Welcome to the Show, A.J. Ewing!
After a day off Monday, New York is back home to open a series with Detroit tonight
What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️
The Mets were off on Monday and will open a three game series against the Tigers tonight, back home at Citi Field
Ahead of tonight’s game against the Tigers, the Mets are calling up top prospect A.J. Ewing (Athletic)
The Just Mets Podcast 🎙️
In the latest edition of the Just Mets Podcast, Andrew and Rich recap the Mets mediocre 3-3 week and their boring brand of baseball.
SUBSCRIBE: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Down on the Farm 🌾
All Mets minor league affiliates were off on Monday.
Today’s Game 🗓
Match-up: Mets (15-25) vs Tigers (19-22)
Where: Citi Field -Flushing, NY
Starters: RHP Freddy Peralta (2-3, 3.12 ERA) vs. RHP Jack Flaherty (0-3, 5.56 ERA)
When: 7:10 PM EDT
Where to Watch: SNY
Where can the Mets find any power? ✍️
The Mets’ nightly anemic offensive showings are the biggest reason for their struggles in 2026. That’s not a secret.
Only the San Francisco Giants have scored fewer runs than New York. Only the San Diego Padres have produced fewer hits. The Mets are in the bottom four in the Majors in both doubles and home runs.
To put it delicately, this has been a team that for more than a month and a half has simply been hard to watch.
The biggest issue to me is that there is not a single thing to indicate the results will change any time soon. And this subject is also a nightly reminder of the frustrating and disappointing offseason David Stearns put us through this winter.
The Mets—like every team—are going to go through offensive ebbs and flows. That’s just baseball. The difference is, most teams still find ways to score runs via power when they can’t string together rallies. And, most teams collectively get out of their team-wide funks.
On nights when you can’t get anything consistently going, you can still put a quick crooked number up with a walk, a bloop single, and a three-run bomb.
Those sequences are just not happening here. And it’s something that drives the knife deeper into the wound of letting Pete Alonso walk. Elite power hitters just don’t grow on trees. And the aforementioned three-run homerun can be a great elixir for a struggling offensive squad. Brandon Nimmo’s 20-25 homers/season production fits into the same category.
Right now, Mark Vientos leads the Mets in home runs. With five. Five! The Mets’ vaunted three-headed monster coming out of spring training—Francisco Lindor, Bo Bichette, and Juan Soto—has combined to clear the fence just eight times.
Right now, this Mets offense is clearly pressing, clearly feeling the pressure of struggling to score runs, and also looks completely incapable of stringing together four or five hits in an inning.
So where in the world can the team turn to address some of this?
Sadly, there are not any good answers other than turning back the clock.
The most obvious option would be a promotion for Triple-A first baseman Ryan Clifford. He leads Syracuse with seven long balls in 37 games, but his slash line shows he’s not exactly dominating the Triple-A level, and his 53 strikeouts in 131 at-bats are extremely concerning.
The Mets’ best hitter in Triple-A this season has been Ji Hwan Bae, whose slash line is .287/.374/.426. While his contact bat could certainly be more helpful than some of these journeyman additions the club has brought in the last couple of weeks, his two home runs illustrate he won’t solve the power outage.
SNY”s Chelsea Janes speculated yesterday about the team searching for another team’s disgruntled player, such as Boston’s Trevor Story.
That’s an interesting thought exercise, and not one that should be dismissed immediately. Story is a former All-Star with six seasons of 24+ home runs on his ledger. He’s struggled severely this year, but was excellent for Boston in 2025, so maybe that’s something at least worth considering if they can get him on a pennies on the dollar trade, or deal a bad contract for a bad contract there? If not with Story, maybe there’s a similar opportunity elsewhere?
The simplest answer, though, doesn’t involve outside additions.
The Mets simply need to get more production from their own players. Bichette has been awful since putting on the orange and blue. The back of his baseball card clearly indicates that should not continue, but when you’re 10 games under .500, everything is magnified. Francisco Álvarez and Brett Baty have not even been in the zip code of their preseason projections.
Guys like Luis Robert Jr. and Jorge Polanco, who were supposed to help, are predictably injured and they weren’t doing much when they were healthy.
They’re bringing up AJ Ewing from Triple-A ahead of tonight’s game. That move seems both premature and bordering on desperate, and while they’d probably acknowledge to some degree that both are true, they’re looking for anything to jumpstart this offense, and while he isn’t going to hit for a lot of power, perhaps his elite speed and contactability will help jumpstart the top of the lineup and create more scoring opportunities for the middle.
Of course, his readiness is in serious question since he’s played just 58 games above Single-A Brooklyn in his professional career.
In the end, this whole season feels like an indictment on the front office’s winter strategy. Stearns was resolute about run prevention but tried to do it at the sacrifice of run production. And we all know you can’t win if you don’t score.
And honestly, I don’t even know if the Mets should be even thinking about bringing in an expensive veteran at this point, even if the cost is net-zero to the books. If anything, the Mets should probably start considering moves to jettison expensive, underperforming veterans from their roster and seriously think about how they’re going to move this organization forward in the way they keep saying they want to, which is a product which is sustainable and successful long-term.
Last night brought a much-needed day off for the Mets.
Can they show us any fight when they open this week’s homestand later tonight?
Around the League 🚩
Yankees’ lefty Ryan Weathers carried a no-hitter into the 7th in the Bombers 3-2 loss in Baltimore
The A’s are calling up one of their best prospects, outfielder Henry Bolte, who has recorded hits in 12 consecutive minor league at-bats (MLB.com)
Travis Bazzana doubled and drove in two in the Guardians 7-2 home win over the Angels