Mets continue to lose and it's starting to get very old very fast
Mets' Edwin Diaz reacts after surrendering a ninth inning run against the Texas Rangers on Saturday at Citi Field. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The Mets held an Old-Timers’ game on Saturday before they played the Rangers. So let’s get the obvious joke out of the way early:
Why can’t the Mets suit up some of the retired players? They can’t do any worse than the current ones!
Saturday’s crushing 3-2 loss to the Rangers at Citi Field gave the 2025 Mets a season-high eight-game losing streak. They remained a half-game ahead of the Giants in the battle for the National League’s third wild-card spot.
It’s been obvious for some time now: The $340 million Mets are as likely to miss the postseason as they are to make it.
Astounding but true.
So maybe it’s time for Bartolo Colon to take the mound (and grab a bat, too). Can Jose Reyes suit up to provide a spark? Hall of Famers Mike Piazza and Pedro Martinez were on hand, too, as were lesser lights such as Josh Satin and Kirk Nieuwenhuis.
Activate them all!
The Mets had MLB’s best record at 45-24 on June 12, but since then, they have gone 31-49.
It’s unfathomable. As is the way the Mets lost on Saturday.
They were leading 1-0 when manager Carlos Mendoza removed Brandon Sproat after six innings and 70 pitches in the rookie’s second big-league start.
Mendoza noted a tough sixth, when Sproat was hit hard and worked out of a two-on, two-out jam, and a “big-time velo drop.”
The data backs up Mendoza: Sproat’s first fastball of the night was 98.7 mph. His last was 93.7.
The kid said he wasn’t hurt, so while Mets Old-Timers who were on hand such as Colon, Martinez, Mike Hampton and Al Leiter (combined 121 complete games) would have gone back out for the seventh even with a “velo drop,” Mendoza’s bosses would have wanted him to go to the pen. That’s just how it’s done now, and it’s not why the Mets lost.
The Mets lost because, after Juan Soto made it 2-0 with his 40th home run in the seventh, everything went to heck.
Tyler Rogers and Edwin Diaz couldn’t hold a 2-0 lead as the Rangers tied it in the eighth, an inning that started with Francisco Alvarez getting called for catcher’s interference. That’s an E-2 and a man on base for no good reason.
The Mets went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position and left 12 men on base. Brandon Nimmo was one of those men. He started the eighth in a 2-2 game by reaching second on a single and error. He ended the inning on second as pinch hitter Cedric Mullins struck out.
In the ninth, Francisco Lindor failed to catch a line-drive single off his glove to start the inning. “I should have caught it,” he said.
The Rangers, the 2023 World Series champions who have won six in a row and 17 of 22 to get back into the AL wild-card race, took a 3-2 lead on Wyatt Langford’s two-out RBI single off Diaz.
Of course the Mets had a chance in the bottom of the ninth. Of course they didn’t come through. The outs were strikeouts by Lindor (leadoff), Pete Alonso (after Soto singled) and Nimmo (after Ronny Mauricio sent Soto to third with a pinch-hit single).
“We just keep losing games,” Soto said. “I don’t know what else to do right now.”
Neither do Mets fans, who came out early for a celebration of team history and stayed ’til the bitter end believing that somehow the Mets were going to pull it out.
“We’re definitely trying to figure out what is going on,” said Soto, who added that he thinks the Mets are “100%” a playoff team.
At this point, you can’t blame Mets fans for disagreeing. The crowd of 41,752 enjoyed seeing some of their favorites in the Alumni Classic, but the fans were understandably less enthusiastic about the current squad.
The Mets were searching for an early spark. They didn’t get one when they loaded the bases with two outs in the first and Patrick Corbin struck out Starling Marte looking on a 3-and-2 pitch.
The 36-year-old Marte, by the way, is older than some of Saturday’s “Old-Timers,” including Matt Harvey, Ruben Tejada, Kevin Plawecki and Juan Lagares.
Jose Siri, who has made swinging and missing an art form in his limited at-bats as a Met, earned sarcastic cheers after he fouled a pitch back in the fourth inning of a scoreless game with a man on third and two outs. Two pitches later, Siri was called out on strikes.
Mullins was booed lustily when hit for Siri and struck out to end the eighth-inning threat. And boos poured over the field after Nimmo made the final out of a long day that started with hope and ended in despair.
“You’ve still got to believe, right?” Mendoza said. “But you’ve got to get going.”
If this doesn’t turn around in the next two weeks, the Mets will be going.
Home.
Unbelievable.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
