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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Jason Fry on 27 August 2026 7:36 am The good part of Wednesday night’s game? It was Faith and Fear reunited for the first time since the 2024 postseason, sitting together waaaaay up in the seats where you duck your head to avoid the bellies of planes. We had a grand time taking stock of Andy Green, the Mets’ future prospects, retired numbers, City Connects and all the topics that unspool during the ebb and flow of a baseball game.
The bad part? Everything else. Robert Stock didn’t give up a lot of loud contact but lordy was there a lot of inside-voice contact, which meant a lot of Brewers runs. I like Stock and have been rooting for him to pick up a first win as a Met, but he seems to be unlucky all the time, and it’s probably time for the Mets to move on to some other answer, whether it’s Jonah Tong or Jack Wenninger or some entity who isn’t Robert Stock. Milwaukee’s Dustin May got hurt on the very first pitch of the game, just after I’d remarked that I can’t stand him, which was true but I swear wasn’t an attempt to invoke injury.
And a poor luckless squirrel got loose on the field, scampering about in an escalating panic before darting up the protective screen and hunkering down atop the cable holding it in place. He was still up there at the end of the game, while various groundskeepers peered up at him unhappily, and I’m curious how they decided to get the poor creature down. Hopefully not by having A.J. Ewing tattoo him with line drives, though that had been effective in engineering departures.
It did occur to me that our visitor had to make an exceptionally large number of poor squirrel decisions to wind up where he was — that’s a long way from the nearest tree, and it’s not like Citi Field has an enviable acorn concession. On the other hand, there I was in nosebleed seats watching a last-place team get its brains beat in by a first-place team, so who am I to tell any creature about life choices?
by Greg Prince on 26 August 2026 1:05 pm Tuesday night at Citi Field was a game for icons. Dolly Parton’s music played to seemingly unanimous approval, one of those ballpark as public square moments that reminds a person that when something or somebody needs to be commemorated or celebrated — even if the subject isn’t baseball — a ballpark is the place to do it. Besides, anywhere Dolly’s voice pervades instantly turns into the Grand Ole Opry. The opening beats of “9 to 5” and why we were hearing them a few minutes before the Mets took on the Brewers moved me to the edge of tears. I probably would have let them flow, except I chose to collect myself given the iconic occasion that drew me to the ballpark.
The Prince-Chasin Game was Tuesday night. It’s the hardiest of perennials on our mutual calendar. Sixteen consecutive non-pandemic Augusts, always a Tuesday night. Stephanie and I join with Rob and Ryder Chasin, father and son, two Mets fans we know because the son invited us to his Bar Mitzvah at Citi Field in the ballpark’s first offseason. He read some words I wrote, and even though none of them meshed concision and evocation like “tumble outta bed/and I stumble to the kitchen/pour myself a cup of ambition,” they formed the basis for a recurring RSVP.
There was that festive Saturday afternoon in November 2009; these sixteen August Tuesday nights from 2010 forward; the Tuesday night in August 2020 when we did our best to replicate the annual get-together ritual via Zoom; and a couple of handfuls of occasions of brief proximity mixed in. These are people we’ve known for seventeen years but have spent not quite thirty days with. No wonder that Bar Mitzvah seems like it was barely a month ago. Ryder is no longer 13. He’s literally going on 30. Funny how the years yawn and stretch and ultimately come to life.
 Dolly’s critique of capitalism’s flaws wound down. “That’s a nice tribute,” Ryder said. If I tried to respond immediately, I would have incurred an ocular rain delay. I took my time before adding, “yes it is,” and awaited composure’s slight return.
The Prince-Chasin Game proceeded per precedent. Ryder and I caught up on baseball. Stephanie and Rob caught up on up all else. The Milwaukee Brewers didn’t catch up to what Zac Thornton was throwing, not enough to make a dent in the scorecard Ryder was keeping. The Mets similarly failed to move the pencil productively versus Kyle Harrison The early innings were mostly me yapping and Ryder being his usual ideal audience for it. I noticed the Mets leaving the bases loaded and a couple of double plays killing rallies on each side. The Brewers nosed ahead in the fourth on a two-out single. Well, I thought, they do have the best record in baseball.
But do they have an icon? In their lineup every day? ’Cause we do, even if we needed a few reminders his iconhood tends to hide in plain sight. The first reminder, and the first reason Ryder’s pencil had to do some jaunty scorekeeping, came in the bottom of the fifth with one out, when Francisco Lindor tied the game at one on his solo homer to left. The scoreboard noted Francisco had also just tied Dave Kingman for sixth-most on the all-time Mets home run chart. No. 6 may not be an iconic slot on such a list, but c’mon, this is Dave Kingman, the embodiment of Mets slugging for a generation. The fact that Sky King had been passed by five later-vintage Mets indicates his home run total (unlike the home runs that comprised it) wasn’t all that towering and his bifurcated Met tenure wasn’t all that lengthy. Parts of three seasons from 1975 to 1977. Three more seasons from 1981 to 1983, though his last few months of 1983 were limited to special guest at-bats once Keith Hernandez arrived to play first base and consign Kingman to both the bench and the past.
Nevertheless, Dave Kingman was home runs in a Mets uniform, and now his accumulation of 154 was matched by a Met who’s been here roughly as long and does so much more that it’s easy enough to forget that he’s also a premier slugger. He doesn’t look it, but his bat says different. The on-field similarities end there, what with Kingman having brought one awesome dimension and not much else to bear as a Met, and Lindor, at his best, deploying every tool you could ask for.
We’d ask for a couple more later.
In the sixth, Ryder and Rob got up to derive some use from their tickets’ built-in concessions credit. That’s the Mets’ concession that their product in the second half might need some added attractiveness. As Ryder noted when he and his dad explored the team store, “Nothing says ‘winning season’ like ‘new Mets clearance section.’” I was asked to “babysit the book” for an inning. I get approximately one inning a year with the short pencil. I’d almost forgotten what to do with it. Started filling in boxes from the inning before. No eraser, so just a crossout that made it look like a raccoon invaded the page. The top of the sixth gave me a DP to find a box for, which was fun, if inartful. The bottom of the sixth let me scrawl “HR” for Luis Robert, Jr. before I remembered there’s lines to be traced and diamonds to be darkened, even if there is go-ahead excitement to be expressed. Also, the Brewers had changed pitchers, something I forgot to write down for at least three batters. If this is how I babysit, don’t leave your kids with me.
Thornton went six, giving up only the one run. He will not be in the Mets’ clearance section anytime soon. Nate Lavender continued to beguile batters in the seventh and eighth. The 2-1 lead he protected figured to set up our closer Kodai Senga, except the only Kodai sighting we’d be treated to Tuesday came pregame when he took part in congratulating the Mets customer service award winners for the month (“please make some noise for the sales associate who changed the price tags on our stack of Freddy Peralta shirseys…”). Instead, the evening’s save opportunity was bestowed on Peter Principle, a reliever who’s reliable when it’s not the ninth inning and there’s not a one-run lead. Principle, wearing Austin Warren’s uniform, had command issues and gave up the lead. He was replaced by that avatar of placidity and stability, Jefry Yan. Yan has a new signature move: throwing the ball and hoping the team icon makes the play of the year once the ball is hit.
 Yan knows what he’s doing. The two-out bases-loaded liner he gave up to David Hamilton, so clearly ticketed for left field that it, too, had a concessions credit embedded in it, had the misfortune of meeting the glove attached to the diving shortstop, who could have been mistaken in the moment for Rey Ordoñez. Except we knew it wasn’t Ordoñez, because innings earlier, this shortstop had tied Dave Kingman for sixth place on the Mets’ all-time home run chart. Not many Mets who stuck around as long as Rey hit as few home runs as he did. Only six Mets have hit as many home runs as Francisco has. Hardly any Mets shortstop makes the kind of play Lindor did to save Yan’s and our respective bacon. There was Rey-O, now there was Fran-L. (Sorry if you didn’t see it on SNY.)
In the bottom of the ninth, Lindor prepared to extend his iconography to manufacturing the winning run the way another icon of the Met shortstop pantheon, Jose Reyes, might have. Lindor beat out an infield hit. There were two out, but Bo Bichette was up, and he was certainly capable of the kind of hit that Francisco could score on, provided Francisco had a big enough lead. Sitting in Field Level in short right field, I could see what Francisco was thinking. Everybody could see what Francisco was thinking, including the Brewers. Trevor Megill picked Lindor off first.
Nobody ever suggested icons who aren’t Dolly Parton are perfect. Lindor’s been in the Met GOAT conversation when he’s been at his peak and he’s been many fans’ idea of a goat in the Bill Gallo sense when he’s flailed. When he’s going well, I’m in his amen corner, which generates a sound a lot like “My Girl”. When’s he’s not, I start to calculate how long a contract that runs through 2031 really is. I didn’t believe the scuttlebutt that he was a serious trade candidate this summer. But I didn’t rule it out as a concept. In a year when much has been put on remainder, it’s been hard to value what has remained mostly stellar — if not exactly steady — for six going on eleven seasons.
The Manfredian thing was Lindor didn’t have to get a lead off first in the ninth to get to second. He’d be on second to start the home tenth. After Jonathan Pintaro, a.k.a. the Jared Young of the bullpen, did his understated best to keep the game tied, Francisco indeed made it to second for Bichette’s next attempt to drive him in. Leading off, Bo flied out. Carson Benge, who rated three lines in three boxes for three hits on Ryder’s scorecard, was intentionally walked. Megill didn’t intend to do the same with Robert, but another base on balls materialized, and Luis took first, sending Lindor to third and Benge to second. The bases were loaded for Christopher Morel, whose entrance into the game I missed while Stephanie and i were using our own use-it-or-lose-it concessions credit in the eighth. The Citi Field lists OPS as its primary lineup stat. I glanced up and saw Morel’s might as well be Jorge Polanco’s. I winced. I winced again when Morel grounded to third. I stopped wincing when I realized contact is contact, and the ball that was being thrown home was sailing wide of the plate. The enduringly iconic Lindor scored the winning run of a most gratifying extra-inning Met victory over the team with the best record in baseball.
The four of us among the Princes and Chasins high-fived one another immediately. We don’t get to do that every August when a game ends. A few minutes later, we exchanged goodbye hugs. That we do every twelve months. Nine or ten innings with the Chasins always fills our emotional scorecard. And winning 3 to 2? What a way to leave the ballpark.
by Jason Fry on 26 August 2026 8:14 am An oddity as this odd Mets season winds down is that I have remind myself Andy Green‘s top priority isn’t winning games. That’s always welcome, but not job one — job one is to conduct a quasi-instructional camp, in which new guys and new situations get tried out to see what might work in some better, brighter future.
I get all that, but years of fan instinct have me otherwise wired. Isn’t this too big a spot for this guy? Is this the ideal matchup? Why pinch-hit here? Why not pinch-hit here? Oh yeah, that’s right — Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp is in session.
Much of Monday night’s game against the not so big but exceptionally bad Milwaukee Brewers — best team in baseball, don’tcha know — unfolded as a relatively taut duel, notable mostly for a surprising number of runners left on base by both sides. Zac Thornton looked good yet again, nicked for only an RBI single over six, and has earned not only a spot in the Mets’ starting rotation but also a baseball card without an h or a k tacked onto the end of his first name.
Thornton was in line for the win after the Mets twice ambushed an otherwise effective Kyle Harrison for solo home runs. Harrison is one of the many players transformed by a sprinkling of the mysterious Milwaukee pixie dust that we thought would arrive with David Stearns, only to find out Stearns isn’t the source of this magical confetti. (Rats!) The first came off the bat of Francisco Lindor; the second was struck by Luis Robert Jr., going over the Great Wall of Flushing despite Robert connecting essentially one-handed. To quote a long-ago spring-training broadcast, “a grown man hit that ball.”
The Mets got two more sparkling innings from Nate Lavender (including some yellow-light lefty-righty matchups, because Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp) and handed a 2-1 lead to Austin Warren for the save opportunity. But Warren didn’t have it — he’s coming back from arm woes and is still finding his sweeper — and coughed up the lead immediately, though he did strike out Luis Lara with second and third and nobody out.
The next exercise at Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp was seeing if the electric/erratic Jefry Yan could get his team out of trouble, and the answer was yes … with an asterisk. Yan got Garrett Mitchell on a called third strike with an ABS assist, walked Joey Ortiz, and gave up a liner to David Hamilton.
Lindor rushed a couple of steps to his right, lunged — and my Apple TV restarted. Black screen, white pinwheel, lots of bad words from the Fry couch, and an equal amount of uncertainty. Had Lindor snagged that ball? Had it ticked off the end of his glove to be retrieved by a teammate while Brewers wheeled around the bases merrily? I put the odds at 50-50 either way.
The answer was that Lindor had caught it. Whew.
The Mets tried to scratch out a conventional-nine win against Trevor Megill, but that’s a tall order: Megill gave up an infield hit to Lindor but picked him off to end the inning, though replays indicated he’d balked and the infraction had gone uncalled. Time for Calvinball Presented by Rob Manfred and His Team of MBAs Who Don’t Like Baseball, and new auditions in Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp, starting with Jonathan Pintaro trying to strand the Manfred Man at second.
Pintaro was up to the task, allowing only a walk to the formidable William Contreras, which led to Megill resuming his duties and an oddity of modern baseball. Lindor had been picked off while on first with a 1-1 count on Bo Bichette, so of course the tenth began with Lindor on second and Bichette at the plate with a fresh count. Eight-year-old me would have been amazed that such a thing was possible; 57-year-old me was mildly appalled though mostly numb.
Bichette popped out; Megill then intentionally walked Carson Benge and unintentionally walked Robert, bringing up Christopher Morel with the bases loaded. Morel looked overmatched, frankly, and rapped an 0-2 fastball to Hamilton at third. Hamilton had plenty of time: Lindor was going to be forced at home, with Morel possibly doubled up at first, and either way the game would grind on.
Except Hamilton couldn’t get the handle, made a terrible throw, or both — the ball was wide right, allowing Lindor to stamp on home plate uncontested. That gave the Mets a victory and, presumably, led to s’mores getting handed out at Uncle Andy’s Baseball Camp. Good job, campers! Now let’s talk about what we learned! Nate, Austin, Jefry, Jonathan … who wants to go first?
by Jason Fry on 23 August 2026 9:20 pm I’ll grant you that we’re grading the post-deadline 2026 Mets on the curve, but still: Aside from the ending, that was a fine way to spend an afternoon.
You had Nolan McLean, with the movement on his pitches baffling the White Sox and sometimes McLean himself. I’m pretty sure what he did to Andrew Benintendi with the bases loaded in the third inning was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. You had the White Sox countering with three guys in shifting roles, the most impressive of whom was young Hagen Smith.
Both teams then turned to reliever roulette to settle a 0-0 deadlock; reliever roulette, like the ill-advised real thing, is a chancy affair full of surprises and perceived injustices. Dedniel Nunez kept hanging sliders but escaped unscathed; Daniel Duarte made one bad pitch but it was enough to leave him decidedly scathed and his team down 1-0. The pitch that drew blood was to Benintendi, because baseball has a keen eye for irony; Carson Benge almost threw Miguel Vargas out at the plate, but was undone by a tricky carom off the wall which forced him to rush, leading to a throw that was slightly off-line.
(By the way, Vargas is a helluva hitter. Glad not to see him again!)
The White Sox looked to close out the Mets with Grant Taylor, who’s been impressive but was mortal today, giving up a bloop single to Benge and walking revenge-tour Luis Robert Jr. before Jared Young got him for a game-tying single up the middle. Taylor was fighting his control but managed to get Francisco Alvarez and then dialed it in against A.J. Ewing, erasing him on a fastball at the top of the zone.
Enter newly minted closer Kodai Senga, whose promising experiment has yielded shaky results of late — which shouldn’t surprise us, honestly. Senga got the first out but then Tristan Peters connected for a drive to right-center that juuuuuuuuuust eluded Ewing’s glove (should that be “just eluuuuuuuded” or “juuuuuuuuust eluuuuuuuuded”), bouncing off the top of the wall and into the stands.
Another day, another Tristan Peters drive not quite secured. Which meant White Sox 2, Mets 1 and the second enemy walkoff in three days.
Ewing retrieved his cap, looking crestfallen; maybe it’s my imagination but I could see Senga thinking, “Huh, in this gig one bad pitch can end your day.”
I wasn’t too downcast, to be honest — it was barely a pinch, to quote Greg. Good game, crummy ending. Those happen. Focus on the former and try to shrug off the latter. Or hey, think of it this way: Crummy season, good ending?
by Greg Prince on 23 August 2026 1:29 pm I wasn’t wishing any ill will toward Huascar Brazobán when he came into Saturday night’s game to face his former team, beyond hoping his former team would rough him up gently.
It was the seventh inning of a game the Mets were leading, 7-5, an evening pervaded by the sense that this game could be going a lot better for us or a lot worse. The seven runs didn’t seem like enough. The five runs seemed too many. Carson Benge near-robbery of a Tristan Peters home run underpinned the evening to this point. I’m always put off by the idea that an outfielder almost made a great play. “Almost? You mean he didn’t catch it.” But Carson Benge almost made a great play, nearly robbing Tristan Peters of a home run. He leapt like he was Fernando Tatis, Jr., except his glove revealed nothing but air. There was deflection, which should be worth something, but close only counts in Carpenters songs on their way to the top of the charts.
Benge’s best effort — and the faceful of fence he absorbed — occurred leading off the home third in Chicago. The emptiness in his glove made the score Mets 4 White Sox 2. It would be 4-3 before the inning was out. Two Met homers that touched nobody’s glove, swatted by Bo Bichette and Luis Robert, Jr., had put the Mets ahead by three in the top of the third. But then we left two on, so a touch of uneasiness grew to at least a tap on the shoulder when the gap closed so quickly.
The Mets scored three more for Christian Scott (and themselves, one supposes) in the fifth, featuring a solo homer from Benge, whose continued presence and performance pronounced himself fit. In the middle of the mini-onslaught was Eric Wagaman coming out of exile and off the bench to drive home a run as a pinch-hitter for DH Brett Baty. The White Sox had recently changed pitchers, from righty starter Luis Castillo to lefty reliever Tyler Schweitzer, I presume, and Andy Green noticed. The designated hitter is a scam of a position, anyway. It’s a pinch-hitter dressed up as a regular four or more times per game. You should be allowed to PH for the DH with whoever you want, even if they’re not on the roster. Announce Abe Lincoln into the game; what the hell, you’re in Illinois.
The Mets moved up, 7-3, in that fifth inning, and all Scott had to do to slot himself in for his fifth win of more or less his first full season was get three outs without giving up four runs. The good news was he didn’t give up four runs. I don’t think he was trying to, either, but geez if he wasn’t determined to stretch out a tightrope and audition for the Wallendas.
Hit a guy with a pitch.
Walked a guy on a full count.
Struck a guy out on a full count.
Threw a wild pitch.
Walked another guy on a full count to load the bases.
Struck another guy out on a full count.
Walked the next guy on a full count to force in a run.
So much for the three outs. The Sox had pulled to within 7-4, they had bags full of themselves, and had Colson Montgomery — half of Chicago’s capital of Alabama contingent — up against new pitcher Jonathan Pintaro. Pintaro struck out C. Montgomery to strand three. Had that been the entirety of Jonathan’s involvement Saturday night, we’d have raised mimosas in his honor this Sunday morning. But Pintaro didn’t have it in the sixth, so please hold your glasses. The four batters he faced in the sixth produced three runners and a run to make it 7-5. Nervous sips became appropriate. Out went Pintaro. In came Austin Warren. Austin (speaking of state capitals) loaded the bases. But he left them that way, so hoist your brunch drinks high.
This is how we got Huascar being on for the Sox to start the seventh, and me feeling bad when I saw his stats on the South Side were not nearly as gleaming as they’d been in Flushing. I don’t like the idea of fans in other places deciding they received a stiff from the Mets. Brazobán was one of our steadiest hands this year and pretty decent the past two years. Why our reputation with American League strangers should matter to me, I don’t know. Put an American League team in front of me, I want to impress anybody who’s watching. I also wanted the Mets to increase their two-run lead.
One out in, we cashed in on my desire, via Luis Robert, Jr.’s second home run of the night. Now this was a twist! We’re convinced we’re always done in by the vengeful bat of an Old Friend™ (see “d’Arnaud, Travis: shudders caused by mere appearance”). It rarely occurs to us it can work the other way, especially when it’s somebody else’s Old Friend™ facing one of ours on the mound for them. Got those pronouns straight? Robert — who I’m more comfortable referring to by full name, junior included, probably because I don’t believe I’ve gotten to know him much as a Met — had been booed consistently if not unmercifully in the first two game of this series at Not Quite Comiskey Park. I don’t know what the Sox fans’ Vienna Beef is with him, exactly, other than he missed a lot of time while he was one of theirs and now, for this weekend at least, he’s healthy and playing. I try not to meddle in other fans’ affairs, especially in the other league, but I’d advise easing up on Luis. You’re in first place without him.
But you weren’t extending your first-place lead with him belting his second home run of the night against you, which is to say for us. Luis Robert, Jr., put the Mets ahead, 8-5, which felt really good, if not quite good enough. It was the kind of game that you weren’t sure wasn’t being played under Family Feud rules. I half-expected Steve Harvey to step out to home plate and tell the White Sox they now had a chance to steal all the runs on the board.
Baseball doesn’t work that way. This baseball game worked in such a way that after Warren and Dedniel Nuñez handled the seventh and eighth, respectively, without incident, Green had another chance to do some managing. The grand master of exceeded expectations Jared Young was on third after doubling and advancing on a wild pitch. One man was out. An extra run was going to be delightful if attained. The DH position — again, a total scam — was up. Andy pinch-hit Luis Torrens for Wagaman. It wasn’t a righty-lefty thing, as the White Sox were pitching Trevor Richards a righty, and that’s the side from which Torrens bats. It was a conviction that if you need a fly ball, you put in Luis Torrens.
And if you’d like a fly ball that keeps going, you sit back and watch Luis Torrens go deep. He does it basically every other at-bat, and he did it here. The Mets were up, 10-5. You could have almost sharpened the pencil you use for putting it in the books right there, except Green opted to deploy his closer to protect a five-run lead in the ninth. I don’t care that the closer is Kodai Senga, and he’s been a closer for about two weeks. No closer responds flawlessly to a non-save opportunity. It zips inside their frigging DNA as soon as somebody hangs the “closer” label on them. Naturally, Senga walked his first batter and gave up a hit to his second. A little less naturally but far more pleasingly, Kodai got his next three men and protected the 10-5 lead with no damage, save for his Sunday availability, but that’s Andy Green’s problem…and maybe ours if there’s a lead nine innings from now.
Definitely one of those games in which the Mets’ edge never felt safe, even after it went final. That’s why they put erasers on pencils, Bob Murphy said. Doesn’t mean you always have to use them.
by Greg Prince on 22 August 2026 11:37 am For most of my life, my relationship to needles has been a matter of bracing for the absolute worst and reacting to them as if they definitely are. Once in a while, if a medical professional is coming at my anatomy in a spot where I’m not used to it, I will still yelp and yowl in horror. The standard pokes, however, I’ve come to cope with. I think the turning point was a blood sample I had to submit to when I was in my fifties but might as well have been five. I yelped. I yowled. I said to the nurse something to the effect of, “I guess you get a lot of this.” Unamused, she retorted, “No, you’re the only one.”
These days, when they tell me, “It’ll only pinch for a second,” I believe them. I still brace. I still grimace (and not the gleefully evocative kind from 2024). I may even let out a sound roughly approximating an official scorer who’s seen too much bad fielding — “EEEEE!!!!!” — but I go into the transaction convinced I’ll survive, and I survive.
Welcome to the sensation of a walkoff loss late in a season when nothing is on the line. It only pinches a bit. Then I’m over it. So it was at Not Exactly Comiskey Park on Friday night, where the Mets were playing, for some oddball reason, the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox need every win to maintain their surprising hold on first place in a division that’s none of our business, yet we play everybody in it. The Mets should have no role in determining who wins the AL Central. Yet here we are, getting involved. We recently swept the Cleveland Guardians, you know.
The fun and frisky Mets of August have been nobody’s ideal opponent, and through the middle of the sixth inning, this game was as fun and frisky as any we’ve enjoyed of late. Ex-White Sock Marcus Semien drove in a run. Ex-White Sock Luis Robert, Jr., was awarded a gift double, courtesy of an heir to his center field throne, ex-Rockie Brenton Doyle, losing his fly ball in the lights, and an official scorer who apparently didn’t want to write down, “E!” Brett Baty stirred with a two-run double behind Luis. Bo Bichette continued to erase our memories of April and May with a home run. Sean Manaea was absolutely cruising with a 4-0 lead.
Then the White Sox absolutely crushed Manaea with three consecutive longballs, the first of them with a runner on base, hence bingo-bango-bongo, it was 4-4. What an illustrative game this was being: we had seen why the Mets have been a recent revelation; we were reminded that it’s still the season in which they got themselves buried early and decisively; and we got a hint of what a contender that came out of nowhere can do. The last time the Mets visited Not Quite Comiskey, the White Sox’ primary opponent was the legacy of our 1962 club. The Original Mets lost 120 games. The 2024 White Sox were en route to losing 121. And they weren’t tons better in 2025. Now they’re leading the middle sector of the junior circuit. Kind of gives hope to last-place teams everywhere.
Our last-place team remained tied with their first-place team into the bottom of the ninth. Following effective relief outings from Nate Lavender and Daniel Duarte, Jefry Yan took the ball. Whoever was following the action could have said, “this is gonna be good” from any angle and had a chance of being right. Jefry’s tendencies are already legend. He is a pitcher who relishes the strikes he throws, perhaps because he doesn’t throw enough of them. When he gathers three in the same at-bat, he’s ecstatic. When he thinks he’s thrown the third, he’s on the Partridge Family bus, his instincts imploring him, come on, get happy.
His instincts need to clean whichever window he’s peering through, or at least meet him halfway on the highway to reality. They’re not all strikes, Jefry. They’re really not. Despite two instances of premature jocularity in celebration of pitches called balls, Yan walked leadoff batter Colson Montgomery, who was replaced on the basepaths by Braden Montgomery, the first instance I can summon of one player whose last name is a state capital being run for by another player whose last name is a state capital…though I may be forgetting that time Sammy Sacramento pinch-ran for his brother Cecil.
The second Montgomery was bunted to second base by Doyle, mastering at least one fundie for the evening after that dropped fly ball. Yan then grounded out Old Friend™ Luisangel Acuña, an old friend to us if not Yan; Met roster churn can really take a bite out of a dependable cliché. The grounder also fulfilled the “this is gonna be good” prophecy from all perspectives. For the Mets, it got them closer to escaping the ninth. For the White Sox, it pushed the winning run ninety feet closer to home, as B. Montgomery, running for C. Montgomery, moved to third.
Jake Rogers, whose name rang a vague trade deadline bell, stepped up. Oh, that’s right — the White Sox got Rogers from the Red Sox, who got him from the Orioles, who got him from the Tigers, who were selling off everybody, then hung around the Wild Card race, where they and almost everybody in the American League still lingers if they’re not already in first place. Those deals all happened over a span of about two weeks, indicating Rogers was either a hot commodity or a hot potato. It happened in the American League, so it’s really none of my business. My business was Yan getting out Rogers, who was batting .171, more potato than commodity on the hotness scale.
More like tater in the baseball lexicon, alas, as Jake lofted a very high fly ball off Jeffry. A.J. Ewing went to the wall and gave it his best jump, but the only Met capable of leaping to catch it was the pitcher who threw it. The White Sox landed hard on the Mets’ heads with a walkoff home run, taking us down, 6-4, and completing the kind of comeback I was beginning to think was the sole province of my team. Who knew other people’s teams gather momentum?
This probably isn’t as rare as the pinch-running exchange between the state capital of Alabama boys (Colson was born in Indiana, Braden was born in Iowa, and they both currently pursue their profession in Illinois), but the Mets have now lost by walkoff to different opponents in the same walkable city in the same season. In April, we got nipped by the Cubs at Wrigley. Took ten innings. Extended our losing streak to eleven, deepening the already dull pain you’d go to a doctor and ask that something be done about it, even if it involves an injection that makes you yelp and yowl in horror. This one, four months later, when the season’s shortcomings seem less chronic than something maybe we’ll get over with a change of the calendar — a prescription that worked wonders for the White Sox — didn’t really hurt at all. It only pinched for a second.
by Greg Prince on 20 August 2026 2:07 pm Let’s go live to the internal dialogue I’ve developed in the wake of the august Mets play of August 2026, right up through their 4-2 victory over the Padres at Citi Field on Wednesday afternoon.
The Mets are winning some baseball games lately.
Yeah, I know. I can read a scoreboard.
No, I mean REAL baseball games.
“No shift, Sherlock.”
No shift?
I’m polite, so I thought I’d crib from the section of the MLB rule book pertaining to defensive alignments.
Fair enough, but let me go on.
You usually do.
Me and I can have some contentious conversations.
When I say the Mets are winning some “baseball games,” I’m thinking about the substance and execution of those games. The Mets are proving themselves capable and opportunistic They look like they know what they’re doing, then they go and do it. The scores of the five wins on their just-completed six-date homestand say something in that regard.
4-1
5-4
4-3
2-1
4-2
Those are baseball scores. I enjoy being on the right side of a Met blowout or a Met slugfest as much as the next fan — and nobody relishes the Mets winning by a Unicorn Score as much as I do — but there is comfort to be had in knowing your team can take the field, play a reasonably standard baseball game, and emerge triumphant consistently.
This team is indeed winning some baseball games. This team is getting enough power, taking enough bases, making enough plays, and throwing enough effective pitches to get them from the first inning to the last in the finest of fettle. A Mets fan could get used to this. In fact, this Mets fan is beginning to believe this is who these Mets are.
NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST
SINCE TRADE DEADLINE DAY
New York 11-4
Philadelphia 10-5
Atlanta 7-8
Washington 6-8
Miami 6-9
That’s all the sample size I need. Tell the earlier, larger chunk of the standings to go back where it came from.
The Mets of right now are all the Mets I need. These are…
• the Mets of legitimate Rookie of the Year contender Carson Benge’s fourth-inning homer Wednesday, his fifteenth of the season (it was a two-run job that I’d love to say Benged around the foul pole, but was fair by several feet, which just as well, as you don’t want to leave these things to replay review);
• the Mets of building one run bit by bit (in the eighth, while trying to increase their 2-1 lead, A.J. Ewing walks, A.J. Ewing steals, Francisco Lindor singles, Bo Bichette delivers a fielder’s choice grounder to score Ewing);
• the Mets of taking advantage when advantage begs to be taken (Bichette’s grounder is thrown away, so Lindor rushes to third and Bo goes to second);
• the Mets of insuring their lead with additional timely offense (Jared Young singling home Bichette right after Benge couldn’t do the same with Lindor);
• the Mets of no starter automatically imploding (Robert Stock stood stern for four-and-a-third before allowing a Padre run, which, let’s face it, is more than you’d have dreamed of getting from Robert Stock when you first heard he was back in town);
• the Mets of this bullpen that makes you forget that most of the dealing they did at the deadline decimated one of their few strengths, middle relief (Jonathan Pintaro unjammed what Stock left in his wake, while Nate Lavender, reactivated Austin Warren, and Daniel Duarte built a bridge as sturdy as any Robert Moses ever constructed);
• and the Mets of a go-to closer who had never been a reliever of renown at any time in his professional career, yet is 4-for-4 in his four shots at filling that role (Kodai Senga’s last save prior to this month was in Japan, a dozen years ago).
When your team is leading the small sample size standings, that’s your team. Senga the closer. Stock the starter. Pintaro and Duarte and the lefty who leaves you in a Lavender haze. You still miss Alonso, but you appreciate the value in Young. Benge, you’ve decided, is verging on the stardom that was talked up for him before you ever laid eyes on him. Bichette, you’ve decided, wasn’t a bad signing, whatever the ridiculous price. You’re not looking to relitigate what went wrong. You’re living in the now and you’re delighted to be here.
If you have a heart, you’re sorry to see Jorge Polanco is too hurt to persevere, even if his perseverance wasn’t getting any of us anywhere. You kind of figured out he never really recovered from injury before it was announced he is done for the season, his left ankle bursitis slating him to surgery. “He seems like a decent guy” is one of those things you don’t lead with when you can cite flattering statistics. Polanco’s OPS in his first Met campaign was .431, roughly what the SAT folks give you for signing your name on a Saturday morning. Still, he seems like a decent guy. I can remember Jorge chipping in a couple of key hits. There weren’t so many Jorge Polanco hits to sort through that you can’t recall each of them if you try.
Your loyalty now is to the Mets of now, the conglomeration of bright futures, first-half underachievers, beating-the-bushes relievers, and whoever suddenly just kind of finds themselves here. Christopher Morel — the journeyman whose two stripes of eyeblack on either side of his face approximate cat whiskers, meaning he earned my affection when he was a nominally hated opponent — joined the Mets this week, so I will invest fondness in Christopher Morel until I find cause to disavow it. That’s how it goes when your team is on a roll. You’re into Benge and Ewing and McLean, but you’re also on board with Christopher Morel, Cristian Pache, and Chyace McDermott.
Gabriel Arias and his flowing dyed blond locks were briefly in on the rising, in their way. Gabriel was a Met while the Mets blazed, claimed the other week from the discard pile of the Guardians, the team we’d just swept. Yet the entirety of his Met experience amounted to participation in a pair of rare Met losses, both by shutout. Arias was DFA’d to make room for Morel, then scooped up by one of the Chicago teams once we jetted off to play the other. His designation for assignment occurred the day after the Mets swept the Nats, the same day the Mets took their team picture. One assumes Gabriel had cleared out ASAP, sparing the photographer from instructing the assembled baseball players, “Everybody say CHEESE…except for Number 25 with the great hair.”
 “Quick, snap it before Gabriel finishes signing for that shipment from Revlon!” A definite The Replacements air informs one’s current consumption of this Mets team. The Replacements, the 2000 film based loosely on the games the NFL foisted on fans when the real players were out on strike in 1987, isn’t very good nor does it send a wholly constructive message about labor relations, but a sports movie doesn’t have to be high art as long as it can gin up some inspiration. Gene Hackman as Coach Jimmy McGinty surely brought that with the voiceover he provides during the movie’s denouement.
“There was no ticker tape parade, no endorsement deals for sneakers or soda pop or breakfast cereal. Just a locker to be cleaned out, and a ride home to catch. But what they didn’t know was that their lives had been changed forever because they had been part of something great. And greatness, no matter how brief, stays with a man. Every athlete dreams of a second chance. These men lived it.”
Honestly, that speech crossed my mind earlier this season, when our replacements were the likes of Austin Slater and Andy Ibañez and Guillo Zuñiga, and their respective tenures didn’t augur many happy endings. Who knows why some clusters of Mets blend while others blur? Some years — 2013, for example — it’s not working with Collin Cowgll and Collin McHugh and one player after another who might as well be Colin Quinn (tough crowd), then suddenly it’s not so abysmal when you’ve brought in Zach Lutz and Josh Satin and the alphabetical opposite of Guillo Zuñiga, David Aardsma. You can only hope the best of the replacements become permanents and the small sample size grows big and bountiful.
Until then, I’ll take the winning of baseball games, one at time. Beats the hell out of the alternative to which we became so sadly accustomed.
by Jason Fry on 19 August 2026 7:55 am It was Fernando Tatis Jr. vs. the New York Mets, and it was no contest.
Zac Thornton‘s first pitch of the game was met with about as perfect a swing as I’ve seen from a baseball player, and the ball came down on the moon.
In the bottom of the second, the Mets scratched and clawed against Robbie Ray, who spent the whole night looking like he was on the verge of getting chased from the game. With the bases loaded and two out, Francisco Lindor connected, sending a ball just over the fence in the right-field corner — a ball Tatis jumped for but seemed to miss, only to come down on his feet, wait a perfectly timed beat and then flash the pearl he’d found. It only mildly galls me to admit it looked extremely cool.
In the fifth, Tatis connected against Thornton again — this time for a conventional-distance homer to right-center, with a man on.
So that’s one player responsible for a seven-run swing, which was enough to snap the Mets’ losing streak and their newly acquired air of invulnerability. Had more been required from Tatis to single-handedly vanquish the Mets, I’ve no doubt he would have been equal to the task.
Further analysis would be the stuff of shrugs; regarding the rest, we were watching in a hotel restaurant without sound, which unfortunately turned both the Howie Rose-Gary Cohen booth reunion and Steve Gelbs’ visit with returning hero Jose Iglesias into pantomimes.
Some nights aren’t going to go your way. You’re the Washington Generals, the hapless foil, the designated opponent, the straight man. The other guy is Fernando Tatis Jr., and you’re not.
by Jason Fry on 18 August 2026 8:54 am Some recaps go for analysis, others go for trying to capture what it was like to be in the moment. And we’ll do a little of that. But sometimes you just want to record what happened and be amazed.
So: Combine the top of the first and the top of the second of Monday night’s Mets-Padres game, and you saw the Padres put seven consecutive men on base against Nolan McLean.
Single. Single. Single. Single. Walk. HBP. Walk. Yes, that checks out. Seven!
That sequence somehow yielded zero runs, but ended with the Padres having the bases loaded and nobody out. Yipes! Which was followed by a fielder’s choice, a sac fly and another single. That sequence yielded exactly one run, and another inning over.
You already know the missing elements. The first inning turned — or rather, didn’t turn — on Carson Benge throwing out runners at home on consecutive plays. Jake Cronenworth was the first victim, thrown out by a good 15 feet trying to score on a blooper by Ty France. Cronenworth tried to go up and over Francisco Alvarez‘s tag and ended up on his face beyond home plate. So third-base coach Bob Henley tried it again four pitches later on a Jackson Merrill single — and watched as Benge unleashed a 103 mph one-hop strike to Alvarez to nail Manny Machado. Per the the Athletic, which has a fun deep dive into the nuts and bolts of the Mets’ outfield defense (it’s free, you’re welcome), it was first time an outfielder threw out runners at home on consecutive plays in 22 years. It was also the first time a Met outfielder had ever nabbed two guys at home in the same inning.
 Arrr, what be happenin’ in this here Mets game? The Mets tallied a couple of runs in the bottom of the first on a Bo Bichette single that just trickled between two plus defenders in Cronenworth and France and a sac fly from Luis Robert Jr. that capped a solid grind of an AB. That left San Diego’s Walker Buehler fuming and gesticulating in the dugout. I think Buehler’s objection was to the injustice of the cosmos and not a specific teammate’s sins, but who knows.
McLean, though, was out of sorts in the second, his mechanics awry and his location amiss. Two walks sandwiched around an HBP left the Mets in the soup, but Luis Rengifo tapped back to McLean, who threw high to Alvarez, eliminating any chance for a 1-2-3 double play but allowing the Mets to force Luis Campusano at home. Fernando Tatis Jr. just missed a grand slam, with a Padre finally reaching home safely to cut the lead to 2-1. Cronenworth then singled, wisely not to Benge this time but to A.J. Ewing in left — who threw out Xander Bogaerts at the plate to end the inning.
So at this point the Padres had made six outs, four of them at home. No Met had touched a live ball except McLean, Alvarez, Benge and Ewing. (OK, I think Jared Young had been involved in a pickoff attempt, but don’t be pedantic.) The Padres were 3 for 4 with runners in scoring position and had tallied one run. Got all that?
(We watched these unlikely events unfold in a restaurant in Boothbay, propping up my phone to show SNY silently and in miniature, and kept getting confused about what was a replay and what was a new plate appearance. Can you blame us?)
Baseball being baseball, of course nothing much happened after that. McLean settled down and the make-it-up-as-you-go Mets bullpen held serve, sparing poor Henley further object lessons in not running on Met outfielders.
The lone bit of analysis I’ll add is to give Alvarez credit above and beyond simply being at the center of a cavalcade of unlikeliness. Plays at home aren’t as easy as we think, even when outfielders’ throws are on target: Catchers have to receive those throws cleanly, know where they are in relation to the plate, spin themselves accordingly, anticipate the runner’s lane without blocking the plate too early, and deal with a large opponent sliding or barreling into their vicinity. A lot can go wrong, particularly when you’re trying to do all that in a hurry, but Alvarez handled it all flawlessly.
As for the rest, well, you can’t outguess baseball. Sometimes crazy things happen and all you can do is hang on for the ride.
by Jason Fry on 17 August 2026 8:34 am The 2025 Mets were lousy, basically without interruption, from June until they expired in Miami, with the date on the carton confirming that sour-milk taste you’d been trying to convince yourself wasn’t there really had been. It’s hard to single out games that stuck in the craw when pretty much all of them did, but I do remember the last two home games at Citi Field, and I bet you do too. Daylen Lile, Jacob Young, Cedric Mullins … my God it was dispiriting.
So sweeping the Nats at Citi Field nearly a year later felt … well, hmm. To quote True Grit, I’d have to weigh that. When you’re this far under .500, inspiring is a word you’ve pretty much put on the shelf until next season. Is there an opposite of dispiriting? Spiriting, perhaps? Did that form once exist only to be wind up unpaired, a la kempt and ept?
Whatever it is, I’d like more of it as the 2026 season cools — and this time, the Mets didn’t even have to wait for the Nationals’ bullpen to self-combust.
With Christian Scott on the mound, the Mets fell behind by 1-0 and 2-0, but neither enemy tally elicited more than a shrug from me. The first came on a little Keibert Ruiz parachute over the infield after Scott had nearly found his way through first and second and none out, which was nice work; the second was a solo shot by the wonderfully named, annoyingly powerful Abimelec Ortiz. (To opposite field, no less — an oppo taco, to quote an MLB Audio spot now so threadbare that it elicits groans and amazed laughter when the Bernstein-Frys hear it yet again.)
Scott kept the roof caving in, pitching into the seventh, and the Mets ambushed Jake Irvin in the fourth — Jared Young single, Brett Baty double, Jorge Polanco RBI groundout, Luis Torrens three-run homer — before tacking on another run in the fifth. I was listening on MLB Audio as we doofed around in Portland (ahead of the first soccer game I’ve watched live that didn’t involve inept children), and besides enjoying the Mets being spiriting, I also found myself enjoying Howie Rose.
Over the years Howie’s baseline has drifted to settle on “mildly cranky,” and I roll my eyes when some aspect of modernity makes him crankier than usual. But he remains a master of play by play, not just with big moments (like his justifiably immortal Pete Alonso call) but with little ones too, and I don’t think listeners appreciate how hard it is to maintain that standard. Next time you listen to Howie, take note how he subtly steps up the pace as a game situation evolves from “mildly interesting” to “action immiment” to “break point.” The play by play becomes sharper and more distinct and the bits of color more surgical and staccato, carrying listeners along for the ride without noticing they’re atop Howie’s shoulders.
I can always tell from Howie’s cadences if I’ve arrived during an interesting juncture or a languid stretch, and I love that. I also love that while he stays on the proper side of homerism, he narrates with his heart on his sleeve. Howie’s always been one of us and unapologetically so: joyful when the Mets are good and tortured when they are not. I genuinely like Keith Raad and Pat McCarthy, whose interplay gets better and better and comes with just the right amount of goofiness, but Howie’s shoes are essentially unfillable. Keith and Pat will be his successors, and I think they’ll be able ones, but they’ll never be his replacements — just as it was with Howie and Bob Murphy.
While I listened in Portland, Howie kept stepping back to dissect the 2026 season, and I found myself nodding along with his point that even in a lost year, developing two dependable outfielders (A.J. Ewing and Carson Benge) and three young starting pitchers (Scott, Nolan McLean and Zac Thornton) is something you can build around.
Scott definitely deserves those plaudits — I was particularly impressed with his fifth inning, when he defended the lead that had been handed to him by blitzing through the heart of the Nats’ order — and it shouldn’t be forgotten that he’s put together a fine season while learning his way around elbow 2.0. I also like how Andy Green has handled him, challenging him both privately and publicly to be better.
On that same subject, I didn’t miss that Luis Robert Jr. was playing left, signaling without making a big deal out of it that center field now belongs to Ewing. (Though Ewing looks like he could use a day to clear his head.) Or that your Mets closer is now … Kodai Senga. Regarding Senga as closer, I’ve gone in probably too rapid succession from “well nothing else has fuckin’ worked” to “this may not actually be so crazy” to “HELL YES KODAI SENGA!!!”
On Sunday Senga flat out bullied the Nats while defending a one-run lead: easy groundout, two erasures via ghost fork. He didn’t muck around with any of the secondary stuff that kept betraying him as a starter, sticking to the fastball and the forkball, with short outings giving the fastball an additional tick or two and thus making the ghost fork even tougher to combat. And he looked (OK, he sounded) like he’d embraced the assignment, working quickly and unfussily.
So: Hell yes Kodai Senga.
That change of roles — shear away less reliable pitches, pound the strike zone, it’s one inning so don’t think too much — has worked for plenty of pitchers on plenty of teams, so I don’t know why I’m so surprised that the early returns have been this good for Senga and the Mets. I suppose it’s that little black cloud of Mets fandom, the one we get accustomed to seeing, to the point that we look askance at a patch of blue sky. Howie knows what I’m talking about — and he could tell you that sometimes it really is sunny.
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