CLEVELAND — A season with high expectations goes farther south than anyone could have predicted, leaving an organization reckoning with its identity. Yet, a renaissance arrives the following season. It’s happened before. Just ask Marcus Semien and Bo Bichette.
Semien’s first year with the Texas Rangers ended with 94 losses. His second ended with a championship. Bichette’s injury-marred 2024 was symbolic of a rough all-around season for the Toronto Blue Jays, who finished last in the AL East with 88 losses. They came within two outs of a championship in 2025.
Both players saw similarities between those trying seasons and this one with the New York Mets, who are 50-66 after Thursday’s 13-6 victory over the Cleveland Guardians.
“It was kind of like this year with guys trying to get comfortable to a new place,” Semien said. “We had a lot of new faces (in Texas).”
“There are seasons where things go wrong,” Bichette said. “Maybe it doesn’t have to go this wrong all the time.”
So what changed for Semien’s Rangers and Bichette’s Blue Jays?
The Rangers made more big free-agent moves, signing Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi for their rotation. An offense that was inconsistent in 2022 flourished in 2023.
In Toronto, the team recommitted to its core, extending Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the spring.
The Mets’ reconstruction on and off the field
Tim Britton and Madison Eades
“We just had a decision to make on what kind of team we wanted to be,” Bichette said. “It really just became about winning. I don’t know that there’s any secret recipe to that. Anything else was just taken out of the equation. We just showed up every day wanting to win.”
Referring to the Mets, Bichette said, “People should definitely be looking themselves in the mirror and thinking less about how much better they can be and more about what kind of team they can be and the focus they bring into next year. And it should normally point back to winning.”
What kind of boost can a last-place finish provide?
“If you have any pride in yourself, you should be motivated after not accomplishing your goals,” Bichette said. “For me, I want to be known as a winner. I have a lot of motivation.”
Semien cited how helpful it can be to finish a poor season strong, as he did individually in 2022 even as his Rangers stumbled down the stretch.
“Finish the year strong, you work on what you need to work on in the offseason and build off that,” he said.
“I don’t think there’s any reason we can’t start (getting better) right now,” Bichette said.
Playing time in center field
A.J. Ewing is obviously the Mets’ center fielder of the future. So why has New York handed playing time in center to Luis Robert Jr. after keeping him through the trade deadline?
Interim manager Andy Green said the Mets do plan to give Robert time in left field moving forward — but that it will take some time before he is comfortable enough to play there in a game. All 595 of Robert’s defensive appearances in Major League Baseball have been in center.
“He hasn’t ever played left field in professional baseball. We’ve had the conversations,” Green said. “We want to give him time to get some reps out there. Once we do that, we’ll expand A.J.’s center-field reps.”
The Mets hold a $20 million club option on Robert for 2027, with a $2 million buyout. Given the emergence of Ewing and Carson Benge this season, it’s hard to envision a scenario in which it’s worth exercising that option.
The Mets will do their best, meanwhile, to keep Benge in right field. He started there Wednesday even with Brett Baty getting a rare outfield start; Baty’s outfield starts had usually pushed Benge to center or left.
Watching innings for young starters
At the moment, the Mets don’t anticipate shutting down Christian Scott before the end of the season.
After his five innings Wednesday, Scott has thrown 74 1/3 big-league innings this season (and 88 overall, including his Triple-A frames). Scott is coming off Tommy John surgery, and he’ll set a career high in innings if he gets through the second inning of his next start.
“Right now it’s week to week,” Green said. “These decisions are best made with feedback after each game. We’re continuing on the same course we have all year long. We anticipate him continuing to do that until we get information that points to it being wise for him to shut it down. We don’t have any anticipation of that.”
For what it’s worth, Zac Thornton has already eclipsed his high in innings. Nolan McLean is about 30 innings shy of where he ended 2025.
Set-up Senga?
The early returns on Kodai Senga as a late-game reliever have been solid. After working a scoreless ninth inning to finish Tuesday’s win, Senga pitched a 1-2-3 seventh with two strikeouts Thursday.
The Mets believe Senga can excel as a single-inning reliever if he leans heavily on his high-90s fastball and his trademark forkball. He threw only those pitches Thursday; he’d mixed in a pair of cutters in Tuesday’s outing.
Senga acknowledged Tuesday night that he would still prefer to be a starter — but also that he can’t argue against the team’s decision.
“I made sure to tell the team that I signed as a starter and starting is something I would like to do,” he said through interpreter Hiro Fujiwara. “Regardless what I say, if I say I want to be a starter, the team could tell me, ‘Just look at your stats,’ and I don’t have anything to say back to them.
“Whatever role is given to me, I’m going to continue to perform, continue to prepare, and I hope to continue along this path and have a long career ahead of me.”
Senga is 0-7 with a 9.66 ERA in eight starts this season. His ERA as a starter is 7.57 over 17 games since he returned from injury last July.
Senga is owed $15 million in the final year of his contract in 2027. If he can help out from the bullpen in the final third of games, the Mets would recoup some of that value.
What are the Mets getting in Gabe Davis?
Trey Cobb chuckled over the phone.
“Stillwater North, we call it,” he said.
Cobb heads pitching and performance strategy at Oklahoma State — a job he took after a run as a scout in the Mets organization. (He was the signing scout on Benge.) So he’s as familiar as anyone with New York’s recent trade acquisition, right-hander Gabe Davis.
Davis, a 6-foot-9 starter in Double A, came over from the Chicago White Sox in the Huascar Brazobán trade.
“They’re getting an elite body,” Cobb said of Davis. “Anybody can see that as soon as he steps on the field. They’re getting an underrated elite athlete. I don’t know how many sports he played in high school — I think all of them.”
That athleticism is why Cobb is bullish on Davis’ future. Typically, pitchers his size have difficulty repeating their deliveries. Cobb thinks Davis is attuned enough to his body to make the small but important adjustments to repeat his mechanics.
“His ceiling is unbelievably high,” Cobb said. “The best days of Gabe Davis are coming.”
In Davis’ first professional season, he cruised through High A (a 2.63 ERA in eight starts) before running into some trouble in Double A (an 8.31 mark through 10 starts).
Davis was a reliever at Oklahoma State. Cobb said that was his best fit on the roster for the shorter college season. But he believes Davis can make it as a starter, citing his aptitude and extensive arsenal. The key in pro ball will be refining that repertoire more narrowly to perform more consistently.
“Once he masters the arsenal, this guy’s going to dominate,” Cobb said.
Davis is scheduled to make his organizational debut Saturday for Binghamton.
In need of another miracle
Given the Mets’ sweep of Cleveland, let’s have a little fun: Just how insane a finish would the Mets need to have to get back into postseason contention?
The Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks hold the final two wild-card spots in the National League. Philadelphia is projected for 87 wins, Arizona for 84. (The D-Backs have the tiebreaker, though, so the Mets would need to get to 85 wins to pass them.)
So, starting with the trade deadline, the Mets need a 38-11 finish to get to 85-77. Difficult, but not unprecedented. The 1969 Miracle Mets went 38-11 in their final 49 games.
(The 1973 Mets were 11 1/2 games out and 12 games under .500 at this point in the calendar; they went 34-19 down the stretch to hop five teams and win the NL East with an 82-79 record.)
Since 1969, six other teams have finished the season by winning at least 38 of their final 49 games — a list topped by Francisco Lindor’s 2017 Cleveland squad (41-8) and which also includes the 2001 and 2002 Athletics, and the 2021 Dodgers. Every team that finished this hot was above .500 when the run started. However, the 1978 Pirates were 10 under when they went 37-12 to finish the season. While that wasn’t enough to push Pittsburgh into the postseason, it did serve as the foundation for the following season, which ended in a championship.
