove insurmountable, and no, Peterson shouldn’t do things like that. But he gave it up to Manny Machado, who’s an awfully good player and an even better one with the bases loaded.
Even down by four, the Mets kept scratching and clawing, working good at-bats against a parade of San Diego relievers — and coming within a whisker or two of pulling out an unlikely victory.
Whatever else you say about it, that was a deeply weird baseball game.
Dom Hamel escaped the first-ever run put on his big-league ledger when Luis Arraez got thrown out at second a moment before Elias Diaz‘s foot touched home plate — and Diaz had broken it down because Machado, who thinks everything is best done cool and casual, indicated he should ease up. (Congratulations to Hamel on escaping ectoplasm as a Mets ghost — and for becoming the Mets’ MLB-record 46th pitcher used this year. I’ll contain my excitement about the record, though, because cycling arms on and off the roster is the new normal and you can bet someone will use 47 pitchers next year.)
Francisco Alvarez got the Mets within two runs by driving a ball off the very top of the orange padding in right-center, a ball that bounced straight up before coming back, Dave Augustine-style, to Fernando Tatis Jr. The umps conferred and ruled it a home run, for reasons best left unexplored if you’re a Met fan, because I still have no idea what it hit that wasn’t orange padding or how the umpires determined that.
Then there was Juan Soto, who came up as the tying run in the seventh against Mason Miller, who really probably could throw a ball through a wall if he chose to. Miller got ahead of Soto 1-2 on a trio of fastballs all north of 100 MPH, changed Soto’s eye line with a slider below the zone, and then went back to the gas. That’s a time-honored way of getting anybody out, but Soto isn’t anybody: He whistled the ball down the left-field line, two or three inches on the wrong side of the foul pole. (Miller, undeterred, came back with a perfectly placed slider on the outside of the zone to fan Soto, then got Pete Alonso on an all-slider diet. Dude is good.)
And oh that ninth inning: Brett Baty turned in a very solid AB against Padres closer Robert Suarez, rapping a leadoff single on the seventh pitch. Alvarez, who looked compromised by his various busted fingers, made an out, as did Mark Vientos, pinch-hitting for Cedric Mullins. (A bit of an odd decision: Vientos couldn’t tie the game and is much slower than Mullins.) Francisco Lindor worked a walk to give Soto another chance to tie the game, and Soto turned Suarez’s fifth pitch into a bullet up the middle — one that, alas, Suarez corralled with some combination of glove, hand and midsection.
That’s a loss — an unfortunate one, to be sure, but not one where the Mets let the roof cave in on them or seemed to sleepwalk through the proceedings. They pushed and pushed in a game that felt like it gave us everything — well, everything except the W.
by Jason Fry on 17 September 2025 12:03 am Did any fanbase need a laugher more than we did?
OK, maybe Tuesday night wasn’t exactly a laugher — call it a chuckler, perhaps — but a five-run first and a pair of homers in the second took away a lot of the tension, allowing us to monitor the “piggyback” experiment that saw Sean Manaea take over for Clay Holmes with relative dispassion. (And it went pretty well!)
Facing Michael King — like Holmes a Yankee reliever turned starter for someone else — in the bottom of the first, the Mets singled four straight times to take a 1-0 lead. Mark Vientos (who hit in buzzard’s luck all night) then spanked a ball right back to King, kicking off a 1-2-3 double play that seemed like it might scuttle hopes for a big inning. But not so fast: Jeff McNeil doubled in two and Brett Baty crashed a homer into Carbonation Ridge for a 5-0 lead. An inning later, Francisco Lindor homered off King and Pete Alonso absolutely annihilated a baseball, sending it into the rarely explored second deck above the Great Wall of Flushing.
The Padres poked at the Mets with a pair of solo shots off Holmes and another one off Manaea, but the game never felt particularly in doubt, and after three months of pretty much nothing but doubt, that felt pretty good.
* * *
Emily and I briefly interrupted cheering on the Mets to switch over to Milb.tv, where the Brooklyn Cyclones were playing for the South Atlantic League title in Spartanburg, S.C., against the rather amazingly monikered Hub City Spartanburgers. The Cyclones won, 2-1, and are league champs.
It was an odd year for the Cyclones: They crushed the Sally League’s northern division in the first half with a 46-20 record, then went 26-39 in the second half. That first half was largely engineered by guys who moved on to Binghamton (which also has its eyes on a title), but it gave their successors a playoff berth, and they played beautifully when it mattered, going on a 4-0 run against Greensboro and Hub City for a title. Flags fly forever; here’s to seeing a new one fluttering over Coney Island next year.
by Jason Fry on 15 September 2025 12:36 pm We’re all exhausted, so let’s hurry through the first seven or so innings of Sunday’s desperate affair against the Rangers: A young pitcher was great, the Mets hit a little though not a lot, Carlos Mendoza made an understandable though anxiety-provoking move to get aforementioned young pitcher out amid early signs that the roof might be weakening, and none of it mattered because normally at least moderately reliable members of the bullpen blew the lead.
That was the script on Saturday and on Sunday too, with only the names changing Mad Libs style. On Saturday it was Brandon Sproat (blameless young starter); Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto (fitful sources of offense); and Tyler Rogers and Edwin Diaz (blowers of lead). On Sunday it was Nolan McLean (blameless young starter); Francisco Alvarez, Soto and Brandon Nimmo (sources of fitful offense); and Brooks Raley and Reed Garrett (blowers of lead).
On Saturday the game sputtered from 2-0 Mets to 2-2 to 3-2 Rangers; on Sunday we got the same descent from 2-0 Mets to 2-2, and if you didn’t see 3-2 Rangers coming, well, I guess you’re lucky to have been in a coma for the last eight games, and perhaps since mid-June.
And the Mets tried their damnedest to engineer a ninth straight loss: In the ninth, Diaz immediately hung a slider to Kyle Higashioka to give the Rangers a leadoff baserunner, with pinch-runner Ezequiel Duran piercing through the usual Diaz Maginot line to steal second and then getting bunted to third by the pesty Cody Freeman. Disaster was at hand, but equally pesty Josh Smith lined a ball straight into Lindor’s glove and Duran was trapped off third. Double play, and the Mets had survived.
That felt like deliverance, except nothing feels like deliverance when you’ve lost eight straight and 999,999 out of a million, or whatever the post-June 13 record is now. Again, going back to Saturday, hadn’t the Mets seemed to catch an enormous break when hefty wrecking ball Rowdy Tellez saw a lead-grabbing double take a right-turn bounce into the stands, allowing Diaz to escape the eighth with the game merely tied? That reprieve lasted all of an inning, so the jubilation on Sunday was understandably muted.
(Incidentally: Was this weekend’s timely hitting and smooth fielding from the dismissed-as-Vogelbachian Tellez an indication that I haven’t appreciated his contributions as a player, or a symptom of the kind of things that happen when you’re losing 999,999 out of a million? Show your work, class.)
The Mets did nothing in the bottom of the ninth, though Cedric Mullins did record a single (not a misprint!), and so the game was handed off to Ryne Stanek for the 10th, with Smith beamed down to second base from Rob Manfred’s brain. Smith promptly scooted over to third on a flyout, after which Stanek couldn’t seem to decide whether he wanted to pitch to Joc Pederson or not, eventually walking him. I’d say I didn’t want to face Pederson with the Rangers another fly ball away from grabbing the lead, but I didn’t want to face anybody at that point.
But Stanek then changed speeds and location with textbook execution against Adolis Garcia, fanning him on a slider in the dirt. That brought Tellez to the plate, because of course it did … and he hit a harmless pop-up to Mark Vientos, because baseball loves when you try to outguess it. Stanek stormed off the mound shaking his mane and screaming, and this time it didn’t seem like even the slightest overreaction.
Lindor headed for second as the Stupid Runner Dreamed Up by People Who Don’t Like Baseball, with Soto and Alonso on tap and the Rangers turning to someone named Luis Curvelo. Curvelo eyed Soto and sensibly sent him to first with four imaginary pitches, giving us the answer to the oh-so-modern trivia question of “How can someone be the first pitcher in an inning and face runners on first and second without having thrown a pitch?”
We were in a baseball situation where the Mets could win the game in an assortment of ways, including ones that didn’t feature another hit. It’s one of those scenarios that’s interesting and delightful on a sleepy summer afternoon when you’re not gasping for your postseason life, which meant on Sunday it was the furthest thing from interesting or delightful.
In a vain effort to keep my anxiety in check I started riffling mentally through the possibilities as Alonso took a slider that nicked the bottom of the opposite edge of the plate for strike one (not ideal but fine) and then spat on a bait pitch lower and farther outside and meant to entice him into expanding the zone and putting himself in a hole (a good sign).
I reshuffled the deck of possibilities: fly ball deep enough for Lindor to take third; little squibber of a fielder’s choice that moves the runners up; double play but Lindor moves to third; single that loads the bases; Curvelo holds onto one too long for an HBP…
As I was cataloging, Curvelo went to the sinker, leaving one in the middle of the plate.
Oh yeah, Pete could also hit one over the fucking fence. That would work too.
After the game, the narrative was about Alonso once again saving the Mets’ season, which was probably unavoidable but struck me as a little overheated. That was October and this is trying to get there; there are still an alarming number of days left on the calendar, a series of tough opponents, and the weight of that post-June 13 record still pressing down.
The Mets survived; until Tuesday let’s settle for describing it that way. But hey, at this point survival would be strategy enough.
by Greg Prince on 14 September 2025 12:07 pm The fans try so hard. I can say that as an observer rather than as a participant on Saturday, sitting as I was in the zone of detached decorum known as Citi Field’s press box. I couldn’t react, except in my head, to every entreaty from the A/V squad that urged the crowd to keep urging on the Mets. All day the call and response was effective in that the sound system and video board called for cheers and the cheers materialized. When you’re watching or listening from home, you might question your engagement, never mind your sanity. Your team has lost seven in a row. Your team is almost actively eschewing a playoff spot. Your team is doing its version of its best to overcome a one-run deficit that materialized after your team had very recently led by two; it would have been so much easier to have continued leading, but that is no longer here nor there. It is your team and you have opted to be in their midst. You 41,000 or so are on hand to enjoy and, when enjoyment becomes less accessible, engage.
“Let’s Go Mets!” and associated noises considered helpful to the home-team cause rose as requested. They might have arisen, anyway. The fans are familiar with the chant. They invented it in 1962 at the Polo Grounds. They kept it going in good times and less good times, both of which permeated Shea Stadium prior to its closing in 2008 and Citi Field since it opened in 2009. The undercard to Saturday’s game was a friendly clash between Team Shea and Team Citi in the Mets Alumni Classic, a stylized version of Old Timers Day. Old times weren’t so old when you realized more than half of the alumni were Mets at Citi Field or had returned as opponents to Citi Field. Even those whose career splits are exclusive to Shea didn’t go back as far as Shea itself did. A handful from Team Shea played in the majors in the 1980s. A bunch more showed up at Shea in the 1990s. That’s apparently not recent, somewhat to my dismay. I’ve lodged an unofficial protest that the 1990s can now be accurately classified as relatively ancient. We’ll see how that goes.
No doubt many among the 41,000 or so were on hand specifically to enjoy the Alumni Classic. I know I was in the press box for that reason. Who wouldn’t want a chance to see dozens of former Mets put on Met uniforms? Who wouldn’t want to see how gray in the beard complements the white of the unis? Who wouldn’t want to be reminded that the Mets in the past quarter-century have provided a base of operations to several superstars and strings of supersubs, all meshing enough so that they may have lost ballgames but never our faith? We rooted for all those guys. Quietly, I continued on Saturday to root for those guys. No rooting aloud where I sat, but we all had a good laugh when a pop fly Josh Thole should have had fell in on the infield in the mini-game the older fellas played and the official scorer got on his mic and announced, with a wink in his voice, “E-2.”
Josh Thole is an older fella now. He’s a whole lot younger than I am, but we know how baseball works. The kids become veterans, and the veterans become old-timers, and we at heart stay kids, even if we were 46 when we first saw Josh Thole catch. One night in 2012, Josh Thole did all he was supposed to, as did Mike Baxter, as did Johan Santana, and one afternoon in 2025, we were glad to see them again in the same place that they combined on the no-hitter we had dreamed of since we’d really been kids. There was a lot of that kind of confluence with the alumni present. Prior to the game, a few answered questions about what it was like in the good times — which for a few of them referred to most of 2006 — and the less good times — which meant 2007 for those same guys. Funny how the shortfalls of September 2007 would come up inside Met walls in September 2025.
Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and Carlos Delgado all lived beyond September 2007. They seemed happy to be back representing Team Shea. They seemed enamored of being with one another and mingling with the others on the press conference podium: Curtis Granderson, Benny Agbayani, Ike Davis. Loosening up on the field were the likes of Mike Piazza and Kelly Johnson and Pedro Martinez and Kevin Plawecki and R.A. Dickey and Jay Payton and Matt Harvey and Rey Ordoñez and Bartolo Colon and Josh Satin. Even if they weren’t all teammates back in the day (or technically today, given the Shea vs. Citi motif), they were all Mets once and they were all Mets now. Some won awards. Some won pennants. Some never exactly excelled nor moved the needle in the standings. Everybody was applauded, including former managers Jerry Manuel, Terry Collins, Willie Randolph, and Bobby Valentine, each of whom was told at some point to clean out his office at Shea or Citi. Festivities of this nature are an opportunity to remember the best and only the best of those who relished putting on a Mets uniform again.
 “Don’t collapse.” Still, hard not to look at a few of those guys who didn’t hold onto an in-the-bag division title in 2007 and not think of that. Those who collapsed as Mets got up as people and expressed empathy for the Mets who are unwittingly in the process of repeating their history. Each among Jose and the Carloses preached positivity, a one-day-at-a-time approach, and playing hard. If only advising made it so, but athletes of all vintage thrive on steadiness and confidence. The Alumni Classic game itself didn’t necessarily exemplify the hard-playing ethos (Edgardo Alfonzo is beyond the age of diving for grounders to third), but fun is fun and this was fun. I saw Rick Reed pitch to Juan Lagares. If I were ranking surreal scenarios, this would lead the league.
Sixty-three years since “Let’s Go Mets” was first emphatically suggested across the bleachers, the box seats, and the grandstand where the franchise first cleared its throat, those three little Team Polo words inevitably come up on their own at Mets games, because it feels good to say and it feels like a contribution to make happen what we want to happen. We can’t hit, hit with power, run, throw, or catch — nor can the Mets when it matters most this month, you are tempted to add — but we can chant with purpose and shout with encouragement. It’s not the sort of thing you do at home. But you’re not home. You’re in a ballpark where noise is made intentionally. You want the Mets to make noise not synthetically but actually.
In the bottom of the ninth, you want Juan Soto to touch home. He’s on third, having done his job very well his last couple of at-bats. The Mets had led, 1-0, since the fifth, when Francisco Lindor’s friskiness on the basepaths blended beautifully with some Texas Ranger clumsiness on a ball Pete Alonso had lifted to the not very deep outfield (“E-4 on the throw” was announced with a straight voice). The Mets hadn’t won a 1-0 game since July of 2024. Mets fans would have settled for that modern rarity. Brandon Sproat did all he could do give it to them. In his first Citi Field start, Sproat exhibited nothing but command. Seventy pitches, all but seventeen of them for strikes over six innings. You could have seen him keep doing what he was doing and have plenty to cheer organically about.
But Sproat was removed after six (something was muttered about his velocity dropping), and the 1-0 lead was passed to Brooks Raley for safe keeping in the seventh, then expanded upon by Soto when he homered toward College Point Blvd. in the bottom of the inning. Nobody who has watched every game Juan Soto has played as a Met would term his day-to-day performance spectacular, but an examination of his productivity belies impressions. That home run was his fortieth of the season, accomplished the same week he ran past thirty in the stolen base department. In 2025, Juan Soto messed around and got a 40/30. Just another year at the office.
Soto’s blast made it Mets 2 Rangers 0. The best efforts of Tyler Rogers and Edwin Diaz, combined with some not great moments from others stationed away from the mound, didn’t prevent making it Rangers 3 Mets 2 by the bottom of the ninth. That’s where things stood in the ninth when Soto came up with one out and singled. Yes, Juan was doing his job very well his last couple of at-bats. Ronny Mauricio did his job extremely well in his one and only at-bat, which came with two outs. Gathering dust most days, Ronny was pulled from the shadows to pinch-hit. He lined a single to right. Soto, who usually uses his deceptive speed to steal, dashed from first to third, carrying with him the winning run if he could be driven a final ninety feet. And if Mauricio could get an uncommon jump, and Brandon Nimmo could lash the ball somewhere that would let Ronny get on his horse, well, that’s what all the cheering was for. The call was for noise. The response was absolute. Everybody being urged to urge on the Mets urged on the Mets.
Nimmo no doubt understood the urgency and attempted to respond in kind. Brandon’s played in front of Mets crowds longer than any contemporary Met, not to mention a lot of those Classic alumni. His Met tenure exceeds those of Fonzie, Mike, and Al Leiter, to name three Mets Hall of Famers who had soaked in their share of applause hours before. He’s been on the right side of myriad Let’s Go Mets chants, the programmed kind and the spontaneous kind.
Saturday, when he struck out with the tying run on third and winning run on first, he heard boos. Nobody told the fans to boo. They figured it out for themselves. The Mets had just lost their eighth in a row. They had, for a few hours (until the Dodgers crushed the Giants), lost their fingertip grip on the final Wild Card slot. They had transformed a beautiful day at the ballpark into yet another chapter in their ongoing horror story.
 A true-life story. The fans try so hard. Ultimately, however, they can only respond to what they see, not what they are told.
by Greg Prince on 13 September 2025 10:07 am Jacob deGrom versus Jonah Tong. The Jonah Tong of the past versus the Jacob DeGrom of the future. The Met pitching prospect who excelled amid a glittering class of his promising peers versus the Met pitching prospect at the outset of a journey he’s pursuing alongside those possessing arms full of potential like his.
It was too good to be true. It really was.
The Jacob deGrom we knew and loved and were forsaken by when the money was too good to pass up elsewhere returned to Citi Field Friday night, and Jacob came home with a vengeance. Actually, Jake went about his business as he usually did as a Met. He was elegant, he was efficient, he walked off the mound with nothing to regret on his end. The only difference from the deGrom we savored as ours from 2014 to 2022, besides the TEXAS on his chest, is he’d had eight runs scored on his behalf by his teammates.
The Jonah Tong with whom we’ve just commenced to acquaint ourselves and we wish to embrace as part of the solution to all that ails us was the collateral damage in deGrom’s homecoming. He’d looked so ready to rock against the Marlins and Reds. He did rock in those starts, one a win, one a loss, but both revelations in their own manner. Friday night revealed a 22-year-old pitcher, no matter how highly rated for what it is believed he can do, is sometimes simply a 22-year-old kid who has a ways to go.
The Rangers were immune to Tong’s talents. One struck out against him. One flied out. The other seven reached base. He faced all nine only once. Two walks preceded four two-out hits, two before and two after another walk. It didn’t feel as if balls were being whacked unmercifully, but it did feel like the pitcher was. None of it felt good. You wanted to see Tong take a breath, find his poise, assert his authority. You would have settled for a line drive finding a glove, anything to get him out of the first inning. Instead, the first inning went on without him. He threw forty pitches. Twenty of them were balls. Six batters crossed the plate. The night that began with visions of a transcendent pitching duel didn’t get to the bottom of the first before it was over.
If I’d let myself, I could have teared up watching deGrom get loose as a Texas Ranger inside Citi Field. This shouldn’t have been happening. For all the business reasons I accepted three Decembers ago, it killed me to see this century’s Seaver pitch against us rather than for us. But a game was about to be played, and I wanted deGrom’s team to lose, so I didn’t bother with tears. And as Tong sunk in the quicksand that enveloped him, I could feel another tear or two developing, indicative of emotions that don’t materialize as a matter of course when the Mets routinely fall behind. I felt so bad for the kid. He was flailing and groping, and as batter after batter got the best of him, it was clearly crushing him and me. But a game was in progress. No time for tears.
 When the game was over, my eyes were dry. Sadness isn’t coming to the fore when it comes to watching the 2025 Mets let a playoff spot get away. After falling behind, 6-0, they didn’t dent deGrom until the third, compiling three runs, which would have been fantastic had it not merely halved their deficit and if they weren’t up against a guy who was in no mood to give up anything more. Sure enough, deGrom pitched the fourth through seventh like Jesus Luzardo pitched the second through eighth the night before in Philadelphia. The Mets are in the habit of getting nothing going. Friday it was twelve up and twelve down after the Mets crept to within 6-3.
Tong’s two-thirds of an inning was just sad. Everything else about the Mets this evening was embarrassing. Huascar Brazoban failed to promptly cover first base on a grounder to Pete Alonso in the second. By the time Brazoban scurried to the bag — too late to beat a hustling Jake Burger — Alonso flung the ball in the general direction of his pitcher’s face before it landed in the dugout. Burger wound up on second, which was the least worst aspect of that sequence. In the fourth, Jeff McNeil got called out on a borderline strike three and couldn’t resist to drop some magic words in the direction of home plate ump Scott Barry, who heard them and ejected him. In the seventh, with Gregory Soto on and needing by law to face a third batter, Bruce Bochy sent up a righthanded pinch-hitter, Dylan Moore, to torment Carlos Mendoza. Moore blasted a two-run homer off lefty Soto to provide deGrom the kind of cushion he rarely had in Queens. Up 8-3, the visiting starter finished his seven innings with minimal fuss. The Ranger bullpen went similarly unbothered, and Jake emerged as the winning pitcher at Citi Field
It doesn’t show up in the box score, but the Mets’ A/V squad could have let deGrom’s initial trot to the mound where he earned his two Cy Youngs go unaccompanied by whatever idiotic DJ prattle they insist on inflicting on their crowd for a few seconds. Not to honor Jake — they played him a thanks-for-the-memories video at 6:45 — but to give the people who show up to Mets games with a sense of what’s come before a moment to take in what they’re seeing. Six runs off Tong had warped the vibe, but it was still Jacob deGrom pitching at Citi Field for the first time in three years. SNY withheld commercials so the home viewers could soak it in. All we got was some shouting and throbbing, the essence of inane dronery.
If the sole blemish of the evening was aesthetic, we could laugh it off. Gallows giggles would be welcome at this point. The Mets have lost seven in a row, a sum that should sound familiar, given that the Mets have done that twice before in 2025. Know a lot of playoff teams losing seven in a row repeatedly? After watching Tong have little more success composing himself before reporters than he did against batters, I stayed up to see if the Dodgers could do us a favor and beat the Giants. I’m not programmed to root for L.A. against San Fran, but this wasn’t about them. Soon, it will not be about us. Just as I nodded off, Patrick Bailey launched a tenth-inning grand slam at Oracle Park, and the Giants moved to within a half-game of the Mets for the final Wild Card. The Reds, who hold the tiebreaker over us, lost, at least, though I can’t imagine we’ll be in any position where such minutia will matter to postseason schedulemakers.
Tong, no less promising than he was before Friday, will hopefully process what happened to him for the better and certainly pitch another day, presumably soon. (Also, Kodai Senga produced positive results at Syracuse, so maybe he’ll be back to pick up slack.) Brandon Sproat today, Nolan McLean tomorrow. I seem to be implying there are still some things to look forward to. There are, in the sense that we’re still Mets fans and we can still relish young pitchers coming along, even if not every one of them comes along all at once. As far as what it means to an unforeseen sizzling “pennant race,” you’ve gotta be kidding. I’m past attempting to solve “they’re too good to play this bad” puzzles. They’re not good. Those who constitute the everyday lineup have shown no signs of succeeding meaningfully as a collective, and as individual performances go, honestly, who cares? I like an upbeat statistic as much as any fan, but I can’t remember the last time any hit or home run or stolen base made any kind of tangible difference to the Mets’ fortunes. The pitchers who aren’t the kids are just as culpable for where we are.
It’s not a good team, and they’re not in a good situation. The part where we say they “yet somehow, they’re still in playoff position” figures to turn inoperative imminently, and we won’t need to ask how it’s possible that a team this good can be this bad. It’s not a team that’s that good. Fourteen games remain to change that answer. Breath will not be held in advance of that happening.
by Greg Prince on 12 September 2025 3:20 pm What a spectacular top of the first inning in Philadelphia Thursday night! And what a moving eight innings of respectful silence in the top halves of each frame that followed.
That was pretty much that where the current Mets were concerned in their sixth consecutive loss. Thus, let us turn our attention to Mets of yore. As Saturday at Citi Field will feature the Alumni Classic (a mini-Old Timers Day), it seems a fine time to issue our wholly arbitrary Mets Alumni Power Rankings.
1. Harrison Bader
I’ve only paid close attention to Harrison Bader when he was a Met in 2024 and when he’s played against the Mets in 2025. When he played for the Mets in 2024, Bader was an endearing character and a spry defensive asset. Also, he showed himself the speediest of Jewish Mets ever, certainly the most productive on the basepaths. Bader stole 17 bases in 2024, his one and only year among us. Every other Met with some “Chosen People” pedigree (14, including pitchers) combined to grab 25 bags in toto. This was one of those things I tracked out of a certain degree of cultural pride; I was a pretty plodding Jew when I attempted to run from first to second in my youth, and it gave me nachas to see someone who wasn’t. As 2024 wore on, however, Bader stopped stealing many bases because he stopped reaching base. Tyrone Taylor took over center field on a full-time basis, elbowing Bader to enthusiastic benchwarmer, and when he moved on to Minnesota in the offseason, I don’t recall a rending of orange and blue garments. In 2025, in April as a benign Twin and this month as a vengeful Phillie, Bader slashed .528/.564/.778 over nine games. Bader transcends Met-kiiler Old Friend™ status. He’s Travis d’Arnaud times Daniel Murphy to the power of that time Wayne Garrett took Tom Seaver deep. Kyle Schwarber may have hit 50 home runs this season and Jesus Luzardo may have proven himself capable of mowing down 22 batters in a row (I forget against which team), but given how the Phillies have surged since acquiring Bader, I can’t imagine Harrison isn’t their MVP. Honestly, I don’t want to imagine a whole lot about the Phillies, as I’ve seen them enough in real life. On the plus side, Bader attempted three stolen bases against the Mets this season and was successful only once.
2. Jacob deGrom
Tucked away in Texas, Jacob deGrom wasn’t likely going to come back to haunt us unless we crossed paths with him in the World Series…is what I would have guessed when he bolted Flushing for Arlington in December 2022. Silly me, I forgot (or try to forget) about Interleague play, but even with that pox on our schedule, what were the odds we’d face the most accomplished Met pitcher of the past quarter-century in the September of his renaissance season with a whole lot on the line? Cash in your ticket if you said they were viable. Jake, who takes on one of the future versions of himself in Jonah Tong tonight, has thrown 155.2 innings, more than in any year since 2019, and carries an ERA of 2.78, which is absurdly high compared to what he was doing for us at the peak of his deGreatness (1.94 from ’18 through ’21), but good enough for fourth in the AL. Yeah, Jake is back in every sense of the word. We’ll see if the Mets have figured out how to score when he’s on the Citi Field mound.
3. Jim Marshall
Jim Marshall was the oldest living Met ever until he passed away last Sunday at 94 years and a few months old. He drew a bit of attention as his final birthday approached in May, with the Mets joining with the Diamondbacks to present Jim with a jersey prior to one of their games at Chase Field, which the Arizona resident was fortunately able to attend. Jim made a Met jersey game-used on April 11, 1962, and lived longer thereafter than anybody else on the visitors’ side of the box score to tell about it, which is to say nobody is left from that inaugural contest in franchise history — and only six 1962 Mets are still with us. Marshall never betrayed any bitterness over the Mets letting him go early amid the remarkable story they were writing, trading him within a month of the team’s debut. Nor did he shy from sharing with a smile his status as the first Met ever booed by the home crowd (folks trekking to the Polo Grounds for the Manhattan opener were not pleased to find him rather than Gil Hodges in the starting lineup, Hodges’s balky knee not being their problem). In June, when Howie Kussoy of the Post caught up with the handful of Original and Original-ish Mets he could track down, Jim had this to say for the likes of us: “It was a special place, a special time. It was unlike anywhere else I had ever been. They treated us great. Everyone was so enthusiastic. I could never forget all that.”
 4. Jim Bethke
Sometimes word about an old Met leaving us doesn’t seep out for a few months or even a few years. In the case of Jim Bethke, word of his death in June made the rounds only this past week. To call the 1946-born Bethke an “old” Met is counterintuitive, as he remains and almost surely will remain the youngest pitcher in Mets history. (The next pitcher after him to debut for the Mets: their oldest, Warren Spahn.) The first Baby Boomer to play as a Met made the team out of Spring Training in 1965 less than six months after his 18th birthday and pitched the final inning on Opening Day. Jim had two wins and no losses in front of him in ’65, his only year in the bigs. Roster machinations landed him in the minors (sound familiar?) and he never made it back. Eventually, Bethke’s life proceeded on a different track. He hooked up with Union Pacific and, according to his obituary, worked “diligently” as an engineer.
5. Ed Kranepool
Bethke may have been the youngest of Met pitchers, but only Ed Kranepool could have claimed to have played for the Mets as a 17-year-old. Only Ed Kranepool could have claimed a lot of things Metwise, and they all would have been accurate. We just passed the one-year anniversary of Ed’s death, and I realized, as I was putting Bethke’s youth into Met-historical context, that it felt good to think about Ed Kranepool again, if only for a minute. Ed was so much a part of the larger Met narrative, that during the 45 years he lived as a Met alumnus, he leaped to mind as a matter of course, just as he was regularly interviewed for his reflections on 1962 or 1969 or any number of Met themes. Even in those years when he engaged in a cold war with previous ownership, he was always around the ballpark or making appearances in the area, never not, in his way, the Met among Mets. I miss that presence.
6. Art Shamsky
For as long as he’s making himself available, I appreciate Art Shamsky’s presence. Art didn’t come up as a Met, didn’t wind down his career as a Met, and was a member of the Mets for only four seasons, yet he has emerged over time as the face of the 1969 Mets. Art lives in New York, understands the media (having worked in it himself) and clearly relishes his role as primary griot for the Miracle of Miracles. SNY aired a documentary about Canyon of Heroes parades the other night, one I clicked off after the processions of 1969 and 1986 were dutifully covered. Bearing witness to all of that confetti from 56 years before were three Mets who knew what it felt like to have it fall on their heads: Art, Ron Swoboda, and Duffy Dyer. Dyer was a surprise, Swoboda less so, Shamsky not at all. He’s always out front, reminding the generation who experienced it how wonderful it all was and convincing the generations who didn’t see it that it was really something. His latest book, Mets Stories I Only Tell My Friends, co-authored by my friend Matthew Silverman, serves a similar purpose. This volume, unlike his previous two, isn’t completely focused on 1969, but it’s obviously the center of the action. Though the title hints at a certain salaciousness, it’s all good, clean fun, with nothing racier than the night Art and Ken Boswell broke curfew and hoped Gil Hodges wouldn’t find out about it. The book follows Art into broadcasting as well as his foray into managing in the quickly defunct Israel Baseball League; in case you’re wondering, Art stole four bases in his four years as a Met.
 7. Ike Davis
Also in case you’re wondering, the holder of the Jewish Met stolen base record prior to Harrison Bader was noted non-speedster Ike Davis, with seven between 2010 and 2014. I seem to recall Keith Hernandez referring to his heir at first base as a truck horse, but stick around long enough, you’ll get your opportunities to run. Ike surpassed Elliott Maddox, who swiped six, as he eclipsed Shamsky’s four. Kevin Pillar got on the board with four bags in 2021. David Newhan had two in 2007. Norm Sherry, Shawn Green, and Josh Satin each had one. Ike and Josh will be among those back for the Alumni Classic, which is beautiful, as it is knowing so many from the 2010s and 2000s will be on hand despite many of them not being parts of teams that ring bells the way 1969 does when Art Shamsky brings up that singular season. Heck, I don’t even mind that what we’ll call the Ike Davis Era is now distant enough to qualify as quite a while ago. Time has unmatched speed from first to home.
8. Todd Zeile
Several Mets alumni who were here in September 2001 were at a firehouse in September 2025. If it’s late summer, there are Mets or former Mets visiting firefighters, letting them know the Mets as an organization will never lose sight of their devotion to their city. This week, it was Todd Zeile, Al Leiter, John Franco, and their manager Bobby Valentine doing the honors. It’s been 24 years since the attacks of September 11th. The memory of those who were lost, especially those who were lost trying to keep others from being lost, can’t be honored enough. The Mets continually make good on their pledge to Never Forget. Zeile sticks out among his similarly dedicated teammates to me because, à la Shamsky, he wasn’t really a Met for that long. We had him in 2000 and 2001 and got him back in 2004. He famously played for seemingly everybody in his sixteen-season career. He came up with the Cardinals. But he has made himself a Met beyond all else, whether it’s as go-to spokesman for the Subway Series Mets or someone who will always share, when asked, what it was like to be a Met in those tragic weeks of September 2001. It helps that he landed at SNY as the lead postgame analyst, where I think he’s made himself essential to the Met-viewing experience. He’s as honest as he can be within reason in criticizing the Mets when they deserve it (he came pretty close to cursing after they lost their sixth in a row) and he wears his Metsiness pretty close to his sleeve when they win, which is something they need to do more of. As a Met and a Met broadcaster, Todd as persuaded me he is more than someone who just passed through. He’s one of us.
 9. Benny Agbayani
Benny Agbayani will be among the returning Mets alumni this weekend. Like Al Leiter, he has a son playing professional baseball. Bruin Agbayani is in the Twins organization after being drafted just this year. Maybe because Al was on the major league scene long before Benny, or because nearly everybody in his family has made a name in baseball, the fact the team the Mets will be playing this weekend includes somebody named Jack Leiter doesn’t faze me. Yet the idea that Benny Agbayani’s kid is working his way up the minors seems shocking. Didn’t Benny just show up here late in the 1990s and exhibit legendary amounts of Hawaiian punch? Weren’t we just serenading him as Be-NEE? Wasn’t that…holy crap, that was more than 25 years ago. Anyway, you can catch the doings of Benny and Bruin and, for that matter, Bobby V via Tim Britton in The Athletic here. But try not to toss the article to a fan in the stands as soon you catch it.
Power rankings should probably contain ten entries, but given what the Mets have been doing lately, coming up short seems appropriate.
 If you find yourself in the vicinity of Levittown on Long Island this Monday, September 15, at noon, drop on by the Levittown Public Library for some Mets talk with yours truly. Information here.
by Jason Fry on 10 September 2025 9:47 pm For a little while Wednesday night the Mets played non-embarrassing baseball. Which isn’t to say they were leading — they weren’t — but that they weren’t being beaten as badly as seemed likely at first.
Clay Holmes pitched OK-adjacent, giving up two runs in the first but escaping far worse harm, and hung in there until the fifth, when he gave up a single and a run-scoring double, departing with the Mets down 3-1.
Enter Gregory Soto, who simultaneously has been quietly terrible and in the top half of the Mets’ trade-deadline acquisitions in terms of performance, which tells you all you need to know about how the trade deadline has turned out. Soto immediately allowed the inherited runner to score, escaped the fifth without further harm, and then fell apart in the sixth, putting the game out of reach.
To dwell further on the nightly failures of this increasingly woebegotten team would verge on sadism: The Mets are now 31-46 since June 13, the fourth-worst team in the majors, and the real story of this year increasingly is about the nearly three months in which we’ve tried to convince ourselves that they somehow aren’t the team we’ve been watching fall flat all summer. It’s pointless to scoreboard-watch and worry about a specific team on their heels in the wild-card hunt; as the SNY crew noted, if they don’t start winning games, someone is going to catch them.
A couple of miscellaneous notes before we put a merciful bow on this one:
One culprit noted in the Mets’ summer swoon was their apparent passivity on fastballs. For a while the Mets seemed to have flipped the script on that, hunting fastballs and rejuvenating their offense (the pitching failed at the same time, alas). But now they look befuddled by fastballs again. To be fair, Ranger Suarez and Cristopher Sanchez have pitched two beautiful games and would have been tough opponents against anybody. But the Mets were particularly hapless Wednesday night against Sanchez’s sinker. How did this lesson get unlearned?
Tuesday night saw Sean Manaea display some bad body language coming off the mound, followed by Carlos Mendoza hustling him into the tunnel for what seems to have been a firm talking-to. Which led to a long conversation in the booth Wednesday night about confidence and fight and a lot of other baseball stuff — a conversation I found deeply annoying.
Look, Manaea’s body language really was terrible, Mendoza really did haul him off by his ear, and he really did pitch better after that. But do you honestly believe Manaea’s nightmare of a year is due to a lack of confidence or fight? Or is it more likely that his struggles are because he has a loose body in his elbow? Isn’t it far more likely, in fact, that the injury is most of the problem?
Write this down: During some dull homestand next June or July, Manaea will quietly admit to Anthony DiComo or one of the Athletic beat guys that he couldn’t finish his pitches properly because of the elbow in 2025 but thought he could fight through it, or some variation of that.
Which is so much more interesting than this Just So story about confidence and fight: If you’re an injured player, what is your responsibility to your club? Where’s the line between gutting through it because you’re a gamer and admitting you’re too compromised to help your team win? That’s an old story for athletes — the most honest take on it I can recall is from Bobby Ojeda — and it’s one that Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling know perfectly well. That’s the story I would have liked to hear and could have learned from, instead of an empty one I’ve heard innumerable times that’s never taught me anything.
by Greg Prince on 10 September 2025 10:11 am PHILADELPHIA (FAF) — Analysts are theorizing the New York Mets may be organizing an illegal and possibly immoral “stealth boycott” of the 2025 Major League Baseball postseason and are coming closer every day to their goal of not participating in the upcoming championship tournament.
By losing their fourth consecutive game on Tuesday night, 9-3, at Citizens Bank Park, the Mets fell to within two games of the nearest Wild Card aspirant, the surging San Francisco Giants. The stubbornly viable Cincinnati Reds also won on Tuesday, moving them within three of the Mets. New York, once seen as a sure entrant into the National League playoffs, appears to be standing on ever shakier ground.
It may not be a matter of simple bad play or bad luck, according to those who claim experience in the field.
“Look at how they proceed,” suggests a man willing to identify himself as only El Castillo, a former baseball operative. “They do just enough to indicate they are perfectly capable of winning games, yet they inevitably find a way to lose. This could be interpreted as a sign they do not want to compete beyond their heretofore agreed-upon schedule.”
El Castillo points to individual Mets’ inclinations to “do something well to momentarily make you forget they do something poorly,” so the overall outcome they produce is muddied. “Sean Manaea pitches very badly for a couple of innings, enough to do sufficient damage to his team’s fortunes, then suddenly ‘gets it together’ to finish on ‘a high note’. Jose Siri returns from a long absence and hits a ball that almost goes out of the stadium, then almost makes a difficult catch. Mark Vientos wins your trust by belting a home run, so much so that when he plays a ground ball nonchalantly and allows a base hit that sets up a big inning, well, it’s ‘just one of those things’.
“Or is it?”
Another veteran baseball observer, willing to be known only as Double Agent Punctuation Mark (“double, as in I gave up crucial run-scoring doubles when it mattered most, punctuation mark, because family newspapers did not wish to spell my name properly out of concern for ‘propriety’”), points to the activities of Juan Soto, who joined the 30/30 club Tuesday when he stole a base in a less than advantageous situation.
 Yay? “I understand the lure of milestones,” Punctuation Mark says. “For a brief time, achieving them can earn you the trust of a doubting populace. And nobody can deny the excellence of Soto. But he attempts to steal third base in the eighth inning with two out and his team down by five runs. You have 30 stolen bases to go with 30 home runs in one year, or you have 300 wins in your career, and it all seems very positive. But you have to ask yourself whether this is about winning and making the postseason, or just about a shiny bauble obscuring a desire to go home in two or three weeks.”
While Soto’s achievement of 30/30 reflects genuine seasonlong achievement, the Mets over the past few months have failed to mount a record of as much as 30-30 over any 60-game span. Most pertinently, they have compiled only 31 wins in their past 76 contests, leaving them in the peril they currently face.
“This does not appear to be a team that wishes to have its October filled by baseball,” Punctuation Mark declares. “Their general manager planted among them several assets who clearly do not boost their chances of winning. I don’t know if their manager shares his players’ reluctance to extend their season, but he does not appear to be particularly proactive in rousing them from their doldrums — and if he is, he is not effective. I also don’t know who are the ringleaders in this reverse-momentum effort, as almost none of the ‘stars’ are, in a phrase I like to use, ‘brave’ enough to meet the moment. The lack of fire is disturbing to the naked eye.”
To those who would counter that the recent elevation of Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong, and Brandon Sproat is evidence of a Mets team doing its best to win, Punctuation Mark presents a different theory: “I will say the insertion of this trio of potentially brilliant young starting pitchers seems to represent clever subterfuge. They are too ‘fresh’ to be part of such a scheme to avoid winning, but there are only three of them. They may not realize they are pitching on behalf of an intentional lost cause.”
Despite the stumbling the Mets have done from their once-high perch above the National League East, they remain in playoff position and can regain traction by living up to their reputation and playing up to their capabilities over the season’s final 17 games.
“If they wanted to grab hold of a playoff spot, they surely have the talent to do so,” El Castillo believes. “All they have to do is reach out and take it. But if they don’t grab it with both hands, we will know they are not serious about their effort. There is an old proverb from where I come — all it takes to drop something you should be holding tight is one hand in the air and one hand nowhere in sight, so you better use two hands.”
by Jason Fry on 9 September 2025 11:01 am One recipe for a good baseball game? A sequence of unlikely events. No-hitters flipped into walkoffs, storming back to a ninth-inning win, Houdini-ing your way out of what looks like statistical doom, that kind of thing.
Monday night’s game in Philadelphia was a good game, much as we would have preferred a duller one with a different verdict. And it certainly had its share of unlikely events.
For openers, a 1-0 victory — by anybody — at this bandbox?
Or how about Aaron Nola spitting in the face of a terrible season to shut down the Mets and effectively lock up the division for the Phils?
Or how about the Mets tormenting the highly capable Jhoan Duran again, except this time the ninth-inning magic fizzled?
Or how about Ryan Helsley working a 1-2-3 inning?
OK, that last one’s a little mean-spirited. But c’mon, you were as shocked as I was. (More meanness: Francisco Alvarez saved Helsley from an pitch-clock violation and a walk, and way too many of Helsley’s sliders hung in the middle of the plate. But still: progress!)
The Mets’ offense looked stagnant once again, the latest episode of ebb in a season of maddening ebb and flow. (More like once-a-generation drought alternating with flash flooding, at the risk of pummeling our poor metaphor.) But give some credit to Nola: He put aside his disobedient curve as his primary pitch and it proved a canny adjustment that left the Mets guessing wrong all night.
For our part, Nolan McLean looked good again — even better when you consider that he had to deal with a misfiring sweeper and a fingernail that ripped off early in the game. It wasn’t enough last night, but I’ll gladly take a decade of McLean departing in the sixth having given up one run in Philadelphia, thank you very much.
The Mets — perhaps you’ve heard — haven’t come back to win a single game in which they’ve trailed after eight, the only team still left bearing that burden in 2025. (It’s a quirk, however much we insist during postgame fuming that it’s a sign of weak moral fiber.)
It looked like Monday night would be the end of that streak, as Duran’s ninth inning began as a rerun of his recent nightmare at Citi Field. Pete Alonso bounced a single up the middle and then departed for pinch-runner Ronny Mauricio, Brandon Nimmo just missed a carbon copy of Brett Baty‘s little duck-snort hit to left, and Mark Vientos lined a double over the head of Nick Castellanos.
Oh, that play. I assume Mauricio would score and tie the game, and was dumbfounded when he only wound up on third. But not all doubles into the corner are the same: The ball’s trajectory was low and it wasn’t clear that it would get over Castellanos’s head, Mauricio was blocked out by the fielder, and he might have remembered that Castellanos is a terrible defender except against the Mets, whose presence seems to transform him into Garry Maddox.
So Mauricio only reached third, leaving the Mets with second and third and one out and putting the game in the hands of Jeff McNeil and Alvarez. McNeil is up there with Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor for “Met I’d most want to see when anything but a strikeout will get the job done” (maybe even a little ahead of Lindor) and he just missed a double down the line that would have given the Mets the lead and caused Duran’s agent to book a therapist posthaste.
But the ball went foul and four pitches later Duran threw 102 MPH past McNeil for the second out. Alvarez then arrived at the plate eager bordering on desperate to deliver, the kind of self-sabotaging AB he’d largely stopped having. Not on this night, though: Duran threw him three curve balls he couldn’t have hit with an oar and the game was over.
1-0 Phillies. Who’da thunk it?
by Greg Prince on 8 September 2025 3:02 am A few months ago, I watched an episode of American Masters devoted to Liza Minnelli. One of those attesting to her brilliance as an entertainer and warmth as a human being was the actor Darren Criss, who related Liza’s reaction to a group get-together he considered himself lucky to be a part of: “She’s grabbing everybody and going, ‘This was great, this is great. This is the gang now; this is the gang.’ And when she left, I was like, I’m in the gang now. It was amazing.”
As has been the transformation of the gang we refer to as the New York Mets’ starting pitching rotation, an entity whose recent initiation rites have been as much fun as a singalong at Liza’s place. You flourish in the minors, they call you to the big club, they hand you a baseball, and you show your stuff.
The gang, in flux for so long, has fluctuated fortuitously to encompass Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong, and, as of Sunday, Brandon Sproat. This is the core of our gang now. These are whose arms we figure to ride in the weeks ahead, weeks we wish to be certain will extend well into the month beyond. The years beyond, too, but we should probably get to know the gang better first.
 Start spreading the news, there’s pitching today. We now know Sproat as well as we can know any pitcher after six innings. Hey, remember when throwing six innings was something only one Met starting pitcher ever did? Our transformed gang suddenly contains a trio of guys who do it like it’s no big deal, and none of them was with us even one month ago. Brandon, who debuted in Cincinnati Sunday, had a little trouble with control, none with giving up hits for an extended period, and ran into the bad luck of having his teammates come up against a masterful pitching performance from the other side. Reds starter Hunter Greene pretty much toyed with Met batters, going seven, striking out twelve, and allowing only one hit, a solo home run to Brett Baty. Tough to overcome that kind of obstacle, and neither Sproat nor the Mets did, falling, 3-2, and, for the first time in their history at Great American Ball Park, failing to win a September series there.
Yet it was hard to leave the weekend set feeling less than optimistic. Sproat gave up three runs in his six innings, which you’ll take from a so-called raw rookie, especially considering he blocked the Reds from the H column until the sixth. None among the freshman class constituting Generation MST3K feels the least bit raw, but a first start is a first start. If this is the beginning of the journey for young Brandon — the first Met born in the year 2000 — we can’t wait to see the next step. Same for McLean. Same for Tong. They have brought the not-too-distant future with them, taking some of the sting out of the discomfiting present.
What stings and/or discomfits? The fact that there’s only three of them, meaning other Mets have to pitch other days and none has been much up to the task of late. The fact that the nine Mets entrusted with producing runs Sunday did little to mount offense, offering merely two solo home runs (Baty’s and Juan Soto’s) and one last-ditch threat that went nowhere. The fact that despite the Reds, the Giants, the Diamondbacks, and the Cardinals sitting barely above or right at .500, they each linger within grasping distance of the 76-67 Mets, who have yet to put any Wild Card wanna-be decisively behind them. The Mets hold loss-column leads of four and five games on the stragglers. Should they resist the temptation to utterly fizzle, they should be fine in terms of reaching October. But losing two of three when faced with one of their flawed rivals for that final playoff spot is a sign of a lot of the same old same old that has beset 2025 with its catalogue of what stings and/or discomfits.
Which is why it’s so delightful to catalogue the brand new: this gang, these pitchers, their shared opportunity and what they’ve been doing with it. It’s not unprecedented for Mets fans to revel in multiple fresh-faced pitchers delivering on potential. It’s something else having them do it for a team not trying to build up to contention but already in the midst of contending, let alone fending off encroaching heel-nippers. McLean, Sproat, and Tong were prospects when August began. In September, they loom as our most effective line of defense against a teamwide inclination to wither away. Come October…well, let’s get to October. Whatever does or doesn’t happen then won’t be an endpoint. We’ll have our poised, talented, youthful pitchers leading us toward the season and seasons beyond this one. Yeah, I can’t wait to get to know the gang better.
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