Wednesday, July 02

Welcome back to the Mets Beat newsletter! Anthony DiComo has covered the Mets for MLB.com since 2007, including the past 16 seasons full-time on the beat.

NEW YORK -- Of all the thoughts to emerge out of the Mets’ postgame clubhouse Saturday in Pittsburgh, the one I found most germane came from Francisco Lindor.   

“This is not like a magic thing -- this is not how it works,” Lindor said of the players-only team meeting he helped orchestrate for a second season in a row. “If that’s how it worked, we would have done it a while ago.” 

For weeks, Lindor and the Mets resisted the idea of a formal team meeting. It’s not as if their players were giving poor efforts. It’s not as if they were failing to grasp the issues affecting them. 

To the contrary, the Mets had reason to believe they could organically work their way out of this mess. 

The origins of their downturn, after all, can be traced back to losing starting pitchers Kodai Senga and Tylor Megill to injuries, disrupting a rotation that had led the league in ERA. That was (and remains) a temporary problem. Beyond that, weather around the country was warming, resulting specifically in some better offensive performances at home. The Mets were also coming off a season in which they demonstrated notable resilience by playing deep into October. 

So there wasn’t much urgency to call a team meeting, understanding these things aren’t panaceas. Every year is different. Many meetings fail to bear fruit. What’s more, such closed-door conversations tend to become very public, very quickly. Because media members are delayed from entering a postgame clubhouse if a formal assembly is happening, meetings are a hard thing to keep secret. 

Once a club has a team meeting, it becomes a thing. The Mets can now either be the club that held a team meeting and notably improved (see: 2024), or the club that held one to no avail (see: 2019). 

While the fate of the 2025 Mets won’t be clear for many weeks, by Saturday, it was obvious -- despite all the cautions listed above -- that it was probably time for them to gather and discuss their shortcomings. This is still a good team. It remains one of the most expensive rosters in baseball history, with high-caliber talent dispersed throughout it. 

It’s still a team with a good record, too. The Mets are 48-37, significantly better than they were at this time a year ago. They’re two games out of first place in the NL East. If the season ended today, they would host a Wild Card Series at Citi Field. 

So there’s time to save the season and a lot worth salvaging. Trade Deadline acquisitions will help, but the real improvements can’t begin until the Mets start playing better, plain and simple. That means stars like Lindor and Pete Alonso and even Juan Soto, who’s been hot in June but can still give the Mets more. 

This roster is too good to get outscored, 30-4, in a three-game series against one of the worst teams in the Majors. 

“Tough stretch, no sugarcoating it,” was how owner Steve Cohen put things in a post to X early Monday morning. “I didn’t see this coming. I’m as frustrated as everybody else.” 

Now that the Mets have officially held their big Team Meeting (capital T, capital M), it’s time to see if, for the second year in a row, that will wind up making a difference. 

Brewers rookie sensation Jacob Misiorowski, whom the Mets will face for the first time Wednesday at Citi Field, is a native of Blue Springs, Mo. Who is the Mets’ all-time wins above replacement leader born in the state of Missouri? 

A) David Cone

B) Bernard Gilkey

C) Ron Hunt

D) Max Scherzer

Misiorowski is not the only top starter the Mets will see on their six-game homestand that begins Tuesday. At a point when they could use a reprieve, the Mets will receive none, with Freddy Peralta, Misiorowski and old friend Jose Quintana set to start the next three games for the Brewers. Then, over 4th of July weekend, the Mets are tentatively scheduled to see Carlos Rodón and Max Fried in the Subway Series. 

That’s at least three lefties set to face a Mets lineup that has fared far worse against southpaws. 

Considering the importance of this homestand, the Mets will need to find a way to buck that trend. Tickets to all games, including the Subway Series, are still available at Mets.com/Tickets. 

Outfielder Carson Benge and right-handed pitcher Jonah Tong, two of the Mets’ top four prospects according to MLB Pipeline, will represent the organization at the Futures Game later this month in Atlanta. 

Benge, the Mets’ first-round Draft pick last season, recently earned a promotion to Double-A Binghamton after producing an .897 OPS over 60 games with High-A Brooklyn. Benge hasn’t hit for much power yet as a professional, but he’s done nearly everything else well. The 22-year-old’s strike-zone judgment already ranks among the organization’s best. 

Tong, also a 22-year-old in Binghamton, is putting together one of the most impressive Mets Minor League seasons in recent memory. Over his first 14 starts, he’s produced a 1.73 ERA with 115 strikeouts in 73 innings. That rate of 14.2 strikeouts per nine leads the Minors among pitchers with at least 65 innings. 

The Futures Game will take place July 12 at 4 p.m. and will be aired on MLB Network. 

• The injury that everyone suspected was formally diagnosed late last week, and Griffin Canning promptly underwent surgery to repair his ruptured left Achilles tendon. He’ll miss the rest of this season. 

• Phase 2 of All-Star Game voting is officially underway. Here’s everything you need to know, including a link to the ballot. 

A) Cone

A Kansas City native, Cone compiled 19.4 WAR (per Baseball Reference) during his Mets career, nearly twice as much as any other Missourian. Second on the list is Gilkey, who holds the single-season WAR record by a Missouri-born Met (8.1).

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