{"id":905920,"date":"2026-09-26T07:09:33","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T07:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905920\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T07:09:33","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T07:09:33","slug":"high-spending-mets-assured-of-first-last-place-finish-since-2003-with-7-6-loss-to-nationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905920\/","title":{"rendered":"High-spending Mets assured of first last-place finish since 2003 with 7-6 loss to Nationals"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON — – The high-spending New York Mets<\/a> were assured their first last-place finish since 2003, losing to the Washington Nationals<\/a> 7-6 on Friday night as Josiah Gray<\/a> earned his first major league save in his first home appearance in more than two years.<\/p>\n

Dylan Crews<\/a> homered for the Nationals (76-84), who have won nine of 12 and are guaranteed fourth in the NL East. They have been fourth or fifth for seven straight seasons since winning the 2019 World Series.<\/p>\n

New York (73-87), which began the season with a major league record $358.4 million payroll, will finish last for the first time since it was 66-95 in 2002.<\/p>\n

Bo Bichette<\/a> and Carson Benge<\/a> homered for the Mets. Benge became the first Mets rookie with 20 homers and 20 steals in a season.<\/p>\n

Gray worked around Juan Soto’s two-out walk in the ninth, getting Bichette to hit a soft grounder to the mound to cap his first outing at Nationals Park since April 4, 2024. An All-Star in 2023, Gray underwent Tommy John surgery the following year and did not return to the major leagues until last week.<\/p>\n

Gus Varland<\/a> (2-2) pitched 1 1\/3 scoreless innings. Jonathan Pintaro<\/a> (2-3) was the loser.<\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

New York RHP Jonah Tong<\/a> (2-2, 4.21 ERA) starts as the series continues Saturday in a game moved up to 12:35 p.m. because of rain forecast later in the day. LHP Connelly Early<\/a> (7-5, 3.44), acquired from Boston for Curtis Mead<\/a> on July 26, will come off the injured list to make his first start for the Nationals.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

See AP’s full MLB coverage here<\/a>br\/]<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON — – The high-spending New York Mets were assured their first last-place finish since 2003, losing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[473787,64,63,794,591,1830,85,5264],"class_list":["post-905920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-473787","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-espn","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-sports","tag-washington-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}