“Thou losest here, a better where to find.”
— “King Lear,” William Shakespeare
Contrary to how it feels, the New York Mets’ season is not yet over. But it could be by the end of this upcoming homestand.
Pennants and postseason berths cannot be won in April, but they can on rare occasions be lost that quickly. It typically requires the kind of mind-numbing snowball of a bad start that has swallowed the Mets these past two weeks.
That 7-15 start — thanks to the Mets’ being decent in their first 11-game sample of the season — does not put them too far out. Teams have won divisions with starts this bad. A team has won the World Series with a start multiple games worse than this. (The 1914 Boston Braves, which, for reasons I’ll list below, is not that encouraging.)
But another losing homestand, against teams such as the Minnesota Twins, Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals? That might be enough to do it.
The team that comes to mind here is the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays — the one that not only had acquired reigning Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey from the Mets but also had added José Reyes and Mark Buehrle from the Miami Marlins. It was a lot of turnover. I was covering the Boston Red Sox at the time, and the prevailing thought going into that season in the AL East was that Toronto was the team to beat. Instead, the turnover proved too much. The Jays started 10-21 and, aside from an 11-game winning streak in June, never challenged for the postseason.
If the Mets go 3-6 over these next 10 days, boom: 10-21.
During the spring, when I looked at the biggest swing counts in baseball while trying to figure out Automated Ball-Strike system strategy, I was a bit taken aback: Despite a lifetime of hearing about the importance of first-pitch strikes, the gap between getting ahead 0-1 and falling behind 1-0 wasn’t initially that large. The bigger swing pitches are at 1-0 and 2-0; once you get behind, can you get back in it? It feels fair to say the Mets have fallen behind (probably 2-0) to start 2026.
Also at the very start of the season, I wrote about the Mets’ need to get off to a good start. To recap briefly, it would have cleansed the bad vibes from last season, reduced the pressure on newcomers and Carlos Mendoza, and exploited an exceptionally easy early schedule before the slate got much tougher in the summer.
Oops.
This very poor start has emphasized the bad vibes from last season, placed even more pressure on newcomers and Carlos Mendoza, and eliminated the benefits of the easy early schedule. If you’d asked me four weeks ago what would have constituted a good start, I’d have said right around 24-16 through 40 games, when the Mets finish a three-city trip and come home for a fun homestand against the Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees. I don’t think 24-16 is going to happen. (Though it would make the 1987 Milwaukee Brewers smile if the Mets followed an 11-game losing streak by winning 17 of 18. That team started 20-3 before losing 12 in a row and going 2-18 in its next 20.)
But what would represent meaningful and significant progress on this homestand, after winning one honest-to-goodness game? The Mets are the 140th major-league team to start exactly 7-15 since the World Series was instituted in 1903. Of their 139 predecessors, 11 (or about eight percent) finished the season with 84 or more wins (or played at an 84-win pace during the 154-game schedule). That’s about the bare minimum for what it takes to make the postseason these days. Two of those 139 won 90-plus games (1.5 percent), which would more or less ensure a playoff berth.
What do the Mets need to do on this homestand to improve those odds?
*Many thanks to Baseball Reference’s Span Finder for the data here.
The bottom line here: The Mets should go 6-3 or better.
And how do the Mets do that? We are beyond the niceties and nuances of having a plate approach and sticking to it, or making the routine plays, or getting ahead in the count. This is the time to look yourself in the mirror and play better. It’s time for every hitter aside from MJ Melendez to hit better; it’s time for every pitcher aside from Nolan McLean and Clay Holmes to pitch better. The Mets got into this funk through a statistically improbable number of reasonably good baseball players performing alarmingly poorly at the same time. They get out of it by flipping that script.
The exposition
The Mets have lost 11 in a row, swept by the Athletics, Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs in their last three series. Their 7-15 record is the worst in baseball.
The Twins have lost four in a row after being swept by the Cincinnati Reds at home. Minnesota is 11-11, which is good for third in the American League Central.
The Rockies have ensured no worse than a split in their wraparound four-game series with the Dodgers at Coors Field, winning two of the first three. Colorado is 9-13 and back within 6 1/2 of first-place Los Angeles in the NL West. The Rockies host the Dodgers for one more Monday and the San Diego Padres for three before flying east for Friday’s opener at Citi Field.
The pitching possibles
vs. Minnesota
RHP Nolan McLean (1-1, 2.28 ERA) vs. RHP Mick Abel (1-2, 3.98 ERA)
RHP Clay Holmes (2-2, 1.96) vs. RHP Simeon Woods Richardson (0-3, 6.10)
RHP Kodai Senga (0-3, 8.83) vs. RHP Joe Ryan (2-2, 3.29)
vs. Colorado
RHP Freddy Peralta (1-2, 4.05) vs. RHP Michael Lorenzen (1-2, 7.48)
RHP Tobias Myers (0-1, 3.00) vs. LHP Jose Quintana (0-1, 5.63)
RHP Nolan McLean vs. RHP Chase Dollander (2-1, 3.32)
Further elaboration
Now, historical comparisons are one of my things. I like to lean on them to contextualize what teams are going through to provide a better gauge for how big a deal it is. But in my experience, there are three teams you do NOT want to be compared to. They are:
1. 1914 Boston Braves. When you’re looking up things like, “Has a team ever done this and still won the World Series?” you inevitably come across the 1914 Boston Braves. That team went 94-59 and swept the Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. (“Boston beat Philadelphia” in the World Series does not make one think of “Braves beat Athletics” now, does it?) But those Braves started 4-18 and were in eighth place (out of eight) on Independence Day before surging to the pennant on the back of a 61-16 finish to the season. They were known as the “Miracle Braves.” This is not a blueprint for success.
2. 1981 Kansas City Royals. This team pops up when you’re wondering, “Has a team ever done this and still made the postseason?” And that’s because they’re the worst team to ever make the postseason, qualifying despite an overall record under .500 thanks to 1981’s strike-shortened split season. Again, not a blueprint to copy.
3. 1962 New York Mets. You know why. Not a blueprint.
I looked up a stat
Just to prep you for this week …
Mets’ losing streaks
Losing StreakLast in…
12
2002
13
1982
14
1982
15
1982
16
1962
17
1962
Injury updates
Mets’ injured list
Player
Injury
Elig.
ETA
Right calf strain
Now
April
Left lat surgery
Now
May
Right wrist contusion
4/25
May?
Left meniscus tear
4/23
June
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
• Juan Soto is on track to return this week.
• Jorge Polanco’s trip to the injury list has felt inevitable for a time, and yet it was for a wrist contusion and not for the persistent heel issues he’s dealt with so far this season. The Mets haven’t put a timetable on him yet.
• Jared Young became the second Mets left-handed hitter to go down with a meniscus tear. Mike Tauchman went down in spring, which opened the door for Young to make the Opening Day roster in the first place.
Minor-league schedule
Triple-A: Syracuse at Worcester (Boston)
Double-A: Binghamton vs. Erie (Detroit)
High-A: Brooklyn at Hudson Valley (New York, AL)
Low-A: St. Lucie vs. Palm Beach (St. Louis)
A note on the epigraph
Of the four great tragedies, I’ll take “Macbeth” or “Hamlet” any day over “King Lear” or “Othello.” Perhaps that’s because I read the latter two on my own and not within the confines of a classroom, and thus there’s a real chance I didn’t grasp everything that was going on in them. Hmm.
Trivia time
The 2004 Mets lost 11 in a row and … fired Art Howe at the end of the season. The 2002 Mets lost 12 in a row and … fired Bobby Valentine at the end of the season. Who is the last Mets manager to endure an 11-game losing streak and keep his job to start the next season?
Note that I said only “to start the next season.” That’s a hint.
(I’ll reply to the correct answer in the comments.)
