Marcus Semien
Pop Quiz: Why did the 2026 New York Mets falter? While people want to blame things like losing Pete Alonso, the truth is the 2026 Mets faltered due to injuries.
Francisco Lindor’s injury was devastating, especially with no real Plan B available at the position. Juan Soto’s keg injuries hurt the lineup. Clay Holmes broken leg killed the rotation.
There are more, but that’s the point. There’s only so many injuries a team can sustain before faltering. However faltering one year doesn’t necessitate faltering the next.
Right off the bat, the Mets rotation looks to be in good shape. Here are the promising young arms set to pitch in 2027:
That’s 3/5 of the rotation figured out. The renaissance of Sean Manaea puts them in better shape, and they can always look to bring back Holmes are sign another veteran.
Their outfield from left to right will be Soto – A.J. Ewing – Carson Benge. That’s an all under 30 outfield with speed and power. It’s a very impressive group.
At catcher, the Mets have Francisco Álvarez and Luis Torrens. Alvarez seems to finally becoming the power bat behind the plate he’s always promised to be. Torrens is a great defensive back-up with a bit of a clutch gene.
The infield is a bit of a problem. They’re at least secured on the left side with Lindor and Bo Bichette, who will likely opt in for the rest of his contract.
We know Brett Baty is not part of a solution. Marcus Semien probably isn’t either. Now, if the Mets pick up Luis Robert Jr’s option, Ewing could slide to second. Let’s see how he finishes the season before we go here.
The Mark Vientos and Jorge Polanco injuries leave 1B and DH unsettled. Long story short, the Mets need to rebuild the first side of the infield. Hopefully, one of them takes off giving us some peace of mind heading into next year.
The Mets are having open tryouts for the 2027 bullpen. We also know David Stearns has been adept at building bullpens making this a little less of a concern.
All told, the Mets are very good in most spots. There is a good foundation here with money to spend. Rather than be doom and gloom, Mets fans should focus on the very good pieces here.
The Mets can now see who can be a part of the 2027 team and beyond. They have the means to address their deficiencies. They will contend in 2027.
Until August 3, the New York Mets are in a somewhat precarious spot. They need to be showcasing their potentially movable players while making sure their young stars stay in the lineup.
Short of a needed day off, Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing have to play. Benge is the right fielder and should never play another position.
As for Ewing, it’s complicated a bit. He’s looked like the center fielder of the future. He has elite speed and can cover a lot of ground.
The problem is when he’s in center Luis Robert Jr. won’t be. Right now, Robert needs to be in center to showcase him for the trade deadline. It’s better to move him now than lose him for nothing when they will have to decline his $20 million team option.
Fortunately, Ewing is versatile. He can play second base. There’s a problem there because the Mets also need to try to showcase Marcus Semien.
Look odds are no one wants Semien and his horrendous contract. Semien isn’t hitting or playing defense. However, if he gets hot, maybe, just maybe, the Mets can get someone to take him.
It’s a delicate balancing act, but the Mets absolutely have to have Ewing in the lineup everyday. They have to do that while simultaneously getting as much playing time for Robert and Semien as possible.
It’s a near impossible situation.
That situation is complicated by the Mets insistence on playing Brett Baty and Jared Young.
Baty has a career 84 wRC+. He has a 75 wRC+ this season. He’s a poor fielder with a poor arm. Looking at his stats, he looks like a non-tender candidate, not a lineup mainstay.
But, he never comes out of the lineup. It’s at the point where he played right field in place of Benge. Baty would misplay a routine fly ball. As a result, Christian Scott couldn’t escape the jam and would eventually lose the game.
Being fair, Baty is 26. It’s possible a team could overvalue Baty’s 2025 outlier season and try to trade for him. If that’s a reason to keep playing him, fine. It’s justified.
Just keep him at first because it’s not like anyone is blocking him there.
The Mets are enamored with Jared Young at first. He plays there everyday. It’s completely bizarre.
Young is 31. He has a career 107 wRC+. He’s a platoon bat. He’s been solid at first with a 2 OAA with zero recorded scoops.
It’s fine having Young on the roster. He serves a purpose. He’s a platoon bat with some pop. He just can’t play right now. Playing him is completely and utterly pointless. Worse yet, it’s detrimental.
Benge and Ewing have to play everyday. The Mets need to hope Robert and Semien get hot and attract someone to at least take the contract. Hopefully, the Mets get lucky, and someone takes Baty.
No one is chasing down Young. Even if they’re interested, the Mets are not getting any value for him. Playing him more works counter to the Mets objectives.
Playing Young before August 3 is malpractice. It leads to Benge in left and Baty in right. It’s dumb and counterproductive. It needs to end now.
Well, no one is whining over losing Brandon Nimmo, Pete Alonso, and Jeff McNeil. David Stearns has drastically and dramatically remade the New York Mets into possibly the best team in baseball.
They recently made huge additions with Bo Bichette and Louis Robert Jr. (two moves requiring overdue posts). Stearns then took a big swing trading for Freddy Peralta and Tobias Myers.
People will say Peralta was needed because the Mets rotation was bad. They were very wrong. That said, Peralta is a very good pitcher, and when you can add a very good pitcher, you do it.
Peralta makes the Mets rotation better in so many ways.
He was 24th in the majors in innings pitched, and he’s made 30+ starts in three consecutive years. He was 17th in the majors in FIP and 15th in WAR. He was seventh in ERA and eighth in ERA+.
While you may uncomfortable calling him an ace, he’s a number one starter. It’s a fact. When there are 30 MLB teams are you’re top 25 and better in most categories, you’re a number one.
When a team adds a number one starter, it dramatically improves their outlook. Go back to 2000. Mike Hampton wasn’t an ace, but he was a true number one, and he was a big piece that helped the Mets win the pennant.
Peralta may not even be the Mets best starter. That is probably Nolan McLean. It’s hard to find a better 1-2 in baseball than Peralta-McLean . . . or McLean-Peralta.
Speaking of McLean, this makes him and the whole rotation better. At the moment, the Mets have six starters. This gives McLean an extra day of rest to help him get through his first full MLB season.
Kodai Senga has been better with an extra day of rest, and now, he gets it. David Peterson and Clay Holmes wore down from the increased workload, and now, they also get an extra day. Sean Manaea also gets a needed extra day.
They just didn’t get better by adding Peralta. They got better because the six man rotation makes the entire rotation better. They’re getting the best out of all their starters, which is very bad news for the National League.
Senga and Peterson have been All-Stars. Manaea was a top of the rotation pitcher for a team that went to the NLCS. McLean’s ceiling is as high as we’ve ever seen. They’re now all positioned to be at their best making them arguably the best rotation in baseball.
Keep in mind, Peralta was not the only pitcher the Mets obtained. They also received Myers, a pitcher who is not even arbitration eligible until after the 2027 season.
Myers has been a dominant reliever in his brief Major League career. If you go back to that 2024 Game 3, he absolutely dominated the Mets and appeared to be the game winning pitcher until Alonso did what he did.
Myers may still yet be a starter. He could be a future closer. He’s the Mets 2026 version of Seth Lugo. That’s a dangerous pitcher to have on your staff, and Myers is probably better.
Now, the Mets paid an understandably steep price for Peralta and Myers. In fact, ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel explains the Mets trading Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat moved them from the top farm system to sixth best. Ironically, the Brewers moved from sixth to first.
There will be some who try to nitpick the prospects. We can point to Sproat’s struggles at Triple-A and his four Major League starts. We shouldn’t be doing that.
Sproat has a bright future ahead of him. After all, he made his MLB debut a year after being drafted. He could’ve been a big piece for the Mets in 2026.
Williams is a top prospect. He has a real future at second, short, or CF. He’s got speed and power in his bat. Losing him hurts, and it takes away insurance for the 35 year old Marcus Semien and injury prone players like Bichette and Robert.
The Mets can soon come to regret this trade, especially with Peralta being a year away from free agency. That makes this a real gamble and a worthwhile one at that.
Peralta improves the Mets rotation and improves the entire pitching staff. Myers makes the Mets deeper. If Myers is in the bullpen, this could be the best staff in the entire Major Leagues.
The Mets officially went all-in. They’ve built a team better than the 2025 Mets, and it could be the best this century. Time will tell. Whatever happens, it’ll be because the Mets made the very bold move to add Peralta to make the Mets the one team who can dethrone the Dodgers.
We were not in the New York Mets clubhouse in 2025, so we can’t know just how bad things were. In fact, we don’t even know if it was bad.
However, there have been signs. The vibes were different from the OMG Mets. Juan Soto talked about how Starling Marte was the true leader.
The team was just different, but perhaps not. There was the famous story sparking the 2024 turnaround. J.D. Martinez said the Mets needed to recall Jose Iglesias to change the vibes and get the Mets to turn their season around.
Usually, that’s just talk. Chemistry is a talking point. It’s something to talk about to explain why teams aren’t performing to their expectations. However, with the 2024 Mets, the chemistry change actually worked.
Something was off, and it seems David Stearns traded Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil to change the clubhouse. In the announced sake for run prevention, the Mets added Marcus Semien, who is a great defensive second baseball and a renown clubhouse leader.
Again, we can question the decision to trade Nimmo and McNeil. We just can’t know how necessary it was. Let’s take Stearns word for it that trading them was absolutely necessary.
The real problem here is Stearns hasn’t fixed the outfield, and he’s running out of options.
For a moment, let’s overlook how he has been pushing run prevention while also having aggressively pursued Tucker. Nimmo was a -1 OAA in left, and he is getting slower.
Tucker was a -2 OAA, and he’s slower than Nimmo. While Nimmo played nearly everyday, Tucker is becoming increasingly injury prone. Tucker is a much better hitter, and he is younger.
Tucker was not the great fit for a team who is harping on run prevention. However, when you get rid of a left fielder to fix team chemistry with no real plan in place, you offer $60 million per year for an imperfect to bad philosophical fit.
That’s also the result of few options on the free agent market. There were few options on thf trade market. The deeper we get into the offseason we see the plan was to change the chemistry without a definitive plan to actually address left field.
Nimmo was the left fielder. He is gone. With Semien aboard, McNeil moves to left where he has been good. He was an All-Star left fielder. He’s gone.
Right now, for the Mets, it’s Cody Bellinger or bust. Bellinger is younger and better than Nimmo. He’s arguably better than Tucker. He’s the most versatile. He might’ve been the best fit overall.
However, he wants a seven year deal. Stearns doesn’t like going to five years, and with the Mets, he’s proven sheepish to go to three years. Bellinger has a five year $150 million offer from the Yankees, who also need him desperately.
The Mets are in a bad place trying to replace Nimmo in left field. Things are worse when you consider they also need to solve center. Maybe they get Bellinger. Maybe there’s a trade candidate we haven’t heard be linked to the Mets.
Whatever the case, the Mets have two massive holes in the outfield. The options are dwindling, and the closer we get to spring training, the more it seems the Mets can’t fill both holes.
Stearns might’ve been right about needing to fix the clubhouse chemistry. The hope is he didn’t sacrifice 2026 to do it.
If this was 2024, the New York Mets should have given everything they had to get Tarik Skubal. He is the best pitcher in the game, and when the best pitcher in the game potentially becomes available, you do all you can to go out and get him.
Short of Nolan McLean, there should not be one untouchable for the Mets in a pursuit of Skubal. He could be what Mike Hampton and Johan Santana were. He’s the left-handed ace that puts the Mets in position to make the postseason (yes, I know the 2008 Mets collapsed, but Santana was brilliant in Game 161).
That all said, the way the Mets have operated this offseason, there is no way this team should pursue Skubal. It would be a massive mistake.
Since taking over as the President of Baseball Operations, David Stearns has been restrained in handing out long-term deals. So far, the longest contract he has handed out to a pitcher has been the three year deal given to Sean Manaea.
Take Juan Soto out of the equation. He was a once in a generation free agent, and he was someone whose contract was handled at the ownership level in conjunction with Stearns. Soto was an outlier and should be treated as such.
Taking Soto out of the equation, Stearns has not handed out one contract longer than three years. Most of the deals have been two years with a player option.
Stearns holding to three years has been impacting the Mets this offseason. Pete Alonso left for a five year deal when the Mets wouldn’t go past three. The Mets unwillingness to go to four years was a reason Edwin Diaz went to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
If the Mets are stuck in that mindset trading for Skubal is a non-starter. He is going to have a prospect cost that will require you to sign Skubal to an extension. That is just not going to happen.
First and foremost, Skubal is represented by Scott Boras. Boras does not typically allow his free agents to sign an extension prior to hitting free agency. If you are going to convince Boras and his players to sign an extension, you are going to have to blow them out of the water.
Certainly, we saw with Francisco Lindor and Soto that Steve Cohen is willing to do that. However, we have also seen with Cohen he is willing to mostly sit back and let Stearns do what he wants.
That is not a criticism of Cohen. It is a strength. We see all the years other New York teams have been encumbered by ownership interference. Cohen’s willingness to open his checkbook and listen to the advice of those he employs is why we are lucky to have him running the Mets.
However, with Stearns, there are limitations. That limitation is signing marquee free agents who are not in their early prime. Looking at his entire history as a GM or president of baseball operations, Stearns is not going to give Skubal, a soon to be 29 year old pitcher who has had Tommy John and flexor tendon surgery, the 10 year deal Skubal is going to demand.
If you are not going to go all out to sign Skubal, why drain the farm system you’ve worked so hard to build? It simply doesn’t make sense.
Stearns has been inflexible not giving out more than three years. It’s at the point where they trade away five years of Brandon Nimmo for three years of Marcus Semien even if Nimmo will be the same age Semien will be when their contracts are over.
We an have the discussion over how prudent Stearns’ position has been. We can talk about how it helps or hinders the Mets. At the moment, we just have to acknowledge how that position should mean the Mets cannot pursue Skubal. ‘
Hopefully, with McLean, the Mets have the ace they need. We can envision a rotation led by McLean and buttressed by Brandon Sproat and Jonah Tong. With any luck, they can do what Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, and Noah Syndergaard did in 2015.
Just like in 2015, that group will need a veteran leader to lead the staff. They most likely won’t have a Skubal or other pitcher of that ilk as they would command too many years.
It’s time to abandon that pipe dream . . . at least until Stearns is ready to show some flexibility in his approach in dealing with giving out contracts.