The New York Mets Are The Worst Team In Baseball

Anyone who has been paying attention to the New York Mets for more than, say, a day should know things can always get worse and that any hints of euphoria will quickly be followed by doses of cold, hard reality.

So of course it was silly to think the Mets would not only finally win a game Tuesday night but would do so in historic fashion.

Still, it was impossible not to daydream a little bit in the fifth inning, when the Mets took their biggest lead since Easter (of this year, for the record) via a three-run homer by Francisco Lindor and Nolan McLean was more than halfway to a perfect game after striking out nine of the first 15 batters he faced. This would be a very Mets thing to end an 11-game losing streak with a perfect game.

Ahh well nevertheless. Toss that on to the pile of cruel teases absorbed by the Mets, who are now officially the worst team in baseball.

The Mets Keep On Losing

The Mets' losing streak hit 12 games with a 5-3 loss to the Minnesota Twins that unfolded much like Bart Simpson's factory collapsing under Milhouse's watch.

First McLean wore down and gave up a hit when Matt Wallner led off the sixth with a well-struck single. Then he surrendered a two-run homer to Byron Buxton, Then, in the seventh inning, Luke Keaschall delivered the game-tying single one batter before McLean further cemented his Jacob deGrom bonafides by exiting the mound ineligible for a win despite an impressive performance

With a previously bedraggled Minnesota bullpen mowing down the Mets - Twins relievers retired the final 12 batters, reducing their ERA to 4.82, the eighth-worst in the majors - it was just a matter of time until Devin Williams, trying to lose the closer's job with a New York team for a second straight season, gave up the tying run.

Which he did by failing to retire any of the five batters he faced in the ninth, though Williams wasn't helped by Mark Vientos throwing to third base in hopes of recording a force on Kody Clemens' bunt. Not great run prevention.

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"The guys are grinding - nobody wants it more than us," McLean said. "It's tough that we're putting in all this work and we're competing like crazy and we don't get the results we want. Hopefully, if we continue to do the right things and grind out at-bats and pitch well, throw strikes, the law of averages will take over."

They did Tuesday night, just not in the way McLean or the Mets wanted.

The Mets Are The Worst Team In Baseball

Shortly after the Mets' latest loss, they officially sunk into the Major League Baseball basement when the Kansas City Royals snapped their eight-game losing streak by finishing off a comeback and beating the Baltimore Orioles, 6-5. At 7-16, the Mets are a half-game behind the Royals (8-16).

This fact is amazin' even for the Mets: Last night marks the latest into a season the Mets have had the worst record in baseball since - and I really am not kidding here - Apr. 21, 2011, when they beat the Houston Astros 9-1 to improve to 6-13.

Almost even more amazingly: The Mets spent one day - ONE DAY - as the worst team in baseball over the subsequent 5,112 days. They were the only 0-1 team on Apr. 3, 2016, when they lost to the Royals, 4-3, in the standalone season opener.

The Mets' current residence in the NL East basement is also unfamiliar. With 1,749 wins and a .502 winning percentage since 2004 - each 15th in the majors in that span - the Mets have always been mediocre enough and surrounded by enough rebuilding teams to avoid last in the division place since 2004, the season after their consecutive fifth-place finishes.

Since those back-to-back last-place finishes, the Mets have spent just 174 days in fifth place, including nine this season. One more day in last place will give them their most days in the cellar since 2014.

And even when the Mets were finishing in last place in Bobby Valentine's final season as manager and Art Howe's first season as skipper, they never had to worry about being the worst team in the game.

In 2002, the Mets didn't fall into last place for the first time until Aug. 17 - when they suffered the seventh loss in a 12-game losing streak that stood as the franchise's longest of the century until last night. But at 58-64, those last-place Mets already had more wins than the Tampa Bay Devil Rays or Milwaukee Brewers would record all season.

In 2003 the Mets fell into last place for good on June 5, by which point they were 26-32 but already 9 1/2 games clear of the Detroit Tigers, who threatened to topple the 1962 Mets as the worst team of the modern era before finishing 43-119.

At some point, sheer probability suggested the Mets would have to not only fall into last place in the NL East but the entire major leagues. So McLean, who deserves so much more than becoming the next Jacob deGrom, was right. The law of averages did come through for the David Stearns Mets, the worst team in baseball for the first time in exactly 15 years.

Related: David Stearns' Mets Are In Big Trouble

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This story was originally published April 22, 2026 at 4:34 PM.