The Mets are just two seasons removed from falling two wins short of the World Series, a little more than a year since they held the best record in baseball, and less than four months since being labeled contenders again.
But now the Mets (40-57) are on pace to finish in last place for the first time in 23 years, returning from the All-Star break after posting their worst first-half mark since 1995.
Steve Cohen is spending roughly a half-billion dollars on a roster that ranks 26th in batting average (.234), 29th in on-base percentage (.303), 27th in slugging percentage (.381), 26th in quality starts (23) and tied for the second-most errors (65).
But the Mets may not have hit bottom yet.
Coming off a home sweep by the Red Sox, the Mets resume their seasonlong slog Thursday at Philadelphia, beginning what is MLB’s toughest remaining schedule (.539 opponents win percentage) over the final 65 games.
Following a three-game set against the Phillies, the Mets will play three consecutive series against first-place teams (at Milwaukee, vs. Dodgers, vs. Atlanta), as part of 25 straight games against winning teams. The Mets will not face a team that is currently worse than one game under .500 until the final weekend of August.
“Continue to fight,” Francisco Lindor said after the final game before the break. “At the end of the day, that’s the only thing we can do. And we’re going to try to be better. We’re going to play as hard as we can in the second half, and hopefully we put ourselves in a much better position. Because right now, it’s not where we want to be.
“It’s not to the standard that we have here, and definitely not what we expected … We just have not played up to our potential.”
Whatever potential the Mets appeared to have in March doesn’t matter anymore, sitting 12 games back of the final wild-card spot and behind all but one team in the National League (Rockies).
“It’s a better team than that,” said interim manager Andy Green, who has gone 6-10 since replacing Carlos Mendoza, the first Mets manager to be fired in-season since 2008. “There’s too much talent in the room to be in this spot right now.”
Soon, the room will have even less talent.
After David Stearns whiffed on nearly every offseason move — including moving on from franchise fixtures such as Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil and Edwin Díaz, while bringing in Bo Bichette, Marcus Semien, Freddy Peralta, Devin Williams, Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert Jr. — the Mets president of baseball operations will attempt to recoup some of his losses by the Aug. 3 trade deadline.
The Mets’ first sell-off since 2023 began last month, when they traded David Peterson to the Cubs, and could end with several more players leaving Queens, including Peralta, Williams, Luke Weaver, Clay Holmes, A.J. Minter, Brooks Raley, Huascar Brazobán and others. Earlier this month, Cohen told The Post that he was “extremely worried” about the team’s future because of “regression in [their] farm system.”
There is nothing left to fear this season. It’s hard to imagine how it could get any worse.
But there is still time.
“We have to take a level of ownership of it ourselves,” Green said of the team’s record. “Every single person on this team has a level of responsibility to flip the script going into the second half.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
