The Mets are playing like a team that's going to be torn apart

Edwin Díaz blows a 9-5 lead in the 9th inning for his third straight meltdown. Plus, how New York keeps topping their own ineptitude.

Rich MacLeod

May 19, 2024

What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️

The Mets performed their latest act of embarrassment on Saturday afternoon, blowing a five-run lead and losing to the Marlins, 10-9, in 10 innings (box)
RHP Edwin Díaz blew a four-run lead in the 9th inning, allowing a game-tying home run to Josh Bell while only recording one out
Díaz has now blown 9th inning leads in each of his last three appearances and has three blown saves on the season
Manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters that Díaz is still the team’s closer despite his struggles early this season
RHP Luis Severino had an up-and-down outing, allowing five runs with just three strikeouts over 6.2 innings pitched
DH J.D. Martínez went 2-for-5 with a double and two RBI at the plate
3B Mark Vientos went 2-for-4 with a double, two RBI, a walk and a run scored in the loss
New York is now 8-17 over their last 25 games and has lost three games where they had a lead in the 9th inning

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Down on the Farm 🌾

RHP Tyler Stuart (No. 18 prospect, Double-A): 7 IP, 7 H, 3 ER, BB, 9 K (loss)
SS Luisangel Acuña (No. 5 prospect, Triple-A): 2-for-5, 2B, run scored

BOX SCORES

Single-A STL | High-A BRK | Double-A BNG | Triple-A SYR

Who’s Cold 🥶

Edwin Díaz has a 27.00 ERA with two home runs allowed and two blown saves in three appearances since last Monday — he’s blown 9th inning leads in all three games

Today’s Game 🗓

Match-up: Mets (20-25) at Marlins (15-32)

Where: loanDepot Park — Miami, FL

Starters: LHP Sean Manaea (2-1, 3.05 ERA) vs. RHP Sixto Sánchez (0-1, 5.96 ERA)

When: 1:40 PM EDT

Where to Watch: WPIX

The impossibly bad Mets keep topping themselves ✍️

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Mets somehow managed to top their own ineptitude in yet another epic manner.

Saturday’s loss against the league-worst Marlins was the latest and most ludicrous in an early season that has been full of such moments for a team that is now in danger of spiraling into their own oblivion. And right now, it certainly appears as if that will be the fate of this chapter of Mets baseball.

Entering the 9th inning with a four-run lead, after previously leading the game 7-2 against a 14-win Marlins club, not even the most pessimistic of Mets fans likely saw what was coming. In the blink of an eye everything flipped on it’s head, as Edwin Díaz’s point to the sky above resulted in a prayer unanswered and a tie ballgame. In his first appearance in the same ballpark that ended his (and by proxy the Mets’) 2023 season before it even began in last year’s WBC, Díaz may have also unknowingly sealed the fate of this year’s version of the club on Saturday.

For Díaz, it was the third straight game in which he’d blown a 9th inning lead, all coming in the span of just six days as he has resembled the calamitous version of himself that fans learned to fear in 2019.

Overall, though, this problem goes far beyond just one man. The 2024 New York Mets have all the classic, tell-tale signs of a bad baseball team. When they hit, they don’t pitch. When they pitch, they don’t hit. Hell, sometimes they do neither of those things resulting in losses like we most recently were spectators to on Friday night.

We’re not even two months into this season and there have already been countless examples of this roster not even being able to execute the simplest of baseball tasks. There is no greater example of this folly than the club’s inability to score with the ghost runner in extra innings. New York has now played eight games this season that have gone to extras, and have not scored a run in the 10th inning of six of those games. It’s unfathomable.

Not only that but this team cannot throw out base stealers at a rate that is not only alarming but historic in addition to being one of the worst overall defense groups in the entire sport.

Offensive players are underperforming throughout the lineup, led by core players such as Francisco Lindor, Jeff McNeil, Brandon Nimmo and even Pete Alonso, which leads us to the most uncomfortable conversation of them all…

The way the Mets are playing the game of baseball right now is to a caliber that will result in this organization decimating their longstanding core.

The trio of Alonso, Nimmo and McNeil have been together since the 2019 season, with Lindor joining them soon after in 2020. In those four-plus seasons New York has only had a winning record twice and has made the playoffs just one time, losing in the first round of the postseason. It has largely been an era of underperformance and disappointment, with even the group’s best season ending in abject defeat.

At some point an organization has to have a sober look at themselves in order to identify what needs to change, and it is clear that David Stearns is going to do exactly that. Stearns has never openly committed to the core of this roster since taking over the club last Autumn, in large part because it was a core that he inherited and not one that he assembled. Many in the industry have wondered what Stearns’ true thoughts were on the players that were already on this roster when he took the reigns and if this team continues on the track they’re on, we’re getting closer and closer to finding out for sure.

Pete Alonso is famously a free agent at the end of this season, and perhaps the once insane idea of trading him at the deadline isn’t all-that-unlikely if Stearns doesn’t believe he’s part of the solution. Nimmo is a fan favorite and is only in the second year of his eight-year extension but has already begun to see a drop-off in his numbers this year and has been moved from center field to a corner outfield position. McNeil appears to be playing on borrowed time more than anyone, despite signing a four-year extension last season, as he’s hitting just 262/.328/.363 with a 95 OPS+ over his last 200 games.

Lindor is the one of the only players on this entire roster that is safe from any sort of ejection, but this is an organization that is going to have to consider every single option available to them if this continues.

Mets fans dreamed of so much more when Steve Cohen took control of this team entering the 2021 season, but the last several years have proven just how long it can take to fix a franchise that in many ways was thoroughly broken. As apathy begins to set in for a second consecutive year and Mets fans continue to focus on things other than baseball, this organization is careening toward their own judgement day.

Assuming nothing changes in the interim — and you’d be hard-pressed to find a reason to expect otherwise — there won’t be many reasons left to continue watching until that day comes.

Here’s hoping you’re a Knicks or Rangers fan. If not, maybe there’s something better on Netflix.

Around the League 🚩

Cubs LHP Shoto Imanaga was dominant once again in the club’s 1-0 win over the Pirates, giving him an 0.84 ERA this season – the lowest ever through nine starts to start a career
Yankees RF Juan Soto had his first multi-home run performance since joining the club as the Bombers defeated the White Sox, 6-1
The Astros won their sixth consecutive game, defeating the Brewers, to pull within four games of first place in the AL West