Four games do not make a baseball season. The very nature of baseball is that it is meant to be a grind, where the team that wins will be the team that stays mentally strong through six straight months. But it's hard to imagine a four-game start that could have been any worse for the 2024 New York Mets.
The Mets are 0-4, have been outscored 19-8, and have been on the wrong end of baseball's first public spat of the season. It isn't just that they've been losing—they've been embarrassed, which wasn't what the team's new brass had in mind for what has largely been billed as a “bridge year” to contending in 2025. So just how dire is the situation in Flushing, Queens? Let's break down all the potential causes for both concern and optimism for these Metropolitans.
The Mets' vibes are abysmal
In just their second game of the season, the Mets found themselves as the laughingstock of the baseball social media sphere. They'd been one-hit, gotten into a screaming match with the Milwaukee Brewers over a slide into second base from Rhys Hoskins, allowed the same player involved in the slide to take them to school the following day, then got a pitcher and their new manager suspended because they threw at that Hoskins out of sheer spite.
Frankly, it's an accomplishment to fit all that into the first series of the year. Then the Mets were shut out Monday and rained out both Tuesday and Wednesday, which means the home clubhouse at Citi Field has to be one of the most miserable places to be in the game of baseball right now.
Overall, New York is a great place to play when you're winning games and a crappy one to play when you're losing. Mets fans have seen trying times for all sorts of reasons through the years and they won't hesitate to make their feelings known if they don't like the way the season is playing out. The Mets had better get their act together and at least start playing around .500 ball, or it's going to be a long, cruel summer in Flushing.
The Mets' offense will come around
Through four games, the Mets are hitting .188 with a .551 team OPS. In the smallest sample size imaginable, they're a bottom three offense in all of baseball, which seems inconceivable considering the talent New York has in its lineup.
Jeff McNeil, Brandon Nimmo, and Francisco Lindor have one hit each, good for a combined .068 batting average. Those are three of the most important contributors to the team, and if they went a combined 3-44 in a four game stretch in July, no one would freak out. It's all a byproduct of the opening week of action and the tendency we all have to overreact to stats that count for the first time in six months.
Plus, this team expects to add J.D. Martinez to its lineup in the coming weeks, which should provide much-needed protection for Lindor and Pete Alonso in the middle of the order. The best lineups in baseball are the ones that give opposing pitchers no time to breathe and the Mets will certainly be on the way to making things more difficult for those pitchers once their stars all start clicking.
Of course, there are caveats to all of this. The Mets offense can improve and still be mediocre, or they could be a top ten offense and still not make up for awful pitching. But even in a year where a playoff experience isn't the expectation, there are too many good big-league hitters on the Mets for their lineup to stay in the bottom five.
Pitching is the Mets' biggest concern
We knew coming into the season that the Mets were going to struggle to pitch. After all, it's somewhat to be expected that a team who traded away their two most experienced pitchers midway through the previous campaign might suffer the following season. And injuries are already confounding things even more.
With presumptive ace Kodai Senga still sidelined for at least another month, the Mets are having to rely on Jose Quintana, Luis Severino, Sean Manaea and some other even less heralded names. It's a tricky formula to try and parlay into a winner. That already murky picture got even tougher to navigate with Tylor Megill's placement on the 15-day injured list on Monday, but the fifth starter spot was always going to be a bit of a pain point for these Mets.
If Severino is as bad as he looked in his first start Saturday, however, that's a serious problem. The Mets essentially took out a pair of lottery tickets in Severino and Manaea, talented pitchers who have had spotty track records the past couple seasons. Manaea actually pitched brilliantly, but it will take a few more quality starts to solidify belief in him. Severino, meanwhile, gave up 12 hits in five innings.
Spotty starting pitching always catches up to a team over the course of 162 ball games. Even if you've got the best bullpen in the league, they'll wear down if they constantly have to cover a ton of innings. The Mets' starters have a lot of work to do if they want to right the ship in 2024.
Francisco Alvarez looks like a superstar
Even if it's a lost year for the Mets, the future will look about 10,000 lumens brighter if 22-year-old catcher Francisco Alvarez takes the leap to All-Star caliber in 2024. In his first 14 at-bats, he's got a home run, two doubles and a pair of RBIs.
Coming off a 25-homer rookie season with a sub-.300 on-base percentage, there was a lot of room for growth for Alvarez, but it was obvious the Mets had a special talent on their hands. With time, it's also become increasingly obvious that they have a special person as well, as Alvarez has grown into a leader among his teammates and taken on the burden of doing all of his interviews in English.
Whatever the future of the team as a whole might look like, it's clear the Mets believe Alvarez has the potential to be a transcendent talent at the catching position. And through four games, that vision certainly looks more than realistic.
In desperate need of a spark
It's always possible to weather the storm of a few consecutive losses, but the bigger issue right now is that there's nothing for the Mets to rally behind. It's like a hockey team without a true enforcer—someone needs to be willing to drop the gloves and give the team something to get excited about.
Maybe it's a multi-homer game. Maybe it's a pitcher throwing a shutout. Maybe it's just a single clutch hit to give the team a lead. But the Mets have yet to have something fully break their way so far this season, and the longer they go without that, the more the losses will continue to pile up.
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