Mets B-Squad Skid Exposes Huge Problem for David Stearns

Memorial Day is the first real mile marker of the baseball season. But for a big-market team with a commensurate payroll, it should also be way too early to realize it has reached a second untenable point in the season.

Yet here are the New York Mets, doing things nobody should be doing.

Mets Bottoming Out Again

The Mets continued a second season-crushing fade Monday, when they were routed by the Cincinnati Reds 7-2 to fall to 1-6 their last seven games.

Pretty much everyone goes 1-6 at some point in a 162-game season - the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays combined for nine such stretches on their way to the World Series last year - but this is already the ninth seven-game stretch this season in which the Mets have gone 1-6 or worse.

Even more alarmingly, the Mets are in the midst of a second ruinous run-scoring drought. They have scored just 16 runs in the last seven games, including six runs in the last five games.

This is looking like the sequel to the first season-crushing fade from Apr. 8-21, when the Mets lost 12 straight while scoring just 22 runs. And you thought there wasn't much time between "Breakin'" and "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo" back in 1984!

Overall, this season, the Mets have scored two runs or fewer 24 times - and gone 1-23 in those games, with the only win a 2-1 defeat of the Washington Nationals last Thursday. Without that piecemeal effort, the Mets would be more than halfway to their second 12-game losing streak.

Again, Memorial Day was yesterday - and an early Memorial Day, to boot.

Mets' Lineup Remains Injury-Prone And/Or Inefficient

The loss to the Reds embodies the lost season for the Mets, whose lineup Monday looked more like a B-squad game in the middle of March than the lineup for the final game of the first third of the campaign.

With Opening Day shortstop Francisco Lindor and catcher Francisco Alvarez out indefinitely due to calf and knee injuries and Juan Soto sidelined with an illness for the second straight game, the top OPS in the Mets' lineup belonged to A.J. Ewing (.771), who made his big league debut two weeks ago after the Mets unofficially gave up the ghost on Opening Day centerfielder Luis Robert Jr., who hasn't played since Apr. 26 due to a back injury.

The second-highest belonged to Brett Baty (.663), who was batting eighth against left-hander Nick Lodolo but has an everyday spot in the lineup because Jorge Polanco (left Achilles) hasn't played since Apr. 14.

The only other starters with an OPS north of .600 were no. 3 hitter and first baseman Mark Vientos (.660) and rookie leadoff hitter Carson Benge (.650).

Vientos had five at-bats in the season's first six games but is now an everyday middle-of-the-order presence because - and stop us if you've heard this before - Jorge Polanco (left Achilles) hasn't played since Apr. 14. Benge batted eighth on Opening Day but is batting first now because, well, the rules state someone has to bat first.

The cleanup batter was Marcus Semien, who at least went 2-for-4 with a homer to raise his OPS to .584…which is the eighth-lowest OPS amongst qualified batters.

When manager Carlos Mendoza was trying to explain why Semien batted cleanup, he noted Semien was a right-handed hitter and added "…he's one of our guys," which is one heckuva endorsement.

For the record, the other batters in the starting lineup were Bo Bichette (second), Tyrone Taylor (sixth), Nick Morabito (seventh) and Luis Torrens (ninth).

Bichette is at least playing his natural shortstop, but his .597 OPS is more than TWO HUNDRED POINTS lower than his career OPS of .806 entering the season.

Taylor hurt his right hip while grounding out in the second and is likely to go on the injured list today. He was replaced by MJ Melendez, who has a .700 OPS for the season but a .455 OPS this month.

Morabito, best known thus far for somehow wearing the late Gary Carter's no. 8 in his big league debut last week, is still looking for his first hit. Torrens is batting .185, including .152 since Alvarez got hurt.

In the words of Homer Simpson as he sits at Apu's dining table: "This is going great."

Where Do The Mets Go From Here?

This is all of course an indictment of president of baseball operations David Stearns, whose disastrous winter has yielded a season worse than any worst-case scenario.

To be fair, these are the Mets, and whenever the worst-case scenario is pondered, expectations should always be doubled. We will remember that going forward.

Anyway, this is what happens when an executive dumps a quartet of franchise icons and tries to reinvent the wheel by emphasizing run prevention with a bunch of players - some of whom are injury-prone - playing out of position.

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With 11 teams in the NL at or above .500, there's not much of a path back to contention for the Mets, who are 7 1/2 games out of a wild card spot with no idea if or when they'll ever have their Opening Day lineup on the field again.

But there wasn't much of a path back to contention even on May 18, when there were 10 NL teams at or above .500, and the Mets were 6 1/2 games out of the last wild card spot despite beginning the month with 11 wins in their first 16 games.

It's hard to make meaningful trades at this time of year - especially for a team that is 22-32 and tied for the fourth-worst record in the majors - so Stearns likely played the last card in his deck by promoting Ewing and inserting him into the lineup.

The Mets went 5-1 with two walk-off wins during Ewing's first week in the majors, but it was always a lot to expect Ewing, Benge and the rest of the youth brigade to spark a revival.

Now the Mets have to hope the grind of a lost season won't imperil the development of the players whom Stearns needs to point to as evidence his methods are working somewhere, anywhere within the organization.

In that regard, Nolan McLean's second straight subpar start Monday was particularly worrisome. McLean nearly saved the season last year, when he went 5-1 with a 2.06 ERA in eight starts, and he opened this year by going 2-2 with a 2.92 ERA in his first nine starts.

But McLean has allowed a whopping 16 runs (13 earned) while pitching just nine innings over his last two starts.

Perhaps this is his Jacob deGrom moment and we'll be looking back at these struggles as a necessary turning point in his emergence as the best pitcher in baseball.

DeGrom allowed 15 runs over eight innings in consecutive starts from May 31-June 6, 2017 and then recorded a 2.18 ERA in his last 121 starts with the Mets, a span in which he won two Cy Youngs.

8 YEARS AGO TODAY:



The day Jacob deGrom locked in



Following this talk with Mets manager Terry Collins, deGrom would go on to win consecutive Cy Young Awards and post a 2.18 ERA over his final 121 starts with New York.



LEGEND.



(@NYMhistory )



pic.twitter.com/zPRaMKXzpR

— SleeperMets (@SleeperMets) June 6, 2025

If not? Then a worst-case scenario season gets even worse for the Mets.

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This story was originally published May 26, 2026 at 2:08 PM.