New day, (mostly) same story for the Mets...

Pete Alonso tied Darryl Strawberry's home run record, but the Mets lost their sixth in a row.

AP Photo

What’s up with the Mets? ⚾️

• The Mets lost their sixth straight contest, losing 7-6 in Milwaukee on Saturday (box)

• RHP Reed Garrett opened the game with a scoreless two-strikeout first inning

• 1B Pete Alonso homered again, tying Darryl Strawberry’s record for most in Mets franchise history

• DH Starling Marte homered again as well, his sixth of the season

• RHP Frankie Montas had another tough outing, needing 72 pitches to get through his three innings of work. He walked two, struck out three, and allowed three hits while surrendering three runs (one earned)

• RHP Ryne Stanek and RHP Ryan Helsley combined for a disastrous four-run seventh inning

• SS Francisco Lindor went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts and committed a costly error in the bottom of the second

• Saturday’s loss was the Mets’ 10th in 11 games; it’s their second five-plus game losing streak of the season

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Playoff Race 🏁

While the Mets lost again, the Phillies won again on Saturday, putting the Mets 4.5 games back from first place in the NL East.

Naturally, the Cubs and Reds also both won on Saturday, further weakening the Mets’ grasp on the final Wild Card spot. New York now sits 4.5 games behind Chicago and maintains just a 2.5-game lead over Cincinnati.

Per FanGraphs, the Mets now have an 81.8% chance of making the playoffs in 2025:

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Who’s Cold 🧊

• LF Brandon Nimmo has 14 strikeouts in his last 25 at-bats

• Ryne Stanek has been unpitchable lately, allowing seven hits and eight earned runs in his last six innings of work

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Play of the Game 🌟

Saturday’s game started with a bang: Pete Alonso’s 252nd career home run.

It ended with two whimpers: swinging Ks from Lindor and Soto.

Yet despite the back-and-forth nature of the scoring through the first four frames, it was Francisco Lindor’s second-inning error that set the losing tone for the afternoon early.

Unfazed by Alonso’s thunderous blast, Milwaukee would immediately retake the lead. With the bases loaded, two outs, and two strikes, Brewers SS Joey Ortiz slapped a 2-2 slider from Montas right back up the middle. The ball took a high hop as it met Lindor’s glove, skipping into the outfield and allowing two runs to score instead of ending the inning. Lindor could be seen reacting emotionally in the dugout once the inning was over.

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Down on the Farm 🌾

• SS Pablo Reyes (Triple-A): 3-for-5, 1 R, 2 RBI, 1 2B, 1 HR

• RHP Jack Wenninger (No. 11 prospect, Double-A): 5.0 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 5 K

• C Kevin Parada (Double-A): 2-for-3, 1 R, 2 RBI, 1 HR, 2 BB, 1 K

• DH Randy Guzman (Single-A): 2-for-4, 1 R, 2 RBI, 1 2B

• CF Yonatan Henriquez (Single-A): 1-for-1, 3 R, 3 BB,

BOX SCORES

Single-A STL (8/8 Makeup | GM 2) | High-A BRK | Double-A BNG | Triple-A SYR

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Today’s Game 🗓️

Match-up: Mets (63-54) at Brewers (72-44)

Where: American Family Field - Milwaukee, MI

Starters: LHP Sean Manaea (1-1, 3.52 ERA) vs. RHP Quinn Priester (11-2, 3.15 ERA)

When: 2:10 PM EDT

Where to Watch: WPIX

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A Quick Ode to Peter Morgan Alonso …✍️

(Credit: Benny Sieu/Imagn Images)

I know: they’re awful right now.

The New York Mets have now lost six in a row and dropped 10 of their last 11 games. They have one of MLB’s stronger schedules to close out the year, which doesn’t bode well for a locker room that’s mustered a team wRC+ of just 83 (28th in MLB) and a collective OPS of only .639 (29th) since the All-Star Break.

I could sit here and loudly commiserate with you, Dear Reader, about this team’s recent performance — and I will in the comments. I could throw a bunch of stats and charts at you to further illustrate just how horrific this team is currently, but that would only upset both of us. Let’s not do that.

Instead, I’m going to take a more positive tone for a moment to celebrate someone worthy of the optimism and good vibes I so desperately want to effuse.

Though the exceptional season he’s having was momentarily derailed by an atrocious July (a likely thing to happen to most of this team), the bet Pete Alonso made on himself this winter has already proven smart. Through 116 games, Pete’s bat has been arguably the most regularly valuable one in the Mets’ lineup: he’s driven in 92 runs with 26 homers and 27 doubles, good for a 143 OPS+ and 2.7 bWAR.

He’s certainly been the RISP MVP:

I spoke on this elsewhere, but I’ll say it again: he’s been so much better at run production than everyone else on this team that it borders on genuine silliness. Comparatively, they’re video game numbers.

There are a few changes Pete’s made that could explain his resurgent season:

1. He’s increased his power output without sacrificing his BB/K ratio. Despite his ISO jumping back up from .219 in 2024 to .241 in 2025, Pete has maintained his 10% walk rate while managing to knock his K rate down a few ticks. I attribute most of this to his improved swing decisions, chiefly that he’s swinging more frequently (both in general and at pitches in the middle of the zone) than he was in 2024.

2. He’s hitting the ball harder than he ever has, more frequently than he ever has. Alonso’s average 93.4 mph EV and 52.5% hard-hit rate are both career highs by quite a step. In his first six big-league years, Alonso’s average EV hadn’t exceeded 91 mph since 2021; similarly, he averaged a 43% hard-hit rate. That points to a more focused swing that Alonso’s able to square up more frequently than he ever has (per Baseball Savant bat tracking data).

3. He’s barreling up the ball more than he ever has. Alonso’s getting the ball to the Goldilocks spot 20.1% of the time he makes contact — that’s fifth best in baseball. Even better, his 13% Barrels/PA is second-best in the league, trailing only (who else) Aaron Judge. An increase in barrel frequency plus a 94th-percentile sweet-spot rate (40.4%) explains why he’s well on his way to 70 extra-base hits on the year.

Though these aren’t flashy adjustments, each of them has undoubtedly played a role in helping push Pete to the brink he’s currently standing on.

Imagn Images

Once his rookie season wrapped, we all knew that Alonso taking his place atop the Mets homer leaderboard was a matter of ‘when.’ Now that the moment’s here, it’s worth remembering what Alonso has done in a relatively short time.

In that storied 2019 debut season, Alonso mashed 53 home runs on his way to the Rookie of the Year Award — breaking a record set by the Yankees’ own prodigious power threat Aaron Judge just a year prior. Since then, he’s hit over 30 homers in all but the shortened 2020 season, and he’s on pace to become the second active big leaguer with four 40-homer campaigns.

Let’s see where else he ranks among the best in Mets history:

• Offensive WAR: 23.2 (10th)

• Career SLG: .514 (3rd)

• Career OPS: .854 (7th)

• Runs Scored: 552 (9th)

• Total Bases: 1,836 (6th)

• RBI: 678 (3rd)

• Extra-Base Hits: 429 (4th)

• HBP: 97 (1st)

And now, he’s on the doorstep of home run history.

This record would’ve felt special in any year, but in the presently less-than-pleasant landscape of this season, I wonder if it arguably means more now than ever.

No, one more home run isn’t going to suddenly tilt the championship scales, and it probably won’t stop the bleeding in our recently vacant win column. But who cares? Right now, the fans need something to feed off, as does the team itself. If we can’t allow ourselves to celebrate a 35-year-old record being broken, why even bother turning on the games anymore?

In a year defined by freak injuries, bullpen implosions, and multiple skids scattered across the past several months, Pete Alonso’s bat has been the one near constant spark — maybe that record-setting homer will be the big spark that finally wakes this team back up.

(I am not being idealistic!)

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Around the League 🚩

• Jen Pawol made history as the first woman to umpire in a regular-season MLB game. She will continue her ceiling-shattering crusade on Sunday behind the plate

• Dodgers DH Shohei Ohtani clubbed his 40th home run of the season. This marks his third-straight 40-homer season; he’s the only active player with four of them

• Mariners C Cal Raleigh hit his 44th homer of the year; he needs just five more to break the record most all time in a single season by a catcher