PHILADELPHIA — Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” purred quietly over the visiting clubhouse speakers as media members filed in.
The bouncy, 1999 anthem was an unfortunately disjointed tune for the moment, a cruel joke by the playlist shuffle gods. As Mets starting pitcher Clay Holmes readied to conduct his evening’s postmortem, Francisco Lindor, the club’s de facto captain, strolled across the room and turned off the music. Silence — the thick, smothering kind that oozes through a baseball locker room after a particularly dispiriting loss — filled the void.
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On Wednesday, for the third straight night, the Mets were thrashed 11-3 by the Phillies, now division champions in-waiting. The Mets had arrived in Philadelphia on Monday with a seven-game deficit in the NL East and a chance. Now, the gap in the division is at an all-but-insurmountable 10 games. No matter what happens Thursday in the series finale, the Mets will return home dispirited, discombobulated, empty-handed.
But more chilling for the New Yorkers is that their hold on the third wild-card spot in the National League has been trimmed to just two games over the suddenly surging San Francisco Giants and Cincinnati Reds.
“Nobody’s happy,” Mets skipper Carlos Mendoza told reporters after the team’s fifth straight defeat. “But we gotta keep going.”
This is not the first demoralizing skid of this topsy-turvy Mets season. Far from it. It is the club’s fifth losing streak of at least four games, their third of at least five. Everybody wearing blue and orange continues to express confidence in the team’s ability to, once again, turn things around. That’s reasonable. There is too much stardom, too much talent, to abandon all faith.
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But don’t get it twisted: The Mets are reeling right now. They are up-creek, paddle-less and running out of time.
Their demise Wednesday unfurled via a well-trodden path. Shaky starting pitching, this time from Holmes, dug an early hole. The lineup could not conjure runs against the opposing starter, a brilliantly locked-in Cristopher Sanchez, who tossed six innings of one-run ball.
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Mendoza was notably aggressive with his bullpen, pulling Holmes for reliever Gregory Soto after just 76 pitches. But once again, a reliever implosion in the middle innings extended the deficit, and the Mets ended the night licking their wounds, trapped in a haze of frustration.
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“It doesn’t matter how much talent we have,” Lindor professed. “We’re playing big-league teams on the other side as well, and they have talent, too.”
Lindor is right: Baseball, even for the most stacked teams, can be a nightly game of roulette. Yet the Mets boast a particularly impressive roster, one laden with well-paid stars, one that should be able to overcome the randomness with ability. That talent — and the money required to assemble it — created supersonic expectations entering this season. Expectations that, to this point, the 2025 Mets have failed to meet.
“We’re super talented. We still believe we have what it takes,” Holmes said after the game. “Times like these can be tough because there’s definitely a lot of noise. A lot of it’s part of the game, you know, where it can just affect, maybe, you know, what you’re trying to do.”
The noise, for this club, has never been louder. Their grip on a playoff spot has dwindled of late. Their upcoming schedule is imposing. The red-hot Texas Rangers will be in Queens this weekend, when former Mets ace Jacob deGrom will make his triumphant return to Citi Field. After that, the San Diego Padres come to town, with 2024 Mets hero José Iglesias in tow, fighting for their own playoff lives.
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The worst-case scenario — an October on vacation — is starting to feel possible. Ample time for a turnaround remains. But these Mets, at present, seem woefully ill-equipped to handle the task.
It’s a stark juxtaposition to last year’s team, which, at this point on the calendar, was an unstoppable freight train, a baseball circus thriving on grit, moxy and self-confidence. Those Mets knocked off the Brewers on the road in magical fashion in the wild card before besting the higher-ranked Phillies with a rousing NLDS win. The energy around that team, even when it eventually faltered against the Dodgers in the NLCS, was unmistakable.
There have been a handful of those moments this season. The rousing home sweep against the Phillies a few weeks ago comes to mind. A version of that swagger still exists. But it’s currently manifesting in a sort of unfounded superiority complex, one that gives off a Yankees-esque vibe. The Mets’ inability to escape this funk feels rooted, somewhat, in their unshakable faith in their own quality.
The starting pitching, or lack thereof, is an even bigger issue and a dynamic that has defined the Mets’ season. The rotation was the biggest topic swirling around the club in spring training. Then New York’s starters delivered a stellar first two months of the season, quieting concerns. But as the weather warmed, the rotation frayed. Since July 1, the Mets’ rotation has a 4.81 ERA, the seventh-worst mark in MLB. An August infusion of quality from rookie Nolan McLean has provided a boon, but he can’t throw every night.
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For all the money spent on players and infrastructure, for all the star power acquired and developed, for all the belief still professed, the Mets are staring down a truth they can no longer avoid. Something needs to change, and soon. If not, this season will be remembered as an extremely expensive empty promise, a squandered chance, a what-should’ve-been of epic proportions.
Mets owner Steve Cohen and his endless riches should keep the club in contention for a long while. The future, no matter how this season plays out, is bright in Queens. But baseball is a fickle, unpredictable thing.
And the Mets are wasting an opportunity as golden as Cohen’s coffers.
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