The Mets of New York were swept in a doubleheader by the Cubs of Chicago on Wednesday, and the second game turned into a rout when their infield defense made six errors. The pitching gave up 20 runs across the two games, leaving Carlos Mendoza’s club looking less like a team still hanging around a race and more like one that is running out of ways to stop the slide.
That is why David Stearns is under the spotlight now. The Mets were 34-46 through Wednesday, in last place in the National League East, 14.5 games behind the Braves of Atlanta and nine games out of the third wild card. The record makes every roster decision louder, especially the choice not to retain Pete Alonso and the trade that sent Brandon Nimmo to the Vigilantes de Texas for Marcus Semien. When a team is already this far back, every miss becomes part of the same story.
The collapse is not total, which is part of the problem. Juan Soto has been productive when healthy, and the bullpen has generally been effective, so this is not a club that has failed in every phase. But the rest of the roster has not held up around those pockets of competence. Francisco Lindor had missed 55 games, Kodai Senga had not won since June 2025 and was 0-9 since then, and Jonah Tong was 1-5 with a 6.30 ERA in AAA. The pattern is blunt: the Mets have enough individual parts to keep the conversation alive, but not enough stability to turn those parts into a winning team.
The front office also cannot escape the math behind the moves that were supposed to help. Stearns did not retain Alonso, and he moved Nimmo for Semien, yet the club is still deep in the basement of the National League East. Jorge Polanco had appeared in 17% of his team’s games, Luis Robert Jr. in 30%, and Dylan Peterson was gone after Wednesday with a 6.20 ERA since the All-Star break last year. Even the better individual performances around the roster, including Bo Bichette’s.380 mark over his last 19 games, do little to change the larger picture. The Mets are being talked about in the 40th anniversary year of their last championship, and the distance between that memory and this season keeps getting wider.
What comes next is no longer about one bad day or one ugly inning. The question is whether a team 34-46 and nine games out of the third wild card can stay in the conversation long enough for any of the injuries, trades or hot streaks to matter at all.
