Mets fans might be losing faith as losing streak reaches a dozen

New York Mets starting pitcher Nolan McLean pitches in the first inning against the Minnesota Twins. - Wendell Cruz/Imagn Images/Reuters

An hour and a half later, they’d turned maniacal.

A nightmare of a ninth inning saw Devin Williams — the once shut-down closer who failed miserably on the Yankees last season before being brought in to replace the beloved Edwin Díaz at the back of the bullpen — came into a tie game and left trailing by two with the bases loaded and no outs.

A journey man reliever brought in to stem the bleeding elicited vociferous M-V-P chants for every out he recorded from a crowd that seemed equal parts sarcastic and genuinely amazed that anyone on the club could do something worth applauding.

In the bottom of the ninth, the Mets were retired on 12 pitches to clinch their 12th loss and the worst record in baseball. No team has ever made the postseason in a year with a 12-game losing streak.

A fanbase is not a monolith. That said, many Mets faithful were, heading into the season, wary of how president of baseball operations David Stearns had gone about remaking a roster that had undeniably disappointed in 2025 but was full of homegrown heroes.

Or at least, homegrown guys who had nostalgia on their side. Some of that wariness, though, was paired with reasonable optimism. Before the season started, FanGraphs projected the Mets to win the second-most games in all of baseball, only to the behemoth Dodgers. They had a better than 80% chance to make the playoffs.

When Stearns first took over the team, coverage played up his New York roots. He had grown up a Mets fan, found success elsewhere and was heralded as something of a savior for his hometown team. His actions have distanced himself from that fanboy narrative — his roster construction technique tending toward risk-aversion to the exclusion of sentimental attachment to the franchise home run leader. Which would be fine, if it worked.

Stearns’ reputation is that of a wonk. A nerd. A shrewd evaluator of production divorced from aesthetics or nostalgia. As the chief baseball executive in Milwaukee, he built a perennial contender despite small market constraints.

The hope when he came to New York was that his acumen combined with owner Steve Cohen’s league-leading billions would turn the historically hapless franchise into a formidable force. They’d be something better than just the cross-town Yankees — they’d be the Dodgers East. It wasn’t a far-fetched dream. Money isn’t everything in baseball. But it helps.

And this is the other problem for the New York Mets.

They are not just bad, they are bad and expensive. They spent a lot of money to watch their playoff odds — down to 38.9% percent after the loss Tuesday — slashed in half by mid-April.

New York Mets' Francisco Lindor watches his three run home run in the third inning. - Elsa/Getty Images

The Mets have, depending on exactly how you calculate it, either is the highest or second-highest payroll in baseball. They were the most expensive team last year, too, when they plummeted from first place in late July to missing the playoffs entirely. And they were the most expensive team in 2024, when they were 11 games under .500 on June 2 and made a miraculous run to the NLCS.

Those sort of wild swings in fortunes from far deeper into the marathon of the baseball season to its ultimate finish line is how players can still preach patience and Cohen can remain “concerned, but calm,” as he said before Tuesday’s game.

Cohen’s ability to remain calm is good for manager Carlos Mendoza’s job security and probably his own blood pressure. But even if he were to panic, there is little the owner could do with that emotion at this point.

A roster is largely set in the offseason and at the trade deadlines. The kind of ticky-tack moves made in mid-April — calling up a minor league pitcher, reorganizing the lineup — are made at the baseball operations level.

Steve Cohen is worth more than $20 billion, but if he’s learned anything since purchasing the team in November 2020, it’s that the Mets are a problem money can’t solve.

Finding the right rhetoric won’t stop the bleeding. But right now, the Mets organization is currently caught between claiming nobody feels the sting of these losses more acutely than they do — while conversely insisting they see each day as a new opportunity, conveniently divorced from the historical failure that preceded it.

Before the game, Mendoza insisted that second-guessing the process would be the greatest mistake they could make. “Stay the course” was the message. But after the process fails 12 times in a row, one wonders when the course will become a dead end.

“That’s a good question,” Mendoza admitted when CNN Sports asked if it was time for a fundamental change. “That’s a good question.”

As the fans filed out into the unseasonably frigid New York night, one supporter in a blue wig carried a sign that read on one side “METS NATION BELIEVES” and on the other “STREAK ENDS TONIGHT.”

The latter was proven to be well-intentioned but wrong. The former is becoming much harder to justify.

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