It seemed as if the Mets traded away so many players at the Trade Deadline you were surprised not to see Mr. Met listed with all the other transactions the next day. They were buried in last place at the time, Juan Soto hadn’t played since July 24, and the season was looking like another major disappointment for a team with one of the highest payrolls in the game.
Mets fans know: It seemed like last season – when the team finished 38-55 and missed the postseason by a game – had simply become this season.
Only here is what’s happened -- even without their best player in Soto -- since the Deadline: The Mets have tied with the Rays for the best record in baseball at 11-4. It isn’t as stunning as the turnaround we’ve seen from the Red Sox, who were buried in last place themselves toward the end of June and 14 games under .500. But in National League New York, they will take it, believe me.
There was a time in the '60s, back when the Mets were born, when their manager Casey Stengel jokingly called them the “Amazin’ Mets.” But what has happened in August, and considering the expectations that the Mets would simply be playing out the string after the Deadline sell-off, truly has felt kind of amazin’ at Citi Field.
It has all happened since trading away Clay Holmes, Freddy Peralta, Luke Weaver, Tyrone Taylor and what felt like most of their bullpen. The Mets are still a hundred miles from the last Wild Card spot in the National League, of course, with what feels like half the league between them and the Padres, holders of that third Wild Card spot.
And yet: They just took two of three from the Padres at Citi Field, and might have swept them if Fernando Tatis Jr. hadn’t reached over the right-field wall to take a grand slam away from Francisco Lindor in the second game of the series. Carson Benge, their hot kid, hit an opposite-field home run on Wednesday afternoon, in the same series when Benge threw out two runners at home in the same inning. Seemingly out of nowhere Kodai Senga, on his way to another nowhere season of his own, has become the team’s closer.
Why did Senga get the job, like some sort of battlefield commission? Because Devin Williams, who’d been the team’s closer and was among their splashiest offseason moves, is on the injured list along with Soto.
On Wednesday, the Mets got a gritty starting performance from veteran Robert Stock, who pitched into the fifth inning without his best stuff. Stock is another Met with plenty to play for over the final 34 games of a season that is actually making Mets fans lean in again, instead of looking away.
“Every game is a chance to prove that I can hang,” Stock said when it was over.
All of a sudden, the Mets are at least doing some hanging of their own, after a season when just about everything that could have gone wrong really had gone wrong. Over the last two-and-a-half weeks, the Mets have become fun to watch. This is after more than an entire season – going all the way back to June of 2025 – when they had one of the worst records in all of MLB.
Before Wednesday’s game, Mets’ owner Steve Cohen sat in the home team’s dugout and addressed the media. Cohen at least spoke a lot about “too much” risk between last season and this from his head of baseball operations, David Stearns, who had turned over what felt like half the team and most of the team’s coaching staff.
Here is something else Cohen said:
“It’s fun to see some of these younger players come up. They have worked hard in their careers and started to demonstrate that they are pretty good at what they do, too. It’s fun for the fans. Winning is better than losing. It’s creating a little excitement and, hopefully, it will carry through the end of the year and it will give us good feelings for next year.”
Mets fans still aren’t convinced that’s the way to bet. But for them, and for Cohen – and for Stearns, under tremendous pressure to turn the thing all the way around by 2027 – it is certainly the way to root. The team even has somehow even produced a record of 24-23 under interim manager Andy Green.
Again: This isn’t the Red Sox, not by a longshot, as much of a longshot as the Sox were when they were in last place in June. The Sox now hold a Wild Card spot in their league and the Mets are still 10 games out of one, with so little runway left. But they are finally getting solid pitching, from both their starters and remade bullpen. Lindor looks like himself again. Bo Bichette has been hitting better for a while. And their young starters, led by Nolan McLean, have also become kids to watch.
Maybe this will turn out to be nothing more than a short summer romance for Mets fans. But since the Deadline, at least they feel like they have a summer again. And will take it.