The 2026 Mets have spent the season looking nothing like the 1986 team Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry helped carry to a championship. At Fanatics Fest on Friday, the two former Mets joined Sal Licata for a live edition of SNY’s Baseball Night in New York and took a hard look at why this year’s club has unraveled.
Hernandez didn’t point to one culprit. He pointed to a pile of them.
"There's no real No. 1 reason. There are a lot of reasons," Hernandez said.
"Injuries, pitching, the bullpen has been shaky recently. The newcomers haven't done the job.
They haven't performed up to expectations. That's a question you want to ask them.
It's been a tough year."
That mess has been building since the opening week. Jorge Polanco hurt his Achilles in the second game of the season and battled through it until mid-April before missing more than two months.
Juan Soto went down with a calf injury on April 3 and missed 19 days. Francisco Lindor then had the same injury and stayed out until late June.
Even after Soto, Lindor and Polanco returned, the injury list kept growing. Clay Holmes is still on the injured list, and Luis Robert has been sidelined since late April.
The offseason additions have also fallen short for much of the year. Bo Bichette has started to look like himself again, batting .274 with nine RBI and a .718 OPS, but he opened slowly and hit just .225 through his first 56 games.
Hernandez also zeroed in on Lindor, whose season has been a rough one by any measure.
"I can't explain it. I always knew how many outs there were," Hernandez said sarcastically when asked what's gone wrong with Francisco Lindor.
"Francisco hasn't hit since coming off the injury. He made those mental errors before he got hurt, so I don't know what's going on."
Lindor missed spring training after a hamate fracture, then got off to another sluggish start before the calf injury knocked him out again. Since returning, the 33-year-old has hit .210 in 41 games, struck out 27 times and driven in 12 RBI. He has also made mental mistakes in the field, and plenty of fans have turned on him.
Strawberry pushed back on the idea that the Mets should move on from their shortstop.
"Coming back from injury, you have to get back into the flow of things," Strawberry said. "Lindor is a great player.
He shouldn't be traded. He will be one of the greatest shortstops in the game."
A trade would be complicated anyway. Lindor has a full no-trade clause after completing five years in Queens, and even if he waived it, a contender would be hard-pressed to absorb his long-term contract. If anything happens, it would most likely come in the offseason.
The Mets are expected to be active over the next two weeks, with multiple expiring contracts likely to be moved as the organization tries to restock its farm system. The future, too, is part of the conversation, with the club looking to build around a strong outfield core of A.J. Ewing, Carson Benge and Juan Soto, while Nolan McLean and Christian Scott project as two rotation options.
Hernandez said the roster still needs major work.
"They need a lot of help," Hernandez said. "We don't know what they're going to do.
It's hard to find a big bat. It's hard to forecast where this club is going."
The offense has felt the loss of Pete Alonso, who left in free agency after never receiving a call from David Stearns. Alonso has 21 home runs, 66 RBI and an .815 OPS through 98 games, and the Mets’ current lineup ranks 14th in baseball in home runs. Hernandez noted that simply adding Alonso’s power back into the mix would have changed the picture dramatically, since that kind of production would have pushed the Mets into the top three in home runs.
There are still more questions than answers around the roster, including what comes next for players like Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes because of the value they could still provide beyond 2026.
Strawberry said he thinks the Mets can still put something together after this season by building around Soto, Lindor and their young group. Hernandez’s final answer, though, landed with a thud.
"If I were their GM, I'd resign. I'd quit. I wouldn't know what to do."
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