Mets offense fails again as Soto noise grows louder

New York loses their fourth game in five tries. Plus, things are continuing to spiral around Juan Soto.

What’s up with the Mets? ⚾

• The Mets lost yet again on Monday night, falling to the Red Sox by a 3-1 score (box)

• New York has now lost four of their last five games, while averaging 1.6 runs per game and hitting zero home runs

• RHP Kodai Senga got off to a rocky start but delivered a quality start, allowing three runs on five hits and three walks over six innings with five strikeouts

• RF Juan Soto went 1-for-4 at the plate with a single, but did not hustle out of the box on his one hit high off of the Green Monster

• Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said after the game that the team would speak to Soto about his recent lack of hustle in games

• CF Tyrone Taylor was one of the few players to deliver on offense, going 2-for-3 with an RBI in the loss

• 1B Pete Alonso committed a throwing error at first base for the second consecutive night

• New York went 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position, and are now hitting .218 as a team in such situations this season (26th in MLB)

• Following their loss and the Phillies win, the Mets have fallen out of first place in the NL East for the first time since April 9th

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Play of the Game 🌟

As opposed to most other games, there wasn’t one singular moment in last night’s game that stands out too much above the rest. The Mets fell down early and never legitimately threatened to recover from it, especially with the way their offense is going right now.

With New York already trailing 2-0 in the second inning, Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran ripped a ball into the right field corner. With two outs the runner on first was able to come all the way around to score and Duran pulled into third base with an RBI triple. That 3-0 lead was more than enough padding for Boston, who went on to win a rather easy 3-1 game.

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Down on the Farm 🌾

All four Mets minor league affiliates were off on Monday.

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Today’s Game 🗓️

Match-up: Mets (29-19) at Red Sox (24-25)

Where: Fenway Park — Boston, MA

Starters: RHP Clay Holmes (4-2, 3.14 ERA) vs. TBD

When: 6:45 PM EDT

Where to Watch: SNY, TBS

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Things are going sideways on Juan Soto, much like one Met that came before him… ✍️

This isn’t the first time that a player who signed a big free agent contract has struggled in their first season with the Mets. And whether or not you’re concerned, whether or not you believe in all the noise surrounding him, things are not going well for Juan Soto right now.

Just when it looked as if Soto had begun to turn things around in a Mets uniform in recent weeks, things have begun to spiral in a way that no one anticipated when the star outfielder agreed to sign a record deal with the club over the winter.

While not terrible, Soto’s .815 OPS to start the season certainly was not what Steve Cohen thought he was getting when inking the 26-year-old to a 15-year, $765 million contract. And over his last eight games, Soto is hitting just .138/.306/.138 with no home runs, no doubles, one RBI, seven strikeouts and a double play.

Soto’s bat speed has also dropped in a rather stark way as it’s dropped from an average of 75.4 miles per hour last year to 73.3 miles per hour in 2025. That 2.1 miles per hour decrease is the second-largest drop for any major league hitter compared to the 2024 season, per Eno Sarris of The Athletic.

At this point, however, this is starting to go beyond the numbers. Everyone expects that Soto is eventually going to hit in a way that resembles the first seven seasons of his career, even if the first seven-plus weeks have looked as average as they have. What really is beginning to turn against Soto in recent days, however, are the optics.

After returning to Yankee Stadium for the first time since telling the organization “thanks, but no thanks” after leaving in free agency, things have gotten as loud as they ever have for the outfielder.

It was a weekend that put Soto under one of the harshest spotlights of his career as he stepped up to a chorus of boos routinely for three games and had fans in right field literally turn their backs on him (quite lamely, if I may so so myself). The noise only grew over the weekend as Soto delivered just one hit – a single – over nine at-bats in a series that the Mets lost, showed an obvious lack of hustle on the base paths, and saw himself being openly questioned and criticized by ESPN’s broadcast for dropping out of his in-game interview appearance that he had previously accepted.

(For context, it has been reported that Soto dropped out of said interview after it was revealed to him that a majority of the questions weren’t about the Mets, but about former teammate Aaron Judge).

Soto also chose not to speak to reporters following Sunday night’s loss in the Bronx, which doesn’t often help with those optics.

Things got so wonky over the weekend that ESPN falsely reported that Soto was flying in his own private jet during road trips instead of traveling with the team. That report was later refuted by Jeff Passan.

Like it or not, that noise has only gotten louder since the series ended as plenty of members of the media are choosing now as their time to pile onto what has become a slow-building avalanche for Soto.

Following the weekend series, Yankees play-by-play announcer Michael Kay (who I’m sure has zero biases whatsoever) shared on his radio show that Soto has been unhappy with the Mets, parroting a popular troll the Yankees fans have been shouting since the moment he spurned them in free agency.

“He is very, very glum around the clubhouse,” Kay said on Monday. “I think at this point, he is probably a bit down, pouting a bit. And then to come into Yankee Stadium with three straight sellout crowds, at a place that was his Field of Dreams. It became his Field of Nightmares over the weekend.”

While I think it’s important to put a rather large asterisk on these comments because of who they’re coming from – I think referring to Yankee Stadium as Soto’s “Field of Dreams” despite him spending just 329 days as a member of the Yankees, a team he never chose to go to and chose to leave in free agency, is a bit laughable – it is still worth noting as Soto is now making these sorts of claims appear to be more believable by the way he’s carrying himself.

That type of chatter went beyond just the Michael Kays and Karl Ravechs of the world, however, as NJ.com’s Bob Klapisch added more fuel to the fire on Monday, as well.

“The man is downright miserable,” Klapisch wrote in a recent column. “These are troubling signs for the Mets hierarchy. I’m told they’re concerned about Soto’s lack of enthusiasm for his new team. The only time Soto seemed happy this weekend was while he interacted with Judge, manager Aaron Boone and second baseman Jazz Chisholm during batting practice.”

Klapisch went on to take additional cheap shots at Soto where he criticized his toughness and even made remarks about the outfielder gaining weight since last season.

To be fair, I do think a lot of what is being said above smells like a steaming hot pile of horse shit. But this is a nuanced conversation that factors in the perception of this player right now, whether that perception is right or patently false.

Even for New York, a media market that is filled with bile and hot takes on a daily basis, the amount of hit pieces filed and knives being sharpened for Soto in recent days has been somewhat alarming. The fact that things have gotten to the point in which prominent members of the media, even if you do actively question their integrity, are choosing now to be their time to get their shots in is a clear sign of the direction these winds are blowing right now.

This momentum of this narrative continues to snowball as Soto didn’t hustle yet again on a base hit that went off of the Green Monster in Monday night’s loss to the Red Sox.

“Well, he’s trotting again…” SNY broadcaster Keith Hernandez remarked during the play last night.

This comes just a day after Soto didn’t hustle on an infielder grounder vs. the Yankees that could have resulted in a hit late in a tie game, and resulted in both Soto and manager Carlos Mendoza being asked about it following last night’s loss. Mendoza told reporters that the club would, in fact, talk to Soto about his recent lack of hustle. Soto, however, had a different take on the matter entirely.

“I think I’m hustling very hard,” Soto said back to reporters last night. “If you saw me tonight, you could tell.”

With things beginning the spiral the way they have around Soto, it’s made me reflect on other big name Mets who have struggled in their first seasons with the club after signing big contracts. Obviously Francisco Lindor is the most recent case of this as he got off to a dreadful start and posted the worst OPS of his career (.734) in his first season in New York. There are plenty of other examples, as well, but there was one, in particular, that I realized was the most apt comparison.

To me, this is looking an awful lot like Carlos Beltrán’s first season with the Mets.

Prior to the 2005 season Beltrán had signed the largest contract in franchise history at that point in time, agreeing to a seven-year, $116 million deal with the club. Similar to Soto, the signing came with a major amount of fanfare, especially considering that most in the industry expected that the star outfielder would ultimately wind up with the Yankees after such a strong start to his young career.

And though there was never any epic bidding war between the clubs that we saw when they competed for Soto, it was still viewed as a major coup for the Mets to land such a prized free agent for a change.

Beltrán’s first season did not go as planned, though, as the outfielder underperformed his lofty expectations and batted .266/.330/.414 with 16 home runs, 34 doubles, 78 RBI and a .744 OPS in 2005. Beltrán’s 97 OPS+ was the third-worst mark of his career, trailing his age 23 season where he only played 98 games and the final season of his career at age 40.

Similarly to Soto, Beltrán also had to return to the stadium of the club he spurned in free agency the offseason prior to joining the Mets to great levels of ire.

“For four days, the fans at Minute Maid Park had taunted Beltran with profane chants, signs and t-shirts,” The New York Times wrote at the time. “One heckler baited him with a bill attached to a fishing pole. The Astros battered him with negative statistics that they flashed on the scoreboard.”

Much like what Soto is going through now, Beltrán’s struggles stretched beyond just the statistics. At the time, the star center fielder received a lot of criticism for his nonchalant body language that often got misconstrued for not caring, and not always appearing to hustle on every play in the outfield or on the base paths.

“For Beltrán, it was another opportunity for fans to boo him, which they did,” Ben Shpigel of The New York Times wrote late in the 2005 season. “In a little more than a year, Beltrán has gone from the best player no one knew about — when he played in Kansas City — to one of the best clutch hitters in baseball, in his half season with Houston, to a colossal disappointment in his first season in New York.”

“He doesn’t show much emotion,” manager Willie Randolph said about Beltrán in August of that season. “Visually, would I like to see something different? Yeah, but I'd like to see all my guys get after it.”

All-in-all, things wound up going pretty well for Beltrán as he wound up with 149 home runs, 559 RBI, a .869 OPS and a 129 OPS+ over his seven years in a Mets uniform. In the minds of many, he wound up having a very successful career in New York. For others, though, he was never quite able to escape some of the criticisms that befell him over the early portions of his time with the organization.

Each player and human being is their own individual, but I do wonder if Beltrán could be the perfect reference point for those worried about Soto these days. But much like Carlos was able to do before him, the only person that is going to be able to help Soto out of this is himself.

That means showing up and doing the work every day, making sure you’re hustling out of the box, making the plays you need to make and finding the adjustments in the batters box to get yourself right. It also means being aware of the way that you’re presenting yourself not only to the media, not only to the fans but to your teammates and your coaching staff around you.

Right now, the narrative around Juan Soto is an absolute mess. The daily discourse has been exhausting. In many ways it is getting blown out of proportion by a blood thirsty, pro-Yankee media apparatus. In many other ways, however, it is something that Soto has allowed to be questioned (no matter how ridiculously) due to the way he is playing and representing himself on the field and in the clubhouse.

Only he can change it. And though we may only be in the second month of his 15-year Mets career, it’s something he’s going to want to start figuring out sooner rather than later.

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Around the League 🚩

• The Phillies rallied for eight runs in the final three innings vs. Colorado, defeating the Rockies and taking a half-game lead in the NL East

• Cardinals RHP Sonny Gray struck out 10 batters as St. Louis continued their hot play with an 11-4 drubbing of the Tigers

• Marlins RF Jesús Sánchez hit a leadoff home run and delivered a two-run, walk-off triple in the club’s comeback victory over the Cubs

• The Orioles lost their seventh straight game on Monday night, falling to the Brewers by a 5-4 score