Monday night started off with high hopes and fun expectations for New York Mets fans. First baseman Pete Alonso, 28, was attempting to win the Home Run Derby for the third time in his career, a feat that only Ken Griffey Jr. has ever accomplished. And things looked promising: He was the no. 2 seed in the contest behind only Luis Robert Jr. But then a random injury set everything back before it could even begin. A few hours before the contest, the guy who was supposed to pitch to Alonso suffered a forearm flare-up, forcing a last-minute personnel shuffle. And then? One mighty letdown.
Alonso and his backup pitcher were unable to find alignment or get in sync. He still managed to rip 21 dingers in the first round—but his opponent, Seattle’s Julio Rodríguez, had already hit 41. And so the lovably galumphing slugger was bounced from the competition almost right from the start, a fitting metaphor for how things have gone for the Mets this season, too.
Following a 101-win 2022 campaign in which Alonso led the majors in RBI, Jeff McNeil won the batting title, and closer Edwin Díaz was feted by trumpets, the Mets entered this season as a top National League contender, one bolstered by acquisitions like free agent pitcher Justin Verlander and newcomer Kodai Senga. Before Opening Day, though, Díaz tore his patellar tendon while jumping around to celebrate a Team Puerto Rico win at the World Baseball Classic. And then things got worse.
Heading into the All-Star break, the 42-48 Mets sat in fourth place out of five teams in their division, and they’ve struggled to establish any lasting rhythm beyond “getting shelled in the first inning.” Despite a payroll in the neighborhood of $350 million, the spendiest in baseball, New York lurks a distant-feeling seven games out of a wild-card spot.
Throughout all of this, pitcher Max Scherzer has put up his highest pre–All-Star break ERA in more than a decade. (“You can put the camera right on me,” Scherzer said on June 13. “I’ve got to be better.”) Outfielder Starling Marte is on pace to have the lowest batting average of his career. McNeil is not on pace to repeat his batting title, probably because Francisco Lindor, who said he’d buy McNeil a new car for his accomplishment last year and then simply never did, has now karmically cursed the whole team. (Except, possibly, himself: The guy is quietly and sometimes loudly off to a good start.)
This Mets season was supposed to be a romp, but it’s feeling more like a trudge. Can they get the zip back in their bats and the skip back in their step, or have they already fallen too far behind for it to matter?
“Obviously not where we want to be,” said Alonso, who has not looked quite like his usual ebullient self this season, back on June 21 after one particularly deflating loss. And that was before the Mets dropped two of three to the Phillies, including one 7-6 rubber match in which New York gave up four runs in the error-ridden bottom of the eighth. Three days after that loss, Mets owner Steve Cohen sat on a bar stool–height chair shaped like a baseball mitt and spoke to the media.
Historically, Cohen’s press appearances (and his once-voluminous, now-rare tweets) have been worth tuning in to. When he bought the team in 2020, he proclaimed: “If I don’t win a World Series in the next three to five years—and I’d like to make it sooner—I would consider that slightly disappointing.” In late 2022, with slight disappointment on the horizon, he told the New York Post: “I made a commitment to the fans. If it means I have to spend money to fulfill that commitment, so be it.” He added: “My team is good. But it isn’t that much better than last year. If you want a team that’s good, this is what it costs. What are you going to do?”
Cohen spent the money all right, deploying enough to have to pay extra as a luxury tax. But the problem is that despite the cost, this year’s team isn’t better than last year’s. Neither the Mets’ starting pitchers nor their bullpen has pulled their weight; the team gave up 54 more runs this year than it had by this point last season and floundered in 20th place in the league in ERA. And on the other side of the plate, some of the Mets’ biggest bats—like Alonso and Marte—have been streaky or downright cold this season.
“I understand the disappointment and the frustration,” Cohen said in late June. “Listen, I’m living this, OK? I mean, I watch every game! The finishes of the games this year were pretty, pretty wild. I describe it as almost like a dog track where the dogs are trying to chase the rabbit, and they get up to the rabbit and somehow never win.” (If the NL East–leading Atlanta Braves are the rabbit, the Mets are nowhere close to getting up to them: The 60-win Braves are currently the best team in baseball.)
When he wasn’t deploying confusing greyhound metaphors, Cohen offered glimpses into his thinking about the team’s near-term future. In response to one question, he said that if the Mets were to hit the trade deadline at the start of August without making a significant move up the wild-card standings, he wouldn’t be making any go-for-it moves of his own. “If I’m in this position, I’m not adding, OK?” Cohen said. “I mean, I think that would be pretty silly.”
But what about subtracting? Cohen said that he wasn’t planning to ax manager Buck Showalter or general manager Billy Eppler in the middle of the season, even if it would make for a big headline. “I don’t see that as a way to operate,” he said. “If you want to attract good people to this organization, the worst thing you can do is be impulsive, OK, and win the headline for the day. You’re not going to attract the best talent because you’re not going to want to work for somebody who has a short fuse.” Cohen noted that he’s still looking to hire someone for the currently vacant president of baseball ops position; the current speculation is that he has David Stearns, formerly of the Milwaukee Brewers, in mind.
However, Cohen didn’t have much to reveal when someone asked whether he’d look to move Scherzer or Verlander. (Both have no-trade clauses in their contracts.) When the Mets signed the veteran pitchers in 2021 and 2022 to three- and two-year deals, respectively, with average annual values of $43.3 million, they were considered low-risk (albeit expensive), high-upside moves, not to mention examples of the appeal of the Cohen regime. But Scherzer’s most memorable Mets moment so far was his playoff implosion last season, while Verlander began this season on the injured list. Now, like so many others on the Mets pitching staff—and like Cohen, and like the Mets generally—he is still searching for his best stuff.
It’s been one of those years when perhaps the best thing that can be said is: It could be worse! Faint praise? Definitely. But also no small feat. For all the moves that haven’t worked out as planned for New York this season, there are a number of non-signings that have aged … maybe … well?
For example, this past December, the Mets came to terms with free agent Carlos Correa for a 12-year, $315 million deal—terms that were rescinded a hot minute later when Correa failed to pass a team physical. The situation may have felt like whiplash at the time, but in hindsight, the deal likely would have wound up being a pain in the neck. (Correa, for his part, has posted what would be a career-low .225 batting average so far this season—to go along with lows in on-base percentage and slugging percentage.)
And while it will always feel a little bit glum for Mets fans that a once-mighty pitching corps that included Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard (and Zack Wheeler and Matt Harvey) dwindled away to nothing over the years with no titles to show for it, there’s no denying that the Cohen-led Mets made the right, cold, hard decisions to let deGrom and Thor walk. “I would give my hypothetical firstborn to be the old me again,” Syndergaard said on May 31. On June 6, it was announced that deGrom is getting Tommy John surgery again.
There are even a few positive signs for the Mets that don’t involve a lick of schadenfreude or an unspooling of what-ifs. One is Lindor’s consistency; another is the play of homegrown talent Brandon Nimmo, whom the Mets re-signed to an eight-year, $162 million deal over the winter and who is on track to post career bests in a number of offensive categories. Outfielder Tommy Pham, another recent addition to the roster, has been a pleasant surprise, and while he also recently went down with an injury, it apparently could be worse.
Buoyed by the play of those three, the Mets pulled off their longest win streak of the season at the start of July, stringing together six straight victories. (That is, until they faced their past and present foe, the San Diego Padres, just before the All-Star break. Like the Mets, the Padres came into the season with a lot of fanfare to match a hefty payroll. Like the Mets, the Padres have an owner who recently felt moved to speak with the media to address the team’s middling results.)
But perhaps the most promising positive for Mets fans to cling to these days is Francisco Álvarez, a 21-year-old Venezuelan rookie catcher. A little more than a week after Cohen’s state-of-the-team presser, Álvarez hit home runs in three straight games—one of them a ninth-inning, game-tying, opposite-field drive that was reminiscent of Mike Piazza.
“When that game’s on the line, what’s the worst that can happen?” Álvarez told reporters. “You’re going to fail? I’m not afraid of failure. When those moments come up, I’m comfortable.” Spoken like someone who will fit in nicely as a New York Met—in both the good times and the times we are currently in.
“It’s a long season,” Alonso told SNY this week. “We still have half the season left to play.” But what might the rest of this strange Mets season look like? For starters, it will probably end on October 1. While FanGraphs calculates that New York has a 15 percent chance to snag a wild-card berth and sneak into the postseason, that’s a far cry from its preseason odds of 77 percent. “All is not lost yet,” Cohen said, “but it’s getting late.”
With a tricky remaining schedule, missing the playoffs would be frustrating, but it also wouldn’t constitute an emergency—yet. “I think the ultimate goal here is to build our World Series odds over a longer-term horizon,” Eppler said during the nadir of the team’s slump in late June. “And so the things that are going to serve that goal will get put in front of any kind of shorter-term goal.” Speaking of which: In some ways, the end of the season will be when the real fun begins. That’s because ol’ Tungsten Arm O’Doyle himself, Shohei Ohtani, is set to become a free agent. At the All-Star Game, Senga quipped that he should go put a Mets hat on Ohtani. And “Someone on our team plane the other day mentioned the b-word,’’ Mets manager Showalter told Bob Nightengale, only half joking that Ohtani’s next contract could reach a cool billion.
Cohen has invested plenty of money already, but only the players have the power to determine if it’s money well spent. “We’ll see if they can get their act together and string together some wins,” Cohen said last month. “You know I can’t hit, and I can’t pitch, OK, so that’s the way it goes.” Sounds like someone won’t be pinch pitching at the Home Run Derby anytime soon—just one more disappointment to add to half a season full of them.
