MIAMI — For the third time in the last four seasons, the Mets’ postseason outlook came down to one game.
In 2022, New York lost the NL East on a tiebreaker to Atlanta, pushing it into a Wild Card Series it lost to San Diego. In 2024, it qualified for the postseason on the strength of a tiebreaker over Arizona. And this year, a loss on the final day of the season kept the Mets tied with Cincinnati, who advanced above them on another tiebreaker.
“It just shows the value of what one game means over the course of 162 games,” Pete Alonso said afterward. “There’s quite a handful of opportunities throughout the year that stand out in my mind. Man, if we did this or that…”
Indeed.
The Mets lost 79 games this season, and at least a handful felt like they should have ended differently. We’ve identified the 10 most difficult losses of the season. Win any one of these games, and the Mets would be in Los Angeles right now playing a playoff series against the Dodgers.
April 27: Nationals 8, Mets 7
The Mets had already lost one heartbreaker in Washington two days prior, when C.J. Abrams scored the winning run from first on a James Wood single. In this Sunday afternoon contest, New York blew its largest lead of the season (7-1) over the final three innings. José Buttó served up a two-out, three-run homer to Riley Adams in the seventh to make it a 7-6 game. In the ninth, an Abrams single tied the game, and he scored the winning run again when Alonso airmailed Ryne Stanek on a routine grounder to the right side. The Mets ended up splitting this four-game series against a bad team, something that happened to them far too often on the road.
June 13: Rays 7, Mets 5
The narratively inclined can point directly to one pivot point of the Mets’ season: Alonso’s high throw that led to Kodai Senga’s calf strain in a June 12 win over Washington. One game later, on Friday the 13th, the Mets were cruising with a 5-1 lead when they replaced Clay Holmes with Paul Blackburn — part of their attempt to keep their pitchers fresh throughout the season and into October. Blackburn was blasted by Tampa Bay in the sixth, allowing four of the five batters he faced to reach and score. Max Kranick didn’t help behind him, yielding Danny Jansen’s go-ahead two-run homer. The loss snapped a six-game winning streak and started a seven-game losing streak — the Mets’ first of those this season.
June 17: Braves 5, Mets 4 (10 innings)
When you’re in the midst of one of those losing streaks, sometimes you need a pitcher to put the team on his back and win a game largely by himself. And that’s what it looked like David Peterson was doing in this series opener in Atlanta. Tyrone Taylor’s three RBIs had punctured Spencer Schwellenbach, and Peterson took a 4-1 lead into the eighth having retired 11 of the last 12. But he walked the light-hitting No. 9 hitter Nick Allen to start the inning, and everything unraveled from there. Atlanta loaded the bases with nobody out, and Reed Garrett was on the verge of escaping unscathed when Marcell Ozuna laced a bases-clearing, game-tying double to left. Garrett had wanted to throw a fastball, Francisco Alvarez changed the call to a splitter, and he took the blame afterward. It didn’t help that Alvarez’s poor decision on a ball in the dirt in the 10th inning allowed the winning run to move to third. It would later score on a sacrifice fly.
June 29: Pirates 12, Mets 1
In the afternoon following a players-only meeting, the Mets looked as flat as ever. Frankie Montas allowed five runs in the first inning. It was the kind of game inside the kind of series that raised the question of whether things can actually get worse (Spoiler: they did). Against one of baseball’s worst teams, things got so bad that in the bottom of the eighth inning, journeyman outfielder Travis Jankowski took the mound and flung balls at 40 mph. This was the Mets’ 13th loss over a 16-game stretch. It epitomized their lack of fight; after going down early, the at-bats progressively got worse as the game went on.
July 28: Padres 7, Mets 6
This was another abrupt momentum shifter. The Mets had won seven in a row, including their series sweep of the Giants in San Francisco — as good a road series as they played all season. In the series opener in San Diego, they jumped on Dylan Cease for a 5-1 lead in the middle of the fifth. In the bottom of the inning, they submitted one of their by now trademarked defensive unravelings. The Padres had halved the deficit and were threatening for more when Jake Cronenworth hit what should have been an inning-ending groundout. But Huascar Brazobán failed to cover first base, allowing another run to score. A pair of RBI singles would follow to give San Diego the lead. After Ronny Mauricio’s ninth-inning homer got the Mets back even, another fielding miscue by a pitcher, this a throwing error on Gregory Soto, set up Elías Díaz’s walk-off single.
August 4: Guardians 7, Mets 6 (10 innings)
This is when it was appropriate to ask, are the Mets actually any good? Many fans were outraged that third base coach Mike Sarbaugh held up Taylor late in the game, but the questions about the Mets ran deeper. Their starters were a big problem (Sean Manaea gave up five runs, in his first poor outing in what would end up as a string of them). Their defense was just as concerning (Brett Baty made a critical error). Two days later in the series against the Guardians, the Mets were no-hit until the ninth inning.
August 10: Brewers 7, Mets 6
It’s a close call, but this might be when things became most worrisome. It was their seventh straight loss, marking the second such losing streak (there would be another). They blew a five-run lead. Their starter (Manaea) failed to complete five innings, let alone six. Things were so bad that before the series in Milwaukee started, Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns had to publicly back his hitting coaches. On June 12, the Mets held a 5 1/2-game lead over the Philadelphia Phillies for first place in the National League East. After this game, the Mets trailed the Phillies by 5 1/2 games for first place in the NL East.
September 11: Phillies 6, Mets 4
The September series against the Phillies underscored the difference between the two clubs, namely how the Mets’ trade-deadline acquisitions fared so poorly compared to Philadelphia’s despite the teams identifying the same positions (bullpen and center field). The Mets scored four runs in the first inning and then failed to reach base for the final eight innings. David Peterson looked shaky. The defense wasn’t good. The Phillies capped a four-game sweep and ran away with the division.
September 20: Nationals 5, Mets 3 (11 innings)
Few stats have stuck out as much this season as the Mets’ inability to win when trailing after eight innings — one season after they pulled off eight such comebacks. The closest they came was the penultimate Saturday of the season. Blanked for seven innings by Cade Cavalli and Co., the Mets scored twice in the eighth and once more in the ninth off Washington closer Jose Ferrer, with Juan Soto’s single tying it. After a daring double steal, New York had the bases loaded with one out and Brandon Nimmo at the plate against Ferrer. Nimmo, however, struck out, as did Starling Marte to end the inning. In the 11th, Cedric Mullins misplayed Daylen Lile’s ball off the wall into a two-run inside-the-park homer that gave the Nats the victory — and kept the Mets winless when trailing after eight.
September 26: Marlins 6, Mets 2
The Mets entered their series against the Marlins knowing they needed to win to keep their playoff hopes alive. Or at least they should’ve. The fifth inning told the story of the Mets’ season. There was bad defense — at first base, there were a couple of plays that could’ve been made. There were free bases — Marlins base runners got jogging leads on their way to stolen bases. There was a lack of fundamentals — Mauricio didn’t react in time to cover third base when a base runner left before a pitch was delivered. Check. The Mets’ defensive fifth inning encapsulated everything wrong with them. Of course, a trade-deadline acquisition (Gregory Soto) happened to be on the mound, to boot. And if that wasn’t enough to understand the underachieving Mets, the sixth inning added additional context. After the Marlins scored six runs on them, the Mets went down 1-2-3 in the sixth inning — seeing a total of six pitches.
(Photo of Pete Alonso (left) and Francisco Lindor: AP / Lynne Sladky)