September usually has a way of exposing what a team really is. For the Mets, though, this month has become something stranger: not a chase for a playoff spot, and not yet a runway for sweeping offseason changes, but a chance to show there’s still a pulse in Flushing.
Friday night offered another reminder. After taking an impressive series from the Rays - the best team in the American League - at Tropicana Field, the Mets came home to Citi Field and handled a Giants club sitting at 58-83, a franchise with plenty of its own messes to sort through. The contrast was stark, but so was the point: the Mets have spent the past month looking more like a team built to compete than a club just waiting for the calendar to run out.
That doesn’t mean the problems have disappeared. David Stearns remains under pressure as president of baseball operations, and there’s still a cloud around interim manager Andy Green’s future, even if the company line says he’ll head back to the front office when the season ends. But the last few weeks have given the Mets something they badly needed - evidence that the core in place can still play real baseball against serious opponents.
Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto were in the lineup together Friday night for only the 15th time all season, a number that says plenty about how much time both have lost to the injured list. Soto has been back only since last weekend, while Lindor has been on a tear since the All-Star break, with 10 home runs and an .818 OPS over his last 43 games. Since the break, the Mets have gone 23-20 after entering it at 40-57.
Lindor’s long-term future has become a topic around the team this season, even with $170 million still left on his deal through 2031. When asked Friday afternoon whether he expects the five-time All-Star to remain his everyday shortstop next year, Stearns didn’t blink.
“No question,” Stearns said.
There’s also been enough offense, even with Soto sidelined for a big chunk of the stretch, to suggest the lineup still has teeth. Since Aug. 3, the Mets have posted the third-best slugging percentage in the majors at .426 and the sixth-best OPS at .742. They’re scoring 4.44 runs per game in that span, which lands them in the middle of the pack, but the results have still been there: 16-11 entering the Giants series, just behind the Brewers at 18-12.
The path wasn’t soft, either. Green’s club had to run through nine playoff contenders during that stretch, including four division leaders in the White Sox, Brewers, Rays and Astros. It started with a post-deadline road sweep of the Guardians and included taking two of three from Tampa Bay this week.
In the standings, that doesn’t change much. But it does say something about how the Mets have looked under Green, and how they’ve handled the kind of games that usually separate contenders from everyone else.
“That’s also where we should be,” Stearns said before Friday’s game. “That’s what we expect of ourselves, so yes, I’m glad that we are playing pretty competitive baseball - in some cases, very good baseball - against some of the league’s top teams. That is also the expectation.”
There are reasons to think the Mets can carry some of this into next year, starting with Nolan McLean. After some early mechanical issues, he appears to have settled into the ace-caliber form the organization expected. Entering Friday, McLean’s 1.76 ERA since June 30 over 11 starts led the National League and ranked second in the majors behind the Blue Jays’ Dylan Cease at 1.36.
“I think we’ll keep holding the bar high for him,” Green said, “because we think he can get there.”
The rotation beyond McLean still needs work. Christian Scott has come back from Tommy John surgery rehab and is part of the Mets’ circle of trust, with maybe Zac Thornton in that mix too. Sean Manaea, signed for another year, has been inconsistent since returning to the rotation.
And then there’s the what-if layer that hangs over the whole season. Freddy Peralta has been sharp since leaving the Brewers’ rotation for the Mets’ division rival landscape, beating New York this week and carrying a 0.75 ERA over his last two starts. Clay Holmes, who had been on the injured list for more than two months when he was dealt to the Cubs, has logged a 1.55 ERA in five starts for Chicago and is averaging nearly six innings a game.
Still, the most surprising development may be the bullpen. After the deadline trade sent away the group that had been carrying the relief work, Stearns had to piece together a new one on the fly.
So far, it has held up. Nate Lavender, Daniel Duarte and Jefry Yan have led the way, and Kodai Senga has been perfect in save situations, going 5-for-5.
Since Aug. 3, the Mets’ bullpen has posted the fifth-best ERA in baseball at 3.25.
“They’ve been relentless,” Green said. “They’ve really attacked the strike zone.
When we think about that group, they’re all here because they belong. They’re all here because they want to be here in the future.”
That’s the strange thing about this September. The Mets are not where they expected to be, and everybody knows it. But they are playing like a team determined to make sure this kind of collapse doesn’t define what comes next.
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