Laura Albanese: The 2026 Mets may be finding their identity
Mets' Juan Soto hits a single during the fourth inning of a baseball game against the Marlins on Friday in Miami. Credit: AP/Lynne Sladky
MIAMI — Bo Bichette said what most people were thinking.
Shortly after the Mets completed a nearly back-breaking 12-game losing streak in April to fall to 7-16, Bichette — who knows a thing or two about good team dynamics, thanks to his time with the pennant-winning Blue Jays — was able to pinpoint something his club was lacking.
“We’ve got a lot of season left,” he told reporters then. “The way to approach it is to come to the field and just play, because we haven’t figured out an identity.”
Suggesting that the Mets were having an identity crisis made all the sense in the world. The team spent the first few weeks of the season mired in misery, with no good communal memories to fall back on. The overhauled roster meant that most of these players simply didn’t know each other that well, and a litany of injuries didn’t help things.
Either because he had to, or possibly because he really believed it, Bichette gave reason for hope. It took years for the Blue Jays to find their identity, he said, but with the right sense of urgency, it would be possible for the Mets to fast-track the process.
It’s hard to tell exactly where they are in that journey, but despite Friday’s 2-1 loss to the Marlins at loanDepot Park, there are indications that the Mets (22-29) are making progress. These past few weeks, they have shown themselves to be troubleshooters — not giving in to their April failures.
And while it’s true that the Mets’ bats went silent Friday, “sometimes you’ve got to tip your cap to a guy who’s throwing 100 [mph] and then [hitting] his off-speed,” Juan Soto said of starter Eury Perez, against whom he homered in the first inning, blasting a 449-foot bomb off a 99.8-mph fastball.
The Mets also were bitten by the Marlins’ sterling defense, with Carson Benge likely being robbed of two extra-base hits and Luis Torrens one.
Though the Mets certainly can’t afford moral victories, even Carlos Mendoza couldn’t ignore the positive signs: Sean Manaea was the best he’s looked all season while pitching 3 2⁄3 innings of relief and the newly recalled Jonah Tong didn’t flinch despite having a tough first few weeks of the season in Triple-A.
“Development is never a straight line,” said Tong, who pitched three hitless innings with a walk and two strikeouts. “Our coaches in Triple-A . . . have all the confidence in me, so I’m going to have confidence in myself.”
Six of the Mets’ last seven wins were of the comeback variety, and when they’re successful, it’s very much a group effort — players papering over their teammates’ foibles in ways they didn’t earlier in the season.
Part of the success, it seems, comes from slowly discovering that elusive identity. For all of the Mets’ early failures, there was never any public finger-pointing in the clubhouse; instead, the general message was “we’ll figure it out.”
Players have to say that, of course, but you’re also starting to see them show their work.
Take Devin Williams. He epitomized the April Mets. After a tough season with the Yankees, Williams packed his bags for Flushing under the premise that he could do a reasonable job of replacing a dearly departed fan favorite. Instead, he flubbed it, pitching to a 10.29 ERA by April 23. But he didn’t panic.
The Yankees last year changed Williams’ set position to avoid tipping his pitches. But he didn’t fully feel comfortable there, and it showed in the results. So he worked with the coaches, went back to his original set position and saw good results.
“I feel like I’m on a good streak here and I’m trying to keep it going,” said Williams, who hasn’t allowed a run in his last 10 appearances. Now he tries to avoid tipping “by just being conscious of it,” he said, “and trusting my stuff.”
Next, check out David Peterson, who also had a rocky start to his year before this recent stretch that, as of Thursday’s start against the Nationals, has freed him from his bullpen shackles.
“There [were] a couple things mechanically that we worked through with the pitching coaches,” he said. “Nothing crazy, nothing new, just trying to get back to my good mechanics.”
You’ve heard all the cliches — “no one is going to feel sorry for us” and “you can only control what you can control.” They get tiring, especially when the team is in a rut, but credit where it’s due: Instead of being inoculated to their wisdom, the Mets seem to be paying attention.
See, they came into this season with a very high ceiling, a $365 million payroll and credible World Series aspirations. When things started going really, really wrong, there was a real risk that they would keep crumbling — self-perpetuating failure born from self-pity, fatalism and frustration. Instead, struggling players pivoted.
“Elite baseball players are always making adjustments,” Mendoza said Friday, recalling leaving the ballpark a few weeks ago and seeing Williams still there, working into the night. “That’s the name of the game, especially when you’re going through struggles.”
When he was stuck in a mini-slump earlier this month, Soto noted that he’d been “working with my hitting coaches, swinging the bat, doing my routines, working on my mechanics.”
Those comments were made on May 10. Since then, he had been slashing .359/.444/.744 with five homers and 10 RBIs entering Friday, and he improved upon those stats by going 2-for-3 with a homer and an RBI.
There’s no magic involved here: Generally speaking, if you put in the work and adhere to the process, you increase your odds of success. Finding the wherewithal to keep doing it when it looks as if it might not be working is the real test.
“We’re just doing our job, showing up every day and trying to win games,” Bichette said. “When you win games, you start to feel what it feels like and just try to keep that going.”
It didn’t work out on Friday, but “we’ve been playing good baseball the last couple of days,” Soto said. “Tough day today.”
Tough days will happen — the Mets know that as well as anyone. But if they can make their identity that of a team that encounters tough days and grows from them, well, maybe they’ll have a shot.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
