Inside the Mets’ $366M disaster: What players say really went wrong — ‘Losing is contagious’

When the Mets broke camp this spring, the goal was clear: Compete for a World Series. That belief was so strong throughout the clubhouse that one player had already warned those close to him about his fall plans.

“Do not ask me to do anything in October,” he recalled telling his friends and family.

The confidence this new-look roster exuded then has since faded into a distant memory. Players and coaches recognize that this season isn’t over yet, but with the trade deadline looming and the Mets open for business as sellers, reality is setting in.

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With a $366 million payroll, the second-highest in baseball, this Mets season will go down as one of the biggest disappointments in franchise history. It started with a catastrophic opening month that featured a historic 12-game losing streak. Injuries stacked up, including lengthy IL stints for new players like Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert Jr., and veterans Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor. Bad baseball persisted into this summer, leading to the firing of manager Carlos Mendoza in late June.

Now the Mets are 43-60 and 11 games out of a playoff spot. In the National League, only two teams have worse records.

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“We show up here and there’s a sense like, ‘Oh man, I hope we win today,'” said one veteran of the doubt that crept into the clubhouse in April. “Losing is contagious just like winning is contagious.”

Mets owner Steve Cohen made it clear during spring training that he considers perennial postseason bids as a baseline for success. Between those expectations, the sweeping changes that were made to rectify last year’s devastating collapse, and the Mets’ stratospheric payroll, missing the playoffs for a second year in a row — both of Soto’s first two years with the Mets while he’s in his prime — is an unmitigated disaster.

“When I was thinking of worst-case scenarios for us in spring training, this wasn’t even close to what I could think of,” another Mets player said.

So, what happened? How is it possible that a team with so much potential ended up here? And more importantly, as the focus begins to shift to 2027, what needs to change?

NJ.com recently spoke with more than 10 people, both inside and outside of the organization, to find the answers to those questions — and who deserves the blame. The people were granted anonymity in exchange for their candor.

Every team suffers injuries over the course of a marathon season. It’s the number of key pieces on the sidelines and all the overlapping injured-list stints, however, that put this team in a position to fail, those NJ.com spoke to said.

The starting lineup that Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns reconstructed this past winter with five new lineup regulars has rarely been at full strength. There have been only six games this year in which Soto, Lindor, Robert and Polanco have all started in the lineup together. Five of them came during the Mets’ first seven games of the year. Because of injuries, Lindor and Soto have been in the starting lineup together for 28 games, 27% of the Mets’ season.

“I honestly think that if this team that was put together didn’t get hurt as much, things would be completely different,” Lindor said. “The first week was so good for us. Then guys started to get hurt after that. It’s uncontrollable stuff, that’s what it comes down to.”

Stearns has since acknowledged that the Mets need to reevaluate their “risk assessment” moving forward with acquiring often-injured players. Polanco and Robert would fall into that category; both players have an extensive injury history and have spent time on the injured list this year.

Third baseman Bo Bichette and rookie Carson Benge are the only players from the Opening Day lineup who haven’t missed significant time due to injury. Beyond that, backup catcher Luis Torrens and utility man Brett Baty are the only other players who haven’t been injured. The trickle-down effect of a depleted lineup has contributed to the team’s inconsistency. The Mets rank in the bottom five in runs (419), batting average (.234) and OPS (.687).

One club source singled out catcher Francisco Alvarez as an example. When most players have been healthy, the Mets have been able to pencil him into the bottom of the order. His numbers in the final three spots of the lineup are strong, especially the No. 9 hole (where he’s hitting .338 with a 1.088 OPS in 23 games).

When key hitters are on the IL, however, Alvarez has been moved up to the middle of the order, where that same level of production hasn’t translated to that spot throughout his career. Plus, when Alvarez is hitting fifth or sixth because other regulars are out, the Mets have had bench bats and call-ups from Triple-A batting eighth or ninth. Sometimes those reserves have been leaned on even higher in the order.

The Mets’ defense has also been an issue. Despite preaching run prevention at the beginning of the year, Stearns has overseen one of the worst fielding teams in baseball – no matter which metric is used. The Mets’ 69 errors are third-most in MLB.

Polanco was slated to play first base, a position he had never played before. His Achilles injury in the opening series of the season paved the way for Mark Vientos to get consistent reps at first. Baty, a third baseman, has played regularly at four positions. And Marcus Semien’s defense has slipped at second base.

The Mets’ starting-pitching ERA (4.48) ranks in the bottom third of baseball, but defense-independent metrics show the team’s true talent is closer to a 4.00 ERA. Freddy Peralta’s nightmare season (5.01 ERA), the loss of Clay Holmes (2.39 ERA) to a fractured fibula two months ago and poor production from Kodai Senga (8.85 ERA) are major reasons why this rotation has failed to live up to the hype.

There have been flashes of potential this season, but whenever the Mets take one step forward, they always seem to follow that with regression or baffling play.

“It’s almost been like a perfect storm, really,” one player said. “When the pitching clicks, the hitting’s not clicking. When the hitting clicks, pitching’s not giving them a shot. It’s tough. You’re searching for answers every day. We feel the stress and the pain, too.”

That took a toll on the Mets’ clubhouse. It wasn’t hard to tell throughout the first half of this season that stars, veterans and youngsters alike were pressing, putting even more pressure on themselves.

Having a clubhouse full of new faces made it tougher for this group to snap out of that early-season spiral. Mendoza’s entire coaching staff was brand new. After Stearns overhauled New York’s core this past winter — Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil and Edwin Díaz are all wearing different uniforms this year — David Peterson started this year as the Mets’ longest-tenured player. He was also ineffective and was traded to the Cubs in June. A significant chunk of the roster the Mets broke camp with was composed of players who were teammates for the first time or were playing in New York for the first time.

“One of the most underrated things about baseball is camaraderie and familiarity,” one player said. “I think it’s the most important thing probably in any sport and we didn’t have that.”

Did that contribute to players focusing more on themselves rather than prioritizing the team’s success?

“It’s definitely not a lack of effort, passion or relationships,” another player said, “but I think the killer instinct to find any way possible to win a game sticks out to me. It’s that next gear that makes great teams great and I think that mentality to me felt looser than tighter here.”

He continued: “There needs to be a stronger belief in who we represent, what we represent and a harder fight to wear that with pride. To not only do it for ourselves, but to do it for the teammates and the staff around us.”

Those whom NJ.com spoke to were split on Mets’ leadership behind the scenes. While some insisted the Mets’ clubhouse has been fine all year, another player mentioned that the Mets have been “too nice” when their poor play warranted “more fire.”

“Everybody in here is great,” that player said, “but sometimes you need a guy who is gonna make things uncomfortable. You can call people out in a respectful way.”

Others disagreed — “being a hard ass is overrated,” one player said — but it is noteworthy that these sentiments still exist within New York’s clubhouse. In June, Will Sammon of The Athletic reported that some within the organization believed the Mets “didn’t have a full roster doing whatever it takes to win.” Sammon also noted in that story that when the Mets hit a new low right before Mendoza was fired — an embarrassing effort in a doubleheader against the Cubs at Citi Field in which the Mets were outscored 20-8 and committed six errors in Game 2 — nobody in the Mets’ clubhouse called a team meeting.

“It’s hard to lead with a lot of new,” a veteran told NJ.com. “I think when there’s so many new faces, everybody’s trying to kind of find their role in that team. Maybe there was a lack of that. It’s just a tough situation.”

“I think definitely people have to step up as leaders and create more of a culture standard here,” said another.

Lindor’s biggest regret is that he hasn’t played to his or the organization’s standard. He wants to elevate his game and lead by example, something he hasn’t accomplished this year because of multiple significant injuries and production that doesn’t match his typical elite level. In 46 games, Lindor has a .233 average, .712 OPS, six home runs and 16 RBI.

“If we were in October now, and I would take a look back at what I can do better, I need to play the game better,” Lindor said. “That’s the bottom line and what it comes down to. That’s where I’m at. That’s where I stand.”

There’s no shortage of accountability from a performance standpoint on this roster. As Stearns put it last month, the Mets have had an “execution problem,” not an accountability problem.

“We put ourselves in this position,” one player said. “We’ve got no one else to blame ourselves. It’s not a coach’s fault. It’s not a manager’s fault. It’s our fault really at the end of the day.”

The Mets’ clubhouse will look different in two weeks. New York will move players on expiring deals before the league’s Aug. 3 trade deadline. That should give the Mets an influx of new talent in their farm system, which has grown thin following the promotions of Benge and A.J. Ewing and a lack of development elsewhere. The trades might not stop there. The Mets are poised to listen to offers on other valuable assets with team control extending beyond this season, save for a handful of core pieces: Soto, Benge, Ewing, Nolan McLean and Christian Scott.

In that sense, leaning into familiarity is a challenge for next season. Will the Mets look at the caliber of their play when they’ve been healthy and take use that as reason enough to largely run it back as much as they can?

Getting younger and more athletic would make this roster better equipped to handle injuries and potentially bounce back, but New York is also locked in with certain aging and often-injured players next year. Sean Manaea, Polanco and Senga aren’t free agents until after next season. Semien is under team control for two more years. A new manager will likely be here next year; Stearns made it clear after Mendoza’s dismissal that Green was stepping in on an interim basis and that Green will return to the front office next winter.

Regardless of what happens at the deadline or what could happen this winter, Green’s priority is to establish a “habit of winning” over the final two-plus months of this season.

“There’s more than enough in the clubhouse to win baseball games consistently, and we should hold ourselves to that standard,” Green said. “Even if on paper we have a few material losses, we still have enough talent to go win baseball games consistently. That habit carried over to the ’27 season will be impactful.”

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