Mets' Luke Weaver: 'Pursuit of perfection is just an ultimate pressurized failure mindset'

Weaver is far from the only Met who has had his struggles this season, but he was acquired this offseason to be in high-leverage spots, exactly like the one he found himself in on Thursday afternoon.

With his performance on Thursday, Weaver now has a 6.00 ERA on the season, allowing eight earned runs in 12.0 innings.

“Typically, you don’t see an entire kind of collective group at the same time not playing their best brand of baseball. It feels individualized. It feels like a moment like today where everybody played well and we’re playing well as a group, and today I kind of let the team down. It just kind of feels like there’s a little bit of a culture that has adapted to it, unintentionally, and it’s just kind of how winning and losing goes.

“When you win, you feel on top of the world. When you’re losing, everyone wants to talk about the failure of the outcomes. The magnification just becomes immense. Sleep is lost, the mind wanders, and you just kind of get into a fixation that you really don’t need to be in. I think the answers are kind of in those words. It’s simplifying the process and maybe doing less. Maybe it’s less reps and more about enjoying why you do this for a living and trying to just find your inner kid and enjoy why you play the game and not trying to do it for other people.”

With 10 wins in their first 31 games, the Mets find themselves in last place in the NL East, certainly not where anyone on the team or around the team thought they’d be as the calendar flips to May.

According to Weaver, the Mets’ performance on the field hasn’t matched their preparation off of it, and perhaps taking a step back to refocus is something the team must do to right the ship.

“I’ve been a part of great teams and part of teams that weren’t up to par. I look at this team, and if you took our record off and just looked at the internal things that you guys can’t see, the conversations, just the enjoyment on a day-to-day basis, I wouldn’t believe you if you told me what our record was,” Weaver said. “I think that is a testament to the people we have in here, the mindset that we bring on a day-to-day basis.

“You’ve got to reframe the way that you think. Make it a priority to be like ‘This old habit is going to die today’ and this new, kind of rejuvenated mindset is something that I’m going to have to attack it and say ‘This is how I want to play baseball.’”