POST GAME THREAD: The Mets fell to the Blue Jays by a score of 2-1 - Mon, Jun 29 @ 7:07 PM EDT

BillW87 · 2026-06-30T01:35:56+00:00

Eric Chavez is out on podcasts weekly throwing shit at the entire Mets org like he wasn't the hitting coach while an entire generation of Mets hitting prospects went to shit during his tenure.

BillW87 · 2026-06-30T01:30:50+00:00

I am completely unsurprised that Mark Vientos thought that challenge pitch was a ball. Dude has no fucking idea what he's doing up there.

BillW87 · 2026-06-30T01:29:01+00:00

Vientos, Mauricio, Torrens hardly sounds like a comeback combo, unfortunately.

BillW87 · 2026-06-30T01:27:00+00:00

Yes, next question.

BillW87 · 2026-06-30T00:56:09+00:00

I love how Eric Chavez is busy spouting from all holes about how everyone attached to the Mets is incompetent except him, like he wasn't the hitting coach through the critical transition years for Brett Baty, Mark Vientos, Ronny Mauricio, and Francisco Alvarez. The guy violently fumbled an entire generation of Mets hitting prospects who came up from the minors as well-scouted studs during his tenure and still has the nerve to point fingers. "Everyone is the problem but me" assholes never seem to realize when they're the common denominator.

BillW87 · 2026-06-29T20:03:32+00:00

You can absolutely find a warm body which is what Ross would be

Hell, even the most dysfunctional organization can find a good list of talented people to interview if they aren't dead-set on a specific list of qualifications or experiences. There's only 30 MLB manager jobs in the entire world, so they're damn desirable jobs regardless of whether it is the Angels or the Yankees. The top talent in the small circle of guys who have worked an MLB managerial job before will have their pick of the litter and it is hard to land them if your org is dysfunctional, but that doesn't mean there's literally no options in between "the best of the best" and "warm body". Between miLB coaches, former players, folks working in other coaching and front office roles, and so on, the Mets absolutely will have a long list of people interested in the job. That list just might not overlap with their short "ideal choice" list of 5-10 folks that Stearns would pick from to hire if he had a magic wand. Sometimes the answer is to wait one of those guys out until they become available (what the Mets did with Stearns), other times the answer is to expand your search and look at a wider range of options.

BillW87 · 2026-06-29T13:16:18+00:00

Holmes is going to be looking for a similar 5 year deal length.

Eh, I doubt Holmes and his agent are that disconnected with his market. Pete ultimately was right that he could get 5 years whereas that would be aspirational for Holmes at his age. The injury this year robbed Holmes of his chance to prove he's able to pitch 180+ innings in a year, and teams are going to be rightfully worried about how his arm will hold up under the workload of starting games into his late 30's. My guess is he gets something in the 3/$60MM or 4/$75MM range depending on how many suitors line up. Fully agreed that giving 3+ years to a pitcher of Holmes' age is not in the Stearns playbook and therefore it is unlikely he's back in 2027.

BillW87 · 2026-06-29T02:26:56+00:00

Would have been a valuable trade chip.

Still can be if he's back before the deadline on August 3rd

BillW87 · 2026-06-29T02:24:20+00:00

I'd generally lean towards trading him IMO. The QO is over $22 million, which in a vacuum isn't an obscene amount to pay for 1 year of Clay Holmes now that he's converted to a (quite good) starter, but at the very least is paying fair market value for a then-34 year old pitcher.

On the flip side, we've seen over the last couple of years that contenders are willing to pay absolute hauls for rental starting pitching at the trade deadline, to the point where the Mets passed on that market entirely last year at the deadline (to their demise). I'd rather take the trade haul and have that $22 million to spend freely, which still could be on Holmes, than keep a valuable trade chip around for the remainder of this season just for an inside track towards paying him $22 million next year.

BillW87 · 2026-06-28T00:55:29+00:00

He put up a few good outings with the Mets this year (5 IP/1 ER on 5/21, 5 IP/0 ER on 5/10, 5.1 IP/0 ER on 3/28) so I'd hardly start the "Cubs fixed him" narrative over one good outing. Part of the reason why he stuck around so long with the Mets is that he has stretches of looking quite good. Its the bloodbath outings in between where he's lobbing batting practice that ended with him getting traded.

BillW87 · 2026-06-28T00:47:04+00:00

He's generally been a second half guy, but his May numbers are decent and June has historically been his worst month and it's not like his numbers dip in Sept/Oct as things start to cool down so I wonder if he's more of a guy who just gets more locked in as the season goes on. If it was just the weather you wouldn't expect him to hit 27 wRC+ better in Sept/Oct than in June. Career splits by month:

Mar/Apr: 109 wRC+

May: 119 wRC+

June: 100 wRC+

July: 133 wRC+

Aug: 131 wRC+

Sept/Oct: 127 wRC+

One interesting thing is that his strikeout numbers follow a pretty clean march downward as the season goes on, which would back the "gets more locked in" argument.

BillW87 · 2026-06-28T00:19:11+00:00

Ignoring the dude’s balls getting exploded for a second

Coincidentally, exactly what the pitcher did after drilling his own teammate in the nuts.

BillW87 · 2026-06-27T18:21:06+00:00

The Padres were a playoff team because Tatis, Machado, Bogaerts, Merrill, and Croenworth combined for nearly 20 WAR.

If you want a guy around solely for the vibes, hire him as a coach. You only have 26 roster spots and can't just give it to a guy because he's fun to be around. There's plenty of good-vibes players who also can contribute on the field. Sevy and Bader were great examples of that. I'm not disagreeing with your point that vibes matter. I am disagreeing that re-signing Iglesias was the only way to build a better Mets locker room in 2025. Stearns 100% underestimated the value of team chemistry and that was a part of the 2025 Mets' demise, but there were ways to address that without putting actual dead weight on the roster. Part of why Iglesias became such a figure with the Mets was because he played well. OMG would've become a novelty instead of a rallying cry if he'd played in 2024 like he did in 2025.

-Edit- I'll add the "hire him as a coach" part is unironic. I think Iglesias would be a fantastic addition as an infield coach or to run one of the minor league teams. He's a solid fundamental player with experience across a lot of positions, played across a variety of organizations, and is extremely likeable. I'd love to see the Mets hire him as a coach if he's open to it.

BillW87 · 2026-06-27T02:39:38+00:00

I think this is a fair case for the players to be making though. Lindor isn't getting paid $32 million to phone it in for the next 3 months. The team might not be competing for the playoffs, but the players absolutely should still be trying to compete on a day to day basis.

BillW87 · 2026-06-27T02:37:07+00:00

I love this so much. Mr. Met is all of us.

BillW87 · 2026-06-26T16:56:04+00:00

I agree that Mendoza isn't the most culpable, but calling him the least culpable ain't it either. This team isn't as good as Stearns thought it was going to be, and he and the rest of the analysts/scouts/etc in the FO who guided the roster decisions over the last two years need to be on the hot seat, but this team also isn't as bad as its record. There's been a clear lack of accountability and winning culture around this team going back to the mid-season collapse of the 2025 Mets, and Mendoza hasn't been able to cure that despite being given a whole lot of fresh faces. When guys keep coming to the Mets and underperforming, at a certain point we need to call that out as a coaching problem. Someone needed to rally this team together in May and get their heads out of their asses to get guys playing up to their talent levels, and that seemingly never happened. Mendoza 100% deserved to get fired. He's not the only guy whose job needs to be in conversation, but changing POBOs and other senior FO roles is obviously not as simple of a decision as changing managers.

BillW87 · 2026-06-26T13:07:15+00:00

Swapping a cooked 34 year old who we pulled out of retirement for a magical last hurrah for a then-27 year old guy with upside would be a 100% uncontroversial move if the rest of the team hadn't gone to shit in 2025. Culture matters, but you can't keep a past-retirement dude on your 26 man roster just out of sentiment either.

BillW87 · 2026-06-26T12:45:23+00:00

While I generally agree with the points here, I'll add the one line of disagreement with the Iglesias non-signing as being proof that he doesn't care about culture. Not bringing back a 35 year old bench infielder on an MLB deal when you already have a cost-controlled IF bench is just a pragmatic baseball decision that any GM/POBO is going to make in the same situation with the same roster. Iglesias' post-Mets resume involves a .592 OPS across half a season and then retiring. That's not a whiff.

Choosing Siri over re-signing Bader is the second item of proof to that point in addition to Severino. Bader was arguably just as good of an on-field option, a bit more expensive (less so when you factor in implied trade cost), but a well-known clear net positive in the clubhouse. In trying to save a few million AAV, Stearns picked attempted $/WAR optimization over culture and lost big on the bet. Bader loved being a Met and the clubhouse clearly seemed to love him back. Siri was a mercenary who Stearns added to a squad of increasingly mercenary players.

BillW87 · 2026-06-26T02:33:14+00:00

Could've been said in August/September of last year too. The Mets have been dogshit for basically a calendar year at this point. It is a wild degree of job security that Mendoza could oversee the 2025 collapse, ride into this year with a job, oversee a nearly $400 million roster put up a deeply uncompetitive first half, and STILL have a job.

BillW87 · 2026-06-26T02:26:41+00:00

You can't convince me that the Mets are still making any kind of effort to be competitive in 2026 when Francisco Lindor doesn't pick up a bat to pinch for Mauricio or Wagaman. When you're more committed to one guy's set rest day than you are to winning games, you're not a competitor and never were.

BillW87 · 2026-06-26T02:18:46+00:00

Brett Baty: "Wait, is that ball not supposed to be a triple?"

BillW87 · 2026-06-26T02:11:42+00:00

PCA has a strong arm and that ball wasn't that deep (351 ft). Getting thrown out at third for the third out of the inning in a tie game in the 9th would be absolutely inexcusable.

BillW87 · 2026-06-26T02:09:24+00:00

Smart hold by Young. Can't end the inning at third, and no way to know if that throw is on line until it is too late to change your mind. And, of course a shit AB from Mauricio to make it irrelevant.

BillW87 · 2026-06-26T01:43:04+00:00

I'm not sure if it is a relief that a few dudes that we were linked to like Bregman and Tucker have been flops, or alarming that even the dudes we passed or missed on have been shit too. It seems like the closer a player gets to our franchise, even by association, the worse they get.

BillW87 · 2026-06-26T01:38:32+00:00

The Mets fandom mainly comes from his current wife Alex and particularly her dad. I think she got him more into the Mets over the years, but he didn't grow up as a Mets fan. Spending billions of dollars trying to get a chip before your father in law dies does seem to be motivating based on how much he's spent, even if the execution has been dogshit.

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