5 Things We’ve Learned About The $370 Million, Last-Place Mets Through Their First 31 Games

NEW YORK – The Mets slogged into their end-of-April homestand with a chance to turn things around in a significant way. When they came home last week, they hadn’t won a game in two weeks. So their next nine games against the lowly Twins, Rockies and Nationals should’ve been a tonic. Instead, the Mets continued to plunge into the depths of inferiority. New York went 3-6 in their homestand and dropped to 10-21 on the season. That’s the worst record in baseball. It’s also the fourth-worst record in the history of the Mets franchise after the month of April. Only the 1962, ‘64 and ‘81 Mets were worse in that stretch. “Not good enough,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said Thursday of his team’s performance. “Not a secret. That’s not going to do it. That’s not good enough.” Here are five things we’ve learned about the Mets through their first 31 games of the season: 1. They have the worst offense in baseball The Mets have a team .628 OPS, ranked 30th in Major League Baseball, or dead last. The numbers are not pretty. Their .227 batting average is ranked 27th. Their .289 on-base percentage and .342 slugging percentage are both ranked 30th. Their 7.9% walk rate is ranked 27th. Their wRC+ of 80 is ranked 30th, meaning they are 20 points worse than the league average. Even their expected numbers, which are slightly better in average and slugging, either place them in the middle or lower half of the league. The offense entered this season widely considered to have a better, deeper and more balanced lineup than last year. Since then, several players are either underperforming or injured. But nobody could’ve predicted that a lineup that started the season with 16 combined All-Star nods and 13 combined Silver Slugger awards would be this atrocious. Besides Juan Soto and MJ Melendez, nobody on the roster has a higher OPS than .691. (The league average so far this year is a .715 OPS.) Besides those two hitters, no one is batting higher than .237. (The league average is .242.) Bo Bichette has been a disappointment to begin his Mets tenure, but there is at least confidence within the organization that he will improve throughout the course of the season. That sentiment doesn’t apply to everyone. The Mets expected their young hitters in Brett Baty, Mark Vientos and Francisco Alvarez — all of whom are in their fifth big-league season — to take steps forward this year. But Baty, who has played four defensive positions so far this year, has an OPS+ of 64. Vientos has been unable to recapture the terrific performance he put together in 2024. And Alvarez, while showing flashes of authority, is inconsistent in the batter’s box. The way out of this mess is for those three players in particular to turn it around. At least, that’s the way David Stearns, the Mets’ president of baseball operations, intended for things to go. Otherwise, it’s becoming more and more obvious that Stearns overvalued just how talented those hitters actually are. 2. The injuries are piling up The Mets took all the precautions they thought were necessary to try and keep the oft-injured center fielder Luis Robert Jr. on the field. They gave him a slower spring training ramp-up and delayed his Grapefruit League debut. They gave him scheduled off days even as he was heating up at the plate. All of this, club officials believed, would be enough to stave off Robert’s tendency to get sidelined from lower-body injuries. Go figure, then, that the malady that’s now landed Robert on the injured list is a back problem. Altogether on the Mets’ IL: Francisco Lindor (left calf strain), Robert Jr. (lumbar spine disc herniation), Kodai Senga (lumbar spine inflammation), Jorge Polanco (left Achilles bursitis/right wrist contusion), Jared Young (torn left knee meniscus), AJ Minter (left lat surgery) and Mike Tauchman (left meniscus tear). Polanco was supposed to be the Mets’ everyday first baseman. It’s been a revolving door at the corner-infield spot where Pete Alonso used to play 162 games, or close to it, for seven years. It’s a dangerous place to be when the offense is this bad and the injuries are this significant. It’s becoming impossible to see how the Mets can dig themselves out of this hole. 3. Mendoza is in the hot seat … for who knows how long The Mets don’t want to relieve the manager of his duties amid their slide to start the season. And, to his credit, Mendoza has handled recurring questions about his job security with class and professionalism. Though he’s not perfect, with some questionable in-game lineup decisions looming large of late, it’s hardly his fault that the injured list is swamped, and the roster is underperforming — or poorly constructed by Stearns in the first place. But the Mets have to do a better job of addressing the situation. Already, two MLB teams have fired their managers, including Alex Cora (Red Sox) and Rob Thomson (Phillies). The Mets are performing worse than both of those clubs, worse than everyone in baseball. Either the Mets are waiting for the slide to get worse before firing Mendoza, which puts him in an awkward position. Or the Mets can treat the situation like all other contract discussions and say they’ll look into it in the offseason. Either defend the man, say he’ll be here until the season is over, or let him go. “It’s hard for all of us,” Mendoza said after the Mets’ 5-4 loss on Thursday, in response to another question about his job. “We’re in this together. It’s not easy. But we gotta keep going. There’s no other choice here. We have a responsibility here and we have to turn it around. It’s not early anymore. It’s obviously frustrating for a lot of people here.” 4. The rotation is concerning Given the way things have gone lately, it’s almost hard to believe that just a month ago, fans were clamoring for the Mets to sign Freddy Peralta to an extension. The Mets did, after all, give up a pair of top prospects to the Brewers in exchange for the right-hander. But, through seven starts this season, Peralta has not pitched like the ace the Mets expected him to be. He has struggled to pitch deep into games, completing at least six innings just twice. Peralta’s strikeout rate has dipped to a career-low, while his walk rate has slightly elevated from last year. He’s 1-3 this season. “One thing that I know for sure is that we’re preparing the right way over here,” Peralta said. “Things are not going our way. But I want to say that we are preparing to win some games. We’re trying hard.” The meat of New York’s rotation problems goes beyond Peralta’s underwhelming results. The starting staff has a 4.26 ERA that’s ranked 17th in MLB. David Peterson has an 8.10 ERA through five starts. He was demoted to the bullpen and fared better there, but the Mets need him to pitch better as a starter, not a reliever. Senga had a 9.00 ERA through five starts before he landed on the IL. Sean Manaea, who is signed through 2027 and is owed $25 million per year, has pitched exclusively from the bullpen. He has a 6.55 ERA in seven outings and 22 innings. Besides Nolan McLean, Peralta and Clay Holmes (who has been fantastic, rocking a 1.75 ERA in six starts and 36 innings pitched), the rest of the Mets’ rotation arms have been unreliable. There are too many question marks to build any sort of consistency. 5. ‘Everybody wants to be the hero’ During their 12-game losing streak this month, finally winning a game and getting that monkey off their backs was all anyone in the organization could think about. There was legitimate belief around here that, once that streak snapped, the Mets would be able to breathe a little easier and just focus on having fun playing baseball. But the team was only able to string two wins together before the nightmare restarted. They’ve lost 17 of their last 20 games. There are no clear answers to how their dreadful situation will improve in a meaningful and steady way. At this point, it seems like players are expecting misfortune. Mets set-up man Luke Weaver, trying to preserve a 3-3 tied game against the Nationals on Thursday, gave up a go-ahead two-run home run to CJ Abrams in the eighth inning. Those runs were all the Nats needed to pull away. “At the end of the day, this pursuit of perfection is an ultimate pressurized failure mindset,” Weaver said in a glum postgame clubhouse on Thursday. “It becomes, everybody wants to be the hero because we care, and we want to win really, really bad. I don’t think success lives in that realm. It truly doesn’t. I think the freedom of which we play day-to-day is kind of being suffocated a little bit.” Like Mendoza said, it’s not early anymore. At some point, this calamity has to be pointed at Stearns for constructing a poor roster and misanalyzing how good it could be. The team is missing a few key players to injuries, but that’s not an excuse for how badly things have gone after 31 games of the season. After collapsing down the stretch and missing the playoffs last year, followed by Stearns taking a bulldozer to the team’s core in the offseason, there are few excuses or reasons for the Mets, flashing an estimated $370 million payroll, to be choking like this. None anyone will accept. Deesha Thosar covers Major League Baseball as a reporter and columnist for FOX Sports. She previously covered the Mets as a beat reporter for the New York Daily News. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Deesha grew up on Long Island and now lives in Queens. Follow her on Twitter at @DeeshaThosar.