Mets won’t stop spiraling until they fix this fatal flaw
· Yahoo Sports
NEW YORK — The Mets eclipsed the one-third mark of this season on Monday at Citi Field and their fatal flaw continues to be crystal clear.
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It’s the opposite of David Stearns’ infamous offseason initiative.
The Mets have been one of the worst teams in baseball in run production.
Remember when the Mets scored 16 runs against the Nationals last Monday?
New York has scored 16 runs in seven games since then.
Monday’s series-opener against the Reds, a 7-2 dud with a concerning clunker from phenom Nolan McLean, was the Mets’ sixth loss in that seven-game span. How’s that for blowing any momentum from the comeback win over the Yankees and that extra-inning outburst in D.C. to smithereens?
The eye test here matches the numbers. An unwatchable offense ranks at or near the cellar in most offensive categories. As of Tuesday morning, the Mets have the lowest team OPS (.643) in baseball — a result of their league-worst on-base percentage (.293) and slugging percentage (.350). New York is ranked 26th, ahead of only four other clubs, in runs per game (3.85). They’ve been mediocre in the home run department as well (22nd in MLB with 47).
It doesn’t help that the Mets are missing a slew of key contributors on their injured list. Losing Francisco Lindor, Luis Robert Jr., Jorge Polanco and Francisco Alvarez to lengthy IL stints has been debilitating, stripping this lineup of any semblance of depth. As Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said after Monday’s loss, however, New York can’t use that as an excuse. This club still has professional hitters on their roster and good teams are able to withstand injury adversity. This team hasn’t.
The irony on Monday was that the two worst slumpers this season on the Mets had productive performances. Veteran Marcus Semien, who hit cleanup because New York simply doesn’t have any better options available right now when they’re facing a left-handed starter and Juan Soto is sidelined by flu-like symptoms, hit a home run and singled. That raised his OPS to .584 on the year. Bichette, meanwhile, had a three-hit day, raising his batting average up to .227. His OPS is on the doorstep of .600, a benchmark that he’s cleared for only six games this season.
Still, the Mets managed to score only two runs, their 24th game this season where they’ve plated fewer than three runs. That equates to nearly half (44%) of their entire campaign to this point.
This lineup’s inability to produce extra base hits this year has been a key component to their downfall. It’s not their only issue — they chase too much, can’t string rallies together, struggle to deliver clutch hits with runners in scoring position, have one of the lowest launch angles in the league, falter against velocity and more — but it continues to be their biggest problem to date.
Other than Semien’s homer and Brett Baty’s opposite-field double on Monday, the Mets scattered seven singles. When they had runners on first and third with two outs in the third and fifth, first baseman Mark Vientos chased a first-pitch changeup below the zone to ground out and then struck out swinging on a pitch that hit him.
“The biggest thing is our ability to drive the ball out of the ballpark,” Mendoza said. “We got nine hits and two runs. It’s hard to score three or four on just singles. You’ve got to be able to drive the ball and right now we’re having a hard time doing that.”
The Mets have hit for extra bases only 6.1 percent of the time this year, the worst mark in the big leagues. What makes that trend even more troubling is how much of a strength that was for this club a year ago. Last season, the Mets ranked in a tie for seventh with an extra base hit percentage of 8.2. They hit a home run on average every 24.36 at-bats, the fifth-best mark in the league. New York has a 38.51 AB/HR rate in 2026.
Digest those numbers and watch this lifeless lineup struggle to hit for power and it’s no wonder so many fans are still questioning the front office’s decision to part with slugger Pete Alonso and shake up this lineup the way they did. Pitching was the Mets’ Achilles heel a year ago not their offense and yet, other than a few late-inning relievers in free agency and a trade for Freddy Peralta, all of Stearns’ splashy acquisitions this past winter were bats. He clearly set out to reshape this lineup with more all-around hitters (and superior defenders). All of those moves haven’t worked out so far.
Even if the Mets let Alonso walk, they could’ve still placed more of an emphasis on thump in the middle of their lineup. With Polanco and Robert inserted in the heart of the order, it was always going to be a question mark as to how the Mets would provide enough protection behind Soto in the post-Alonso era. Those two couldn’t stay healthy — a familiar story — and nobody else has stepped up on a consistent basis in those important spots in the order.
Stearns spoke this past offseason about how protecting Soto goes beyond the hitter who bats directly behind him in the lineup. It’s also a discussion of depth. Can they put runners on base in front of Soto? Can the bottom of the order wreak havoc to put a pitcher on the ropes? That hasn’t been the case for these Mets in 2026. Soto is still shining, but he doesn’t have nearly enough help.
That’s the reality here for the Mets as they enter their second third of the year. No matter how effective the Mets’ pitching staff is, they won’t win enough to climb back into relevance this summer if they don’t start scoring more runs.
How they’re going to do that with this current group remains to be seen.
Bichette and Semien need to get hot and kiss their early-season woes behind.
Prospects Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing (maybe Nick Morabito as well) need to keep providing a spark with speed and contact, a glimpse of the future in the outfield with Soto.
Baty and Vientos must put it together.
Then, maybe if this team can tread water long enough for Alvarez, Polanco, Lindor and Robert to return, whenever that will be, they can make a summer surge. That’s when Stearns and his crew would have the green light to make win-now moves at the deadline, plugging holes and importing upgrades.
That’s a lot of ifs.
That was always going to be the case with this lineup, though. The changes that were made this past offseason raised the ceiling of this offense in a different way, but it also lowered the floor. Now, because of it, the Mets are quickly getting closer to a position where their season is beyond saving.
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