Following a calamitous end to 2025, the New York Mets changed everything. Except, apparently, their trajectory and vibes.<\/p>\n
The trajectory hasn’t changed, as the Mets are following a solid 7-4 start with an eight-game losing streak that has dropped them to the bottom of the National League East. FanGraphs<\/a> has their playoff chances at 57.0 percent, down from 80.4 percent on Opening Day.<\/p>\n No team would have good vibes in this context, but go figure that a team with $500 million<\/a> worth of projected payroll expenses is being held to a particularly high standard. Google literally any Mets power player, and you’ll get results brimming with fire and brimstone. In urging patience<\/a>, owner Steve Cohen might as well be urging for paper to beat scissors.<\/p>\n After all, it’s not just the 7-12 start to 2026. Tack on the Mets’ finish to 2025, and only the Colorado Rockies have lost more games since July 28 of last year.<\/p>\n The Mets’ Losing Streak Has 1 Main Culprit<\/p>\n Hey, at least Juan Soto is blameless in all this. The Mets’ $765 million outfielder hasn’t played since April 3 because of a calf strain, which thankfully should be healed<\/a> before the end of April.<\/p>\n What the Mets have needed in Soto’s absence is their $341 million shortstop to take over carrying duties. Francisco Lindor has instead become the poster boy for all that ails them, and not just because he’s hitting .184.<\/p>\n Wherever Lindor’s head has been, it has all too frequently not been in the game. It’s always a surprise any time a 32-year-old veteran with all sorts of accolades makes a mental mistake, and Lindor has been stacking them<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet even if scapegoating Lindor is the easy thing to do, he’s just one hitter. The Mets have to run nine of those out every night, and every single one of them bears responsibility for the real culprit of the eight-game skid:<\/p>\n Runs Allowed: 44Runs Scored: 12<\/p>\n A total of 44 runs allowed over eight games is not good, but 12 runs scored over the same span is abysmal. The offense’s collective wRC+ is a meager 35, effectively making it a collection of half-functional Ke’Bryan Hayeses.<\/p>\n Seriously, Who Built This Team?<\/p>\n Given how last year ended, it’s no surprise the knives are out for the manager. Nor is that entirely unfair, given that Carlos Mendoza has squeezed only a .522 winning percentage out of over $1 billion in payroll costs since 2024.<\/p>\n Yet, according to\u00a0Will Sammon<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0The Athletic, veteran players on the Mets believe their skipper has “handled this year’s challenges fairly well.” Many of those challenges are downstream of the challenge facing Mendoza. The name on the front of the jersey is the same, but the names on the back are very different after this offseason:<\/p>\n Out: 1B Pete Alonso, RHP Edwin D\u00edaz, OF Brandon Nimmo, 2B Jeff McNeil, DH Starling Marte, RHP Tyler Rogers, RHP Ryan Helsley, LHP Gregory Soto, OF Cedric MullinsIn: 3B Bo Bichette, 2B Marcus Semien, 1B Jorge Polanco, CF Luis Robert Jr., RHP Freddy Peralta, RHP Devin Williams, RHP Luke Weaver<\/p>\n It would have been a lot to process even if the Mets were simply waving goodbye to so many fan favorites. Yet there was also David Stearns’ promise that the offseason would focus on run prevention<\/a>, which almost felt like a joke once they brought in Bichette and Polanco and changed their positions. <\/p>\n Apart from Polanco and Peralta, the Mets bought low on basically all their new additions. To this extent, the four new bats have a .212\/.286\/.300 slash line while Williams and Weaver have a combined 7.50 ERA feels like classic “FAFO.”<\/p>\n After last year’s collapse, nobody will argue that the Mets didn’t need changes. Yet Joe Buck and Ron Darling did dance around a salient question<\/a> during ESPN’s broadcast on Wednesday: Given New York’s resources, why didn’t it reel in bigger fish like a Kyle Tucker or a Dylan Cease?<\/p>\n This is where Stearns’ purported reluctance to long-term contracts<\/a> is unavoidable. It’s hardly an uncommon sentiment among front office types, and it does fit with the “sustainable competitiveness<\/a>” mindset that, to be fair, has made a huge difference for the Mets’ farm system.<\/p>\n And yet, the risk tolerance should be different for Stearns in New York than it was in his former post in Milwaukee. And since the reward Cohen is chasing is the franchise’s first World Series trophy in 40 years, it’s just plain weird to be watching a 2026 Mets squad that feels like Franken-team.<\/p>\n What Can the Mets Do to Fix This?<\/p>\n There’s a lot of season left, but the Mets have already put on a master class on how to lose a division in April. <\/p>\n Per FanGraphs<\/a> percentages, the top contenders for the NL East crown look like this:<\/p>\n Atlanta Braves: 53.6Philadelphia Phillies: 25.3New York Mets: 19.5Miami Marlins: 1.5Washington Nationals: 0.1<\/p>\n It’s a silver lining for the Mets that there will still be three wild-card spots open to them if they can’t win the division. And despite their slow start, one of those is still a realistic target.<\/p>\n As for how the recovery must happen, three possibilities come to mind.<\/p>\n Door No. 1: Fire Carlos Mendoza<\/p>\n It’s harder than ever to blame a manager for a team’s ills, but sometimes a new skipper is just what the doctor ordered. Just look what happened to the Phillies when they replaced Joe Girardi with Rob Thomson in 2022.<\/p>\n Yet, for reasons Sammon got into more deeply, it’s hard to imagine this happening soon. Mendoza is as much a canary in the coalmine as anyone with these new-look Mets, and it likely only helps his cause that he was hired by Stearns and Cohen in the first place. <\/p>\n Door No. 2: Overhaul The Roster\u2026 Again<\/p>\n