It's Opening Day! What to expect from the Mets in 2026

Everything you need to know going into Opening Day. Plus, the Just Mets round table makes their predictions for the season.

What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️

• The Mets will open their 2026 regular season against the Astros this afternoon at Citi Field against the Pirates

• RHP Freddy Peralta, who will make his team debut today, declined to comment about a potential contract extension when meeting with the media on Wednesday

• 1B/OF Jared Young and LHP Richard Lovelady officially claimed the club’s final two Opening Day roster spots

• RF Carson Benge will wear No. 3 in his rookie season

• The Mets are one of 15 teams showing interest in a potential reunion with RHP Drew Smith (MLB.com)

• New York has won 41 of their last 56 Opening Day games after losing their first eight in a row

Roster Moves 🗞️

• RF Carson Benge selected to the major league roster

• LHP A.J. Minter (left lat surgery) placed on the 15-day injured list retroactive to March 22nd

• INF Vidal Brujan, LHP Bryan Hudson and C Ben Rordvedt designated for assignment

Today’s Game 🗓

Match-up: Mets vs. Pirates

Where: Citi Field – Flushing, NY

Starters: RHP Freddy Peralta (Mets debut) vs. RHP Paul Skenes

When: 1:15 PM EDT

Where to Watch: NBC/Peacock

Just Mets Round Table: 2026 Season Expectations 📝

Today on Just Mets, the staff offers their final quick thoughts ahead of the 2026 season, final record & playoff positioning…

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Michael Baron

Expected record: 87-75 (Wild Card)

I think I am purposely staying light on my expectations for the Mets record because I keep getting burned by them when I try to project them out this time of year. I’ll gladly take the loss if they finish with more than 87 wins, but there are still a lot of IFs, specifically with the pitching, that make it too hard for me to go higher with my projections.

It all hinges on the pitching, of course, the area of the roster which doomed this club a year ago. Sure, if Nolan McLean pitches the way he’s expected to, Clay Holmes does what he did last year, David Peterson can put together 162 games in the same season successfully, and Kodai Senga is merely competent, the Mets will have themselves a strong rotation. But, that’s a lot of IFs and maybe’s, and it’s unfair to expect all of that to work out, even if the Mets bring up some of their top young arms in Jonah Tong and Christian Scott and they end up pitching well for the club.

Now, I do expect the defense to be a lot better. I expect the offense to be more fluid than it was last year since it’s more a contact-centric unit than it was a year ago. I think the club is more agile and more athletic as well. Those are all improvements, even without Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil, and Brandon Nimmo. They’re going to be different, it’s going to look weird at the beginning, but it just seems like it’s built better and can be a bigger threat with runners in scoring position in particular because of their improved contact-ability, which was an area they struggled mightily with in 2025.

All told, if this season comes down to one game again and it’s the difference between the playoffs and going home after 162, I do believe that one game can be won by the improved attributes this club now possesses. Obviously, let’s hope it doesn’t come down to one game, and I am wrong on my 87-win expectation on the low end.

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Rich MacLeod

Expected record: 93-69 (NL East Champions)

I may be known for being “the negative one” here at times, but this time of year… hope springs eternal.

After a massively disappointing and frustrating campaign last season and an offseason that had a turbulent beginning, I truly believe that this roster makeover by David Stearns is going to pay off in a major way. The rotation looks as if it is going to have significantly better returns than it did for the last four months of the 2025 season, the lineup is deeper and seemingly less prone to slumps, the clutch/RISP numbers should be notably improved, and the defense has also been upgraded. Truly the only area on this team that you could circle as being downgraded from last year would be the bullpen – specifically sans Edwin Díaz – but even that has a chance to be better than last year simply by virtue of not entering every other game in the third or fourth inning.

Honestly, the thing that’s got me the most excited entering this year is that it truly feels like a fresh start. Yes, losing long-term Mets like Díaz, Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, and Jeff McNeil stings, but this was a group of players that was together for a long time and didn’t do a whole lot of winning. If we’re being entirely frank, they had a habit of underperforming expectations a lot more than surpassing or even meeting them.

This year, I’m excited to watch something new. A new group, a new feel, and a new season. LFGM.

Justin Mears

Expected record: 89-73 (Wild Card)

I spent the majority of the winter being utterly disappointed and frustrated with the course the Mets had clearly decided to take over the winter. It sucks to see homegrown fan favorites cast away.

Then I spent a few weeks in Port St. Lucie around this team every day, came home, the calendar flipped to March, and it got a lot easier to feel optimistic about the Mets’ chances.

In Freddy Peralta and Nolan McLean, the Mets have a chance to boast a pretty dynamic 1-2 duo atop the starting rotation. This staff desperately lacked a true stopper a season ago, and I don’t foresee many prolonged losing streaks dragging out here in 2026.

Bo Bichette has essentially replaced Pete Alonso as the team’s top right-handed bat, and while he likely won’t deliver the same power Alonso did, he is a better all-around hitter and should serve as excellent protection behind Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto.

This year’s version of the Amazins also possesses a pair of legitimate wild cards that have the potential to dramatically raise the club’s floor.

Luis Robert and Carson Benge.

The mercurial Robert has elite raw talent but struggled to stay on the field in Chicago. When healthy, he clearly has 30/30-like upside, and his skills have been on full display in camp.

Benge, meanwhile, will break camp with the club and has the potential to make the biggest position player impact as a rookie with the Mets since Alonso’s rookie season of 2019.

Provided these two perform as expected, the Mets suddenly boast a seriously scary offensive attack.

The one area of the roster that still gives me pause, however, is the bullpen. I’m really concerned about late-inning relief without Edwin Diaz, and while Devin Williams and Luke Weaver both have solid resumes, I need to see it firsthand.

Having Brooks Raley for a full season and getting A.J. Minter back shortly will certainly help, but for now, the relief corps as a whole is something that needs to prove it can be a reliable strength.

If that happens, this is a well-rounded roster that should compete for the NL East crown. I’d expect the race to come down to the end and again be a three-team fight between the Mets, Phillies, and Braves.

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Andrew Van Buskirk

Expected record: 90-72 (NL East Champions)

As sure as the sun will rise and tides will turn, we have once again arrived at the best day of the year. Almost every season, I go into Opening Day with the same level of delusional belief that I had the season before, and I’m able to justify it annually through some combination of silver lining inspection and analysis of minutiae.

But this year feels palpably different.

Yes, the front office jettisoned the vast majority of a core group of players that fans had come to know and love like extended family over the past decade. Yes, they let the franchise leader in home runs and arguably the best closer in baseball leave in free agency, one to a direct rival. Yes, the talent brought in to replace said core comes attached with question marks that make the immediate future of this franchise a bit more difficult to forecast.

And yet, when you take a step back, remove yourself from the emotions of losing your favorite familiar faces, and look objectively at the talent currently on the roster, I’m not sure how you could come to anything other than an optimistic conclusion.

As the resident jinx, I’m sure I’ve just buried the team and cursed them to a third-place finish, but I’m genuinely hard-pressed to find any glaring holes here. You could point to the various defensive question marks, but I honestly don’t foresee it being all that substantial an issue. It’s a long season, and game reps are crucial for development anyway. There will likely be some ugly lowlights in the first few weeks, but the season runs through September.

On offense, I see a complete lineup. Yes, Pete Alonso’s gone, but Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto are now being backed up by Bo Bichette and Jorge Polanco. That combo instantly lengthens the top of the lineup with two more career run creators up top. Brandon Nimmo was swapped for Marcus Semien, who’s replacing Jeff McNeil up the middle with a vastly better glove and what has been an equivalent-to-better bat over the last three seasons (with a superior recent track record of run creation…a pattern is emerging). These seem like winning moves to me!

I’m particularly excited to see how the outfield looks beyond Opening Day. Carson Benge making the team out of camp after such a rapid ascent through the minors was thrilling, foregone a conclusion as it was — having both him and Luis Robert Jr. out in the field should inherently boost this team’s defensive value. Benge is a gifted hitter who will find any and every gap he can to squeeze a ball through, especially going to the opposite field. I anticipate he’ll have a tangible impact swiftly. As for Robert, despite my loud prior protests to trading for him, I’m fully ready to flip the script and take on the role of his loudest champion. The Mets don’t even need him to be the All-Star hitter he was in 2023; they just need him to be league average at the plate so his Gold Glove defense isn’t the only thing of value he’s bringing to the lineup.

As for the pitching staff, I’m just as bullish. I love this rotation, genuinely — that’s not even me being a ruthlessly loyal homer, it’s just a good group of starters. The Athletic’s Jim Bowden ranked the Mets’ rotation as the ninth-best in baseball, and I think that’s just the right spot for them. Freddy Peralta was the picture-perfect person to add to the top of this staff, from the stability and leadership he brings to the clubhouse to his daily elite execution on the field. Nolan McLean will probably win Rookie of the Year, and even if he doesn’t, he’ll still probably win at least 10 games.

Clay Holmes was the most underappreciated member of the team last season, and I don’t think it’s particularly close. Holmes led the team in starts in his first year as a starter — that’s impressive enough on its own, but then consider he came away with a team-leading 12 wins and a mere 3.45 ERA to his name. If Holmes’s WBC performance is an indicator for what we can expect from him this year, I don’t doubt he’ll be even better; the same can be said for McLean. Rounding out the rotation, if David Peterson’s 3.48 FIP last season is to be believed, he had a few run-ins with some bad luck before running out of gas altogether; he should be ripe for a bounce-back. Provided Kodai Senga stays healthy, I think he could also easily come away with 10 wins under his belt this season, even with a reduced workload. He looked exceptional this spring, arguably just as good as he looked only a year ago before the fateful hamstring injury.

The main Mets-related hill I’m willing to die on this season is that the reception to the Devin Williams signing has been ludicrously lukewarm. Williams is a two-time Reliever of the Year winner and a two-time All-Star who, statistically, has a far more consistent career track record than Edwin Díaz. Yes, Williams gave up one of the most signature homers in franchise history, and then immediately struggled in the Bronx. But from his debut in 2019 through his final season in Milwaukee in 2024, Williams accumulated nearly four more bWAR than Díaz, despite throwing 30 fewer innings. In fairness, Díaz beats Williams in K% and BB% over that span...by a percentage point in each category.

It goes without saying that this bullpen would be better with both Williams and Díaz in it. All I’m saying is that the talent drop off from Díaz to Williams isn’t really that severe, and I think recency bias has done Williams a serious disservice. He’ll be a more than suitable replacement for Díaz, and it won’t take long for him to prove that.

Beyond Williams, the Mets’ pen should be fine. Luke Weaver is built for the set-up role, Brooks Raley and a healthy A.J. Minter should provide some lockdown firepower from the left side, Luis García looked terrific in camp, Huascar Brazobán was untouchable in the WBC, and we all know what Tobias Myers can do in long-relief and spot-start situations. This seems like a solid group to me, especially knowing the talent on the farm that’s ready to fill in any holes that do emerge.

Clearly, I’m excited for the 2026 season. I do think the NL East will be particularly competitive this year, so I’m tempering my win-loss expectations, but all the same, I do anticipate this team emerging victorious atop the division.

Let’s go Mets. Let’s go baseball. Happy Opening Day.

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Linda Surovich

Expected record: 92-70 (NL East Champions)

I am usually more pessimistic at the start of the season, especially after getting burned by this team too many times in the past. I am still hesitant to predict anything good happening to this team lest I jinx it, but here we are.

If you had asked me in December to make this prediction, you would have gotten a wildly different answer after the departures of Brandon Nimmo, Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil, and Edwin Díaz. What I have come to realize is while fans lead with their hearts, David Stearns leads with his brain. That core group had multiple chances to get it done, and they simply did not. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, so Stearns saw a change was needed and tore down and built back up in the span of one offseason.

The additions of Bo Bichette, Luis Robert Jr., Jorge Polanco, and Marcus Semien not only overhauled the offense but the defense as well, which in turn should impact the pitching. Now with the addition of Carson Benge, that is five new bats in the lineup compared to last season, which is quite a lot of turnover, but it was a needed purge to hopefully get back to the playoffs. The two most important holdovers from 2025 are Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto. For better or worse, the Mets are now their team to lead, and it is them you build around.

Not only did Stearns rebuild the offense and defense, he overhauled the rotation and bullpen as well. Freddy Peralta is the ace to lead the staff, and Devin Williams is the new closer. While these are absolutely fantastic additions, he also plugged holes in less flashy but no less important areas. Tobias Myers is their new long man, and Luke Weaver is a bona fide setup man. With starters not going deep into games, Myers is a critical addition, and Weaver should bring stability to the back of the lineup.

This team has legit depth in the rotation with Christian Scott and Jonah Tong waiting in the wings if any of their pitchers get hurt or underperform. On paper, this should be a very good time, but what gives me more confidence in them is not what they did but the state of the rest of the NL East. The Phillies are again running it back with their same core that is now aging. Bryce Harper has had a hard time catching up with fastballs, which has been an alarming trend for him the past few seasons. Zack Wheeler is coming off Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, which is a huge question mark at the top of their rotation.

Speaking of rotations, do the Braves even have one? Chris Sale will be 37 years old when the season starts, Spencer Strider is starting the season on the IL, and both Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep underwent elbow surgery during spring training. Atlanta is in serious trouble when it comes to the state of their rotation, so that could hamper them when the season begins.

If anything, the Marlins have improved. They have good young players, and Pete Fairbanks was brought in to be their new closer. Miami could surprise some people this season, but they might be a few years away before being a true contender.

The Nationals will probably still be bad.

The Mets have an opportunity to seize the NL East crown. Let’s see if this is the group that is able to do it.

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Andrew Steele

Expected record: 89-73 (Wild Card)

I’ll admit right from the jump that I suck at predictions. I just do. And, if I’m remembering correctly, I’ve been way off the mark the last couple of times we’ve done this. I’ve also leaned towards the pessimistic end of the scale, which I don’t think you can blame me for. We’ve all got a lot of scar tissue and PTSD as Mets fans.

However, I’m going to change tack this year by being slightly more optimistic. While I believe that the Phillies will ultimately end up winning the National League East, I don’t think the Mets will be a million miles behind. I’m more than happy to be proved wrong on that prediction, but I still think there are a lot of questions that need answering with this Mets team. And I believe there are certain things we need to see first before we can really entertain the idea of this ballclub winning the division.

For instance, we need to see a lot of improvement from the starting rotation. Pitching sunk the Mets in 2025, and it goes without saying that the script will need to be flipped if postseason baseball is to return to Queens in 2026. Freddy Peralta at the top of the rotation should help, as should a full season of Nolan McLean. Clay Holmes increasing his workload would also provide a timely boost, as would David Peterson being able to put it all together for a full season. I think we all need to see Kodai Senga stay healthy and pitch to a high level over a sustained period of time before we truly buy into his impressive camp. And who knows what to expect from Sean Manaea at this point. My sneaky prediction is that Christian Scott will end up having a big impact on this rotation in the second half of the year.

If I’m being honest, it’s the bullpen that probably scares me more. I’m sorry, but the absence of Edwin Díaz is going to be felt. Even if Devin Williams pitches at a decent level. However, I think the eventual return of A.J. Minter will help to solidify the relief pitching and make it a solid unit.

Offensively, I’m actually really high on the potential of this lineup. The front office did a good job of pivoting towards a lineup that puts a heavy onus on elite contact, putting the ball in play, and making things happen on the basepaths. I think Bo Bichette is going to have a huge year at the plate, and Jorge Polanco as mainly a DH could help to replace some of the power that went out the door with Pete Alonso. Plus, there is a lot of upside with both Luis Robert Jr. and Carson Benge in terms of the potential production they could offer. Is this the year we finally see a huge offensive breakout from Francisco Alvarez too? One thing I am confident in saying is that I think this lineup will be a lot more potent with runners in scoring position, and I think it will be more of a well-balanced lineup that can produce runs in a multitude of ways.

All in all, I’m more excited going into this season than I was heading into last year. I just have a sneaky good feeling. And, while I’m not ready to totally buy in just yet, I think improved defense, fewer strikeouts, more clutch hitting, and a more dependable starting rotation will lead to a return to the playoffs.

In any case, I’m just thrilled baseball is back.

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Andrew Claudio

Expected record: 97-65 (NL East Champions)

The Mets are winning the National League East this year. Famous last words, but I believe that both the floor and the ceiling of this team have been raised significantly after this offseason.

The complete roster facelift, which really began when they signed Juan Soto one year ago, feels awfully similar to Omar Minaya’s 2005-06 offseasons that rebuilt a team into a true contender. It only makes sense to predict the same record and regular season success as we saw then.

Around the League 🚩

• The Yankees used a five-run frame to help them beat down the Giants in the first game of the MLB season 7-0 on Wednesday night in San Francisco