Pedro Martinez didn’t exactly unload on the Mets, but he also didn’t sound like a guy tossing out casual opinions from the studio chair.
After the Mets beat the Toronto Blue Jays 3-0 to close June, Martinez fired off a string of tweets that made his view pretty clear: he thinks the team is missing something bigger than talent. Identity.
Personality. Leadership.
And, most of all, a sense that everybody is pulling in the same direction.
“The Mets lack identity, personality and leadership. It gets me mad. #mlbontbs”
“When I was with the Mets, our team was recognize by unity. We didn’t win the World Series but we were pretty good and played together.”
“Mets: Everyone is playing their own game on their own. They need to be together to be successful.
They can all give a little. The talent needs to show up and they need to be accountable.”
“Mets could turn it around this season if they put the right pieces together.”
That last line is the one that hangs in the air. Martinez was sharp everywhere else, but “the right pieces” is vague enough to raise an eyebrow.
Does he mean the 2026 roster as it stands? A bigger organizational reset?
Something else entirely? He didn’t say.
Back in April, Martinez had already been talking about the Mets in a similar tone, and then he pointed to coaching turnover as part of the problem. Since then, the club has already changed managers, while the rest of the coaching staff is mostly in its first season and gets the year.
The issue now is that the Mets already made moves that were supposed to help. They spent the offseason trying to reshape the room and the roster, and the result still hasn’t matched the intention. That makes any talk of fixing things now feel like trying to grab your own tail.
The roster churn was supposed to bring better chemistry. By all accounts, the Mets were swapping locker room leaders when they traded Brandon Nimmo for Marcus Semien.
Bo Bichette is a popular player with fans and teammates. Jorge Polanco is irrelevant, but Freddy Peralta appeared to fit right in with the team in spring training.
Luis Robert Jr., who is almost as irrelevant this year as Polanco, was already friends with Juan Soto. And maybe it all circles back to Soto, and to his alleged poor relationship with Francisco Lindor.
That dynamic has already been a talking point in its own right. Eric Chavez’s comments on his podcast, where he said Juan Soto would exit the dugout to be alone with an assistant GM early in 2025, became one of the more discussed things he’s said. Chavez tried to make the case that management should carry the blame, but the story still left Soto looking bad.
Martinez’s point, though, is broader than any one player. He’s arguing that the Mets don’t feel like a team. He’s saying they look like individuals operating separately, not a group built to win together.
That’s not a wild critique for this particular club. What Martinez is adding is weight.
He’s one of the all-time greats, and he’s been around enough different clubhouses to know what a healthy one looks like. He’s seen how locker rooms form, break, and either hold together or fall apart.
He still stopped short of naming names. That’s what makes the whole thing feel unfinished.
He clearly thinks something is off. He just didn’t say all of it out loud.
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