What's going on with the Mets?
Seriously—what the hell is happening?
An Open Letter to the New York Mets
"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones."
—Confucius
I’ll be blunt—I’m not very happy right now.
On the evening of June 12, 2025, the Mets were celebrating another series victory, this time over the division rival Washington Nationals. Fresh off a David Peterson gem the night before, the team survived a last-inning push by the Nats to secure a 4-3 victory to close the series and secure their second-straight sweep.
Heading into Tampa, the Mets held a 5+ game lead over the second-place Phillies. They had the best record in Major League Baseball. The vibes couldn’t be higher.
They were lowered swiftly.
In the past week, the Mets have tumbled from juggernaut to joke.
Over the last four games alone, they’ve allowed 26 runs while mustering just five of their own. Across all six straight losses, they’ve been shut out twice, have sustained additional injuries to the pitching staff (alongside a significant drop in pitching performance), and have been useless with runners in scoring position, leaving 44 runners stranded in the process.
Sigh…let’s get into it.
Hitless with RISP
During this recent slump, the Mets’ bats have been utterly silent when it matters.
Look at these numbers. Now look at them again. That’s a whole lot of .000’s over quite a few chances.
In these six games, the Mets have had 47 plate appearances with runners in scoring position (RISP). They have created just 10 runs on six hits. The team walked in five of those plate appearances, striking out in 17 of them.
(I’d like to note that my glorious king Starling Marte leads this group in efficiency.)
It’s been a tough week at the plate for the Mets in general: the team is hitting just .215 and putting 45% of batted balls on the ground as a whole. Miraculously, none of the four double plays they’ve grounded into during these two sweeps came with runners in scoring position.
Still, the complete absence of pop (one XBH in six games) is shocking to see from a team that still maintains a top-5 run differential in the league (+68) and is comfortably top-10 in homers (93).
Strikeouts and Plate Discipline
It’s not just the lack of hitting that’s killing us, though. It’s the lack of any life at the plate at all.
In these last six games, Mets hitters have struck out 57 times in 201 at-bats—that’s a 28.4% rate, nearly 10% more than the team average over the full course of the season heading into this slump (20.3%).
Want to strike the Mets out? Pitch them low and away…they’ll swing.
This season, the Mets are a bottom-10 team in chase rate, sitting at a cool 29.7% clip. This is a problem, as they love to swing.
Mets batters are swinging at 49.7% of the pitches they see. The only team more aggressive is the Royals…at an even 50%. The Mets are also the third-most aggressive first-pitch swinging team in the league (34.5%). When your lineup is missing nearly 27% of the pitches they’re swinging at (including roughly 45% of pitches they chase), something clearly needs to change in the cage.
The recent quality of contact data doesn’t add much reassurance. These slumping Mets have a team wRC+ of just 66, and they’re generating 73% pull-side or up-the-middle contact at a 58% medium-hit rate.
That’s about as bad as it gets.
Simply put, the Mets are a predictable, anemic offense right now, which is especially maddening from a team that still grades out top-5 in MLB in overall hard-hit%, exit velocity, and barrel rate.
Pitching Problems
It’s not just the offense that’s the issue: Mets pitchers have also hit a rough patch, posting a collective 7.16 ERA and a 5.08 FIP (5.09 xFIP) over the past week. They allowed the Rays and Braves to hit to a tune of .277, with a dismal 1.61 WHIP and 17 XBH surrendered.
In short, they’re really bad right now.
What makes it sting a bit worse, though, is when you see that some of the biggest causes of these recent pitching woes are some of our very best arms. The seven names above have delivered a combined 13.24 ERA over this stretch, dealing out more free bases than strikeouts and allowing an average SLG just shy of .600.
Heading into this stretch? That same group had a collective 2.87 ERA on the year, with a 3.22 FIP and roughly 8.6 K/9.
That sort of regression is troubling, and while I do believe it to be momentary, it’s not the trend you want to see when you already have a handful of starting arms on the shelf for the foreseeable future.
So…what’s the solution?
Honestly, I don’t know. A team meeting? A complete overhaul of hitting philosophy? Just riding out the slump?
This is usually the part of the article where my blind optimism would kick in and prompt me to type something cliche. Yet today, I can’t muster the energy. The unbridled joy I felt around this team a mere week ago has evaporated, along with their ability to hit.
I don’t know exactly what needs to happen for things to change, but it’s evident that something needs to happen, and soon: the Mets head to Citizens Bank Park tonight to kick off a three-game set against the Phillies in an attempt to wrestle back full control of the NL East. Then, they face off against Atlanta again, this time for a four-game set in Queens.
Time to step it up and remember who we are. (There’s that aforementioned cliche.)