The $370 Million Question: Can the Mets Survive?
There is a particular species of humiliation reserved for the well-heeled and the underperforming — the kind that arrives not in anonymity but under the full, unforgiving glare of public expectation. The 2026 New York Mets, owners of the second-largest payroll in Major League Baseball at a staggering $370 million, have been enduring precisely this brand of misery for the better part of three weeks now. Tuesday night's 5-3 loss to the Minnesota Twins at Citi Field extended their losing streak to 12 games, the longest the franchise has suffered since 2004, and pushed their record to a demoralizing 7-16 — dead last in the National League East, nine and a half games behind the Atlanta Braves.
The sheer arithmetic of the collapse is difficult to absorb. A team with World Series aspirations, one that spent the offseason acquiring shortstop Bo Bichette for $126 million, signing second baseman Marcus Semien, and importing center fielder Luis Robert Jr. from the White Sox, has been reduced to this: scoring just 19 runs in the 11 games before Tuesday, a rate of offensive production so anemic it barely registers as professional baseball. The Royals, for context, are a team currently mired in their own misery at the bottom of the AL Central — and they scored 50% more runs than the Mets over that same stretch.
Tuesday's game was, in many respects, a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong. Starter Nolan McLean was actually rather good — 6.2 innings, ten strikeouts, three earned runs, a performance that on most nights gives your club a genuine chance. The Mets scratched together three runs in the third inning, led by shortstop Francisco Lindor's three-run home run, his bat providing the only real moment of competence in an otherwise grim evening. But the offense went silent immediately thereafter. Center fielder Byron Buxton deposited a two-run shot for Minnesota, second baseman Luke Keaschall added a pair of RBIs, and reliever Cole Sands slammed the door with two immaculate innings to seal the 5-3 final. The Twins held the Mets to four hits on the night.
And then there is Devin Williams. The closer, signed away from the crosstown Yankees in the offseason to anchor the back end of the bullpen, has become the personification of this team's dysfunction. He took the loss Tuesday after walking three batters and surrendering two runs without recording a single out — 21 pitches of controlled chaos. This was not an isolated aberration. Williams was on the mound with a save opportunity in the ninth inning against the Cubs on Sunday, holding a 1-0 lead, before former Met outfielder Michael Conforto tied the game with an RBI double and Chicago walked it off in extras. Whatever confidence he carried into this season appears to have evaporated entirely. Lindor, at least, was direct in taking ownership: "This feeling sucks. It's not a good feeling. We're professionals and we got to find a way out of it. We got to do whatever it takes to end up on top after 27 outs." Williams echoed that sentiment, deflecting scrutiny from manager Carlos Mendoza: "It's absolutely on us. Him or somebody else is not affecting that. If we're not getting the job done, somebody else isn't just magically gonna flip a switch and we're gonna get it done."
Here is where the story turns, at least somewhat, in the Mets' favor — and it is a turn worth acknowledging even amid the wreckage. Right fielder Juan Soto, sidelined by a right calf strain, has not played a single game during this entire skid. Neither has second baseman Jorge Polanco nor corner infielder Jared Young. The roster that has been losing these twelve games is not the roster the Mets assembled; it is a diminished version of it, performing without its most dangerous offensive weapon. Soto's return will not magically transform a 7-16 record, but it injects genuine, quantifiable run-production into a lineup that has been gasping for oxygen. The Colorado Rockies come to town this weekend, a team sitting at 9-15 and featuring one of the more exploitable pitching staffs in the league. The schedule, for once, offers something approaching opportunity.
What remains, beneath all the bad statistics and bleaker historical comparisons, is a team that is structurally too talented to accept this as its permanent condition. McLean showed Tuesday that the rotation can compete. Lindor's three-run blast showed the offense hasn't gone entirely dark. The pieces exist. The question is whether they can reassemble before April's hole becomes May's grave. The 2026 Mets entered this season with the expectation that spending would translate to winning. Twelve straight losses have illustrated, with painful clarity, that baseball has never been especially impressed by payroll. What it rewards, eventually, is the moment a talented team stops losing close games and starts finishing them — and given what's still on this roster, that moment can't be too far off. It had better not be.