“Periods of happiness are empty pages in history.”
—“Introduction to the Philosophy of History,” G.W.F. Hegel
Sixteen games into the season, the 2026 Mets look and sound a lot like the 2025 Mets.
A 1-0 loss to the Athletics on Sunday punctuated a putrid sweep and pushed New York’s losing streak to five. The Mets are 7-9 and flying west for arguably their toughest trip of the season, with three at Dodger Stadium followed by three at Wrigley Field.
“Tough homestand overall offensively,” manager Carlos Mendoza said of six games in which the Mets scored 13 runs. “At times chasing, passive, in between. A few innings with non-competitive at-bats. It’s not creating enough traffic to put together a rally.”
You could copy/paste the summary of this game from Friday night’s shutout loss to the A’s. In that one, the Mets had six hits and went 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position. In this one, they had four hits and went 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position. They had just 28 at-bats with runners in scoring position over the homestand.
You could also copy/paste the postgame reactions from any point over the final 3 1/2 months of last season, albeit with different players presenting the perspective.
“You’ve got to stay consistent and stay positive with the guys,” Mendoza said. “There’s a lot of good hitters here. It’s just a bad stretch.”
“I know we are way better than this,” said starter Freddy Peralta, hit with the loss despite six innings of one-run ball. “We have a great team and we believe in each other.”
“If we’ve got our heads down about this, we’ve got bigger issues,” Bo Bichette said.
Look, that’s probably the right approach to take with 146 games left in the regular season. A 7-9 record isn’t as damning in baseball as it is in football, after all. Two teams this decade have won the World Series after 7-9 starts. Seven teams all-time have won the title with 16-game starts worse than 7-9, including the 1969 Mets.
But there’s no denying how frustrating it is for the fan base to hear the same the-talent-is-here rhetoric one year after the Mets cited it endlessly while giving away a postseason spot over the final months of the season to the 83-win Reds. You can only hear “we’ve got to be better” so long before wondering if the team can be better, especially when the team makes three ninth-inning outs on four pitches and is making the kind of daily mental mistakes the Mets have made over the past week. (On Sunday at least, it was only Peralta forgetting the count.)
Early returns only reinforce the most pessimistic view of David Stearns’ roster reconstruction. An offense built around contact more than power has struggled to hit for extra bases; the Mets entered the day in the bottom half of the league in extra-base hits, and they collected only singles on Sunday. Only seven of their 42 hits during this homestand went for extra bases. (Sure, Citi Field is tough in April, but New York’s opponents had 20 extra-base hits in these six games.)
Additionally, the Mets’ walk rate is in the bottom third of the league. (This is a bit of a statistical oddity: New York’s 9.1 percent walk rate was fifth-best in baseball last season. Its 9.2 percent walk rate — so a better one — ranked 23rd entering Sunday.)
A position player group with durability concerns has tested New York’s depth early. Juan Soto is on the injured list, Jorge Polanco has played just two games in the field, and on Sunday, Luis Robert Jr. was not available to play defense because he’d started the prior five games. So when opportunities to hit Robert for Jared Young against a lefty in the sixth or for Tyrone Taylor in the eighth came up, Mendoza didn’t use him.
Young, the last man to make the team out of spring training, hit third twice in the series against the Athletics. Carson Benge, hitting .130 with a .231 on-base percentage, has actually moved up the batting order since Opening Day.
And the Mets’ pitching staff has not been good enough to overcome the offense’s prolonged slump. New York swiftly trailed games 5-0 and 7-1 behind David Peterson and Kodai Senga, respectively. Overall, the staff allowed at least three runs in seven different innings this homestand. The offense scored at least three runs in only two games (and never in a single inning).
A team is never as bad as it feels like in these moments. But it sure feels bad around the Mets right now.
“We’re going to do better,” Peralta said. “We’ve got to get through these moments.”
The exposition
The Mets were swept by the Athletics and have lost five in a row. At 7-9, they’re last in the National League East.
The Dodgers were unable to finish a sweep of the Rangers on Sunday. Nevertheless, Los Angeles’ 11-4 record is the best in baseball.
The Cubs avoided a sweep by walking off the Pirates on Sunday. Chicago is 7-8 and last in the NL Central. It will play in Philadelphia Monday through Wednesday.
The pitching possibles
at Los Angeles
LHP David Peterson (0-2, 6.14 ERA) v. LHP Justin Wrobleski (1-0, 4.00 ERA)
RHP Nolan McLean (1-1, 2.70) v. RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto (2-1, 2.50)
RHP Clay Holmes (2-1, 1.50) v. RHP Shohei Ohtani (1-0, 0.00)
at Chicago
RHP Kodai Senga (0-2, 7.07) v. RHP Edward Cabrera (1-0, 1.62)
RHP Freddy Peralta (1-1, 3.86) v. RHP Jameson Taillon (0-1, 4.86)
LHP David Peterson v. LHP Matthew Boyd (1-1, 6.75)
One Q and one A
On Tuesday, Sean Manaea reached 10 years of service time — a nice round number and the time at which a player qualifies for a full lifetime pension. Only about 10 percent of players who appear in a major-league game reach 10 years of service time, so I asked Manaea about how reaching that milestone resonates.
Does reaching that mark create a moment of introspection, like ‘It’s pretty cool I got here’?
“It’s incredible. My career’s been full of ups and downs, but I’ve survived all of it. I’m just extremely proud of myself for sticking through all the hard times. It puts everything into perspective that if you want something, you’ve got to work for it. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s definitely worth it when you get to that milestone. I’m one of not many guys that do it, so I’m super happy about that.”
Injury updates
Mets’ injured list
Player
Injury
Elig.
ETA
Right calf strain
4/14
April
Left lat surgery
Now
May
Rib fracture
5/24
June
Tommy John surgery
5/24
2027
Tommy John surgery
5/24
2027
Tommy John surgery
5/24
2027
Red = 60-day IL
Orange = 15-day IL
Blue = 10-day IL
- Soto ended up on the IL with his calf strain, with the expectation that he’ll be out a total of two to three weeks. That would put the best-case scenario return for the next homestand against the Twins.
- Everything is on track for Clay Holmes to make his start on Wednesday despite leaving his last one early with tightness in his hamstring.
- A. J. Minter made his first rehab appearances at Low-A St. Lucie on Tuesday and Sunday, with scoreless innings each time. Minter is still slated for a return in late April or early May.
Minor-league schedule
Triple-A: Syracuse v. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (New York, AL)
Double-A: Binghamton at Akron (Cleveland)
High-A: Brooklyn v. Greensboro (Pittsburgh)
Low-A: St. Lucie at Daytona (Cincinnati)
A note on the epigraph
If we had read “Introduction to the Philosophy of History” rather than “The Phenomenology of Spirit” for a class the first semester of freshman year, college would have been slightly less intimidating.
Trivia time
The Mets haven’t lost a road series at Dodger Stadium since 2021. They haven’t lost a road series at Wrigley Field since May 2023. Those are the club’s second- and third-longest current stretches without a road series loss against NL opponents. Who’s No. 1?
In other words, which National League team have the Mets gone the longest against without losing a road series?
(I’ll reply to the correct answer in the comments.)
