The 2024 New York Mets won 89 games and reached the postseason on the strength of a magical second half.
Pete Alonso hit one of the biggest home runs in the recent history of the franchise in the Wild Card series against the Milwaukee Brewers, turning a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 lead in the top of the ninth inning of an elimination game against top closer Devin Williams. Then, they easily handled the fearsome Philadelphia Phillies in the NLDS to advance to the NLCS.
Despite losing to the eventual champion Los Angeles Dodgers, it seemed like the Mets were headed in the right direction. Even more so, when just a few months later, they signed Juan Soto to the biggest contract in Major League Baseball history.
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Fast forward to late April 2026, and the Mets are 90-95 since the start of the 2025 season. That’s no small sample size, that’s an entire season and an additional month’s worth of games. They missed the playoffs last year by losing a tiebreaker to the Cincinnati Reds. They’ve started the 2026 season by going 7-16 and losing 12 games in a row. Culminating in yet another blown lead, with, ironically, a Devin Williams implosion in the ninth inning on Tuesday cementing a 5-3 loss to the Minnesota Twins.
It raises the question: Why are the Mets so bad? Huge payrolls, star players, big name free agents. How did we get here? Turns out, there’s a pretty easy explanation.
Soto has missed time this year with an injury, but even with him in the lineup, the other Mets hitters are woefully behind where you’d reasonably expect them to be. And it’s a flaw of the team’s roster construction.
Once they missed out on Kyle Tucker, who would have fit well on the Mets’ roster, the team’s front office seemed to flail for anyone who’d take their money. Enter Bo Bichette. Bichette has been a well above average player for most of his career, and had an outstanding 2025 season at the plate. He also has some glaring red flags that could give some teams pause, namely, bat speed.
Statcast data now gives us bat speed data by player, and after ranking in the 23rd percentile in 2023, already not great, Bichette has dropped to the 12th and 14th percentile the last two seasons. He’s never been a great baserunner or fielder, but his bat has made up for it. This year though? He’s making lower quality contact, chasing pitches off the plate more than he has since his first two years in the league, and his sprint speed has dropped to the 15th percentile. Despite being just 28 years old, Bichette has already shown clear signs of decline.
Marcus Semien, at 35, has too. A below average hitter in 2025, he’s gotten worse in 2026. And the same warning signs are flashing with his profile too. His strikeout rate is the highest it’s been in years. His bat speed, never elite, dropped to the 8th percentile in 2025 and has continued there in 2026.
How much does bat speed matter though, you might wonder. Well, a quick glance at the Baseball Savant Statcast bat speed leaderboard shows it’s pretty darn important.
Junior Caminero has been one of the most valuable hitters in baseball this year. Oneil Cruz has been 44% better than league average. Jordan Walker has been one of the stories of the first month of the season, hitting .292/.357/.607, with a batting line 68% better than league average.
Faster bat speed doesn’t always mean better results, but it sure helps. And two of the Mets’ key hitters have some of the lowest bat speed in baseball.
The good news for the Mets is that Soto and Francisco Lindor still project to be two of the best hitters in baseball. And Bichette and Semien, despite their flaws, are expected to improve on their seasons thus far. Nolan McLean has looked great in the early going, and Williams has allowed an unsustainable .556 batting average on balls in play. There will be some positive regression. But there are significant flaws in the team’s roster construction, and they’re paying nearly $70 million to Bichette and Semien where there are key weaknesses in both players’ skill sets. Oh, and Semien is signed through 2028 too.
Then, in a sign that this might not be the closest clubhouse, Soto told the media on Wednesday he hasn’t talked to his teammates during their losing streak.
Not what you want to hear.
It’s easy to say it’s early. And yes, it is still early. But the Mets’ odds of reaching the postseason reached 89% in March, per FanGraphs. Now? It’s just 39%, with a 3% chance of winning the World Series. Their division odds have dropped to just 12%. No team that’s ever lost 12 games in a row has ever made the playoffs. All this for a team with a $370+ million payroll. They won 83 games in 2025, and revamped much of the roster after the season. FanGraphs currently projects them to win 82 games in 2026. That’s a sign that their player evaluations were simply not good enough.
And it might lead to yet another year of sitting home and watching other teams in October.
