With Carlos Mendoza now gone, the New York Mets are left to sort through a mess that goes well beyond one manager’s failings. The team’s playoff hopes are slipping fast, and while Mendoza gave fans plenty to complain about, the bigger problem has been hiding in plain sight.
It hasn’t been the stars taking the brunt of the collapse. It hasn’t been the pitching staff, either.
Francisco Lindor has been injured and ineffective when he has played, but he has only appeared in 27 disjointed games. Juan Soto has a 168 wRC+, and Bo Bichette is batting .337 while also turning in surprisingly strong defense all year.
The pitching has been uneven, but not catastrophic. The staff owns a 4.12 ERA, which ranks 14th, and the bullpen has been one of the better units in the sport, sitting sixth in MLB with a 3.40 ERA.
The real frustration has landed on the supporting cast, especially the latest wave of Mets prospects: Mark Vientos, Brett Baty, Ronny Mauricio, and Francisco Alvarez. That group was supposed to help carry the franchise forward. Instead, it has become the target of fan anger.
“As much as we complain about Baty/Vientos/Mauricio, it’s not talked about enough just how detrimental it’s been that Mets last wave of prospects (2021-2024) has given them so little.
It’s arguably set them back years.”
That sentiment fits the numbers. If the Mets were hoping for even average production from that quartet, they have been left with almost nothing. Using a roughly average starter as a 2 WAR player, the group has not even combined for 2 WAR total to this point.
The breakdown this season is even uglier. The four players together have subtracted 1 fWAR from the Mets.
Alvarez has been the best of the bunch with 0.8 fWAR through June 28, while Baty and Mauricio are both at -0.4 fWAR. Vientos has been the biggest drag of all at -1.0 fWAR.
The damage becomes clearer when you look at the gap between expectation and reality. New York would ideally close 2026 with 8.0 fWAR from this group.
Instead, it is on pace for a reduction of 2.0. That 10 fWAR swing is the equivalent of taking Aaron Judge off the 2025 Yankees for the entire season.
The individual failures all feed into the same larger problem. Vientos has not hit and has not offered value defensively at any position.
Baty’s roughly average offensive season last year now looks like a mirage after years of disappointment. Mauricio has not shown he belongs on an MLB roster.
Alvarez has flashed, but the inconsistency remains.
There was once some hope that Vientos and Baty could at least become trade chips if they fell short of expectations in Queens. That idea looks dead now.
The Mets are staring at a generation of young players who have not arrived, and have not even come close. No amount of money helps much when that’s the return on a pipeline.
In Other News...
Mets Make Another Desperate Upside Bet As Deadline Pressure Builds
With the trade deadline closing in, the Mets have added another name to the organizational mix, signing Christopher Morel to a minor-league deal and sending him to Triple-A Syracuse. It is the sort of low-cost move clubs make when they are trying to keep as many paths open as possible, especially for a player whose tools have long made evaluators dream a little bigger than the risk profile might suggest.
Morel brings real power upside, with 42 homers in his first 220 career games and a 26-homer season in 2023, but the swing-and-miss issues are just as much a part of the package. He struck out 38.4% of the time with the Marlins this year and carries a 30.7% career strikeout rate, so the Mets are betting on raw impact more than reliability as they look for any extra edge before the deadline arrives. [Read more 🡒]
This Forgotten 1986 Mets Trade Has One Of The Strangest Twists
The 1986 Mets made plenty of headline-grabbing moves on their way to a championship, but some of the quieter deals have become strange footnotes in hindsight. One of them came on June 30, when New York sent Ed Lynch to the Cubs and got Dave Liddell and Dave Lenderman back, a swap that barely registered at the time but still sits inside the teams most memorable season.
Lynch had appeared in just one game for the Mets that year before moving on, yet he is still counted as part of that World Series club. The return ended up carrying its own odd wrinkle a few years later, when Liddell surfaced again in Mets history in a way few would have predicted, leaving this old trade as one of those roster moves that feels more like a trivia question than a transaction. [Read more 🡒]
Mets Suddenly Have A Tough Outfield Call They Cant Ignore
Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing have given the Mets something they badly needed in a season full of uneven stretches: two rookies who look like they belong. Benge has been one of the more productive first-year hitters in the majors, while Ewing has paired steady offense with reliable defense in the outfield, giving New York a pair of young players who have handled the jump to big league pitching and the everyday grind without looking overwhelmed.
The timing, though, is what makes this such a tricky development for the Mets. Benge settled in after an early adjustment period and has been consistently productive since, while Ewing has kept stacking useful at-bats and innings in the field, but the organization is also moving toward a point where there may not be enough room to keep both rookies in the mix every day. For a club trying to sort out its future while still chasing results now, that kind of decision is becoming harder to postpone. [Read more 🡒]