Welcome to today’s Mets Mailbag, where we once again try to determine whether the 2026 Mets can somehow pull themselves back into contention…and what happens if they don’t. Thanks to everyone who submitted questions.
What date (even if approximately) do you expect the Mets to make as their demarcation line for buying/selling? Another month? Month and a half? – @maclgm12345 (and others)
Many people asked a version of this question, which makes sense. David Stearns even acknowledged last homestand that a moment will come when the Mets will have to make that call. At the time, he emphasized they are not close to that decision point yet.
The insight I can offer is as follows: the Mets are going to wait this out as long as possible. The feeling from the owner’s box to the dugout is that they are where they are because of injuries, not existential roster flaws. So they want to give themselves as much time as possible to let key players like Jorge Polanco, Francisco Alvarez, and Francisco Lindor return from injury – then give themselves enough time to see if those players can make a difference.
Knowing that, my next question (and I’m sure yours, too) is when will everyone be back and how long will they give them to turn things around once they return? The answers are slightly more encouraging than they might feel: Polanco could return as soon as this weekend in San Diego. Alvarez – and one can debate the extent to which he is a meaningful offensive upgrade over Luis Torrens at this point in his development – is already playing in rehab games, too. Let’s say he returns next week at some point (though no one has said so officially).
Luis Robert Jr. has not even begun baseball activities, so write him off for now. That leaves Lindor as the last big piece, and he was running, throwing, and taking ground balls for several days even before this road trip. Considering he will likely need a substantial ramp-up period on a rehab assignment before returning, a conservative estimate for his return would be two-to-three weeks – or mid- to late-June, barring a setback.
In other words, the Mets could have most of their intended starting lineup back and healthy by the last week of June. That gives them five weeks before the trade deadline. I would expect them to give this team as many of those weeks as possible to play their way back into contention. Plus, most teams are completely consumed by draft preparation until the All-Star Break, anyway. I see no reason why they would not take a week or two after that to let the market fully materialize as other teams emerge from draft machinations and take time to decide whether they are buyers and sellers, too.
So, barring a major collapse over the next few weeks that leaves no doubt about their status, I don’t know why the Mets would decide their fate before the week after the All-Star Break. Everyone involved has every incentive to give this team the chance to turn things around.
What happens to Baty when Lindor returns? Would they possibly trade Bo Bichette to keep Brett Baty at 3B if they’re not in good enough position by then? @jjc927_
I am answering this version of the "who stays, who goes" question because most of them were a little, let’s say…critical… of young Mark Vientos, and he probably doesn’t need me piling on. But I do think everyone’s point is a good one: when Lindor returns – particularly if Polanco proves himself healthy enough to play first base now and then in the meantime – the Mets will have a logjam in the infield. So it is fair to wonder who will be pushed out of a spot.
I do not see them trading Bichette. I guess if they totally swoon between now and then and are totally, completely, irrevocably out of it, that could maybe be on the table. But with his salary and the fact that he has yet to produce anywhere near where he normally does, that seems highly unlikely.
Assuming he stays, the two sure things in the infield would be Bichette and Lindor. Given the way Baty seems to produce better when playing third regularly, one could argue the Mets should move Bichette to second and keep Baty at third, forcing a decision on Marcus Semien’s big contract. But Semien has hit better and for more power lately, has played better defense than the metrics indicate, and has been one of the Mets’ most crucial hitters with runners in scoring position.
Plus, Baty certainly has not blown him away in terms of production this year. So any major decision on Semien at this point would seem several steps away, if on the table at all.
So maybe the move then becomes moving Baty to first base, where he looked better defensively than Vientos. If Jared Young continues hitting, he could play there, too, leaving Polanco in the designated hitter spot. Either way, there is no obvious place for Vientos to play regularly, and since he has been so inconsistent at the plate and in the field, and so consistently prone to mental errors, I think his roster spot is more fragile than Baty’s at this point. But the emergence of Young certainly is not helping either of them.
If Kodai Senga doesn’t turn it around when he returns, do you think the Mets are prepared to eat the rest of his contract and DFA him? – davidsheridan.bsky.social
Short answer: yes. Doing so now would cost them whatever is left of the $14 million he is owed this year and the $14 million he is owed next year, so it would not be cheap. But the Mets can afford that financially, while they might not be able to afford to keep him emotionally.
In talking to people around the Mets, as well as Senga himself through his interpreter over the last few months, I have gained a picture of someone who reminds me a lot of Stephen Strasburg.
Strasburg was so hyperaware of things that were off in his body and his mechanics that he struggled to pitch when he knew those things were not in line. He gained a reputation for being soft when I think he was more accurately a perfectionist: he could pitch through pain if he felt his mechanics were in place. If they weren’t, or something didn’t feel right, he could think about little else, which made executing pitches in those situations much more difficult.
Even Yankees rookie ace Cam Schlittler said something along those lines after his worst start of the year the other day: he knew something was off with his four-seamer, so he spent the whole outing worrying about getting that right and not focused on competing. That never goes well.
So I think Senga is largely an extreme version of that: he seems to struggle when everything is not exactly where he thinks it should be physically, and he has struggled to pitch well with whatever he has while searching for the stuff he wants. And ever since that play on the Pete Alonso throw last year, it seems that something has been off.
Even when his stuff looked good in spring training, he was not certain he would pitch well as a result. Through his interpreter, Senga said something along the lines of "I hope so." My takeaway was that he has not been comfortable with where he is for quite some time, and that even comfortable stretches have felt fragile for him lately.
I also think that Senga and the Mets have sometimes missed each other in terms of working with and around that perfectionist tendency. But I also think the Mets did everything they could this winter to align themselves with what Senga feels he needs, starting with Justin Willard visiting him at his training facility and opening the lines of communication. The result was a promising spring training in which the power stuff that made him so promising in the first place returned. But that has not translated into the regular season. All that combines to make Senga a frustrating case for the Mets, who could certainly use the best version of him, but no longer seem certain they will ever get it.
I think it is clear their patience is running out as a result. Carlos Mendoza is often polite but stern when he talks about the righty, and he said recently that the decision to bring Senga back from the minors will soon have to focus less on where he is physically than where his results are. In other words, if he is healthy enough to pitch in the minors, but is not pitching well, then performance will dictate whether he gets another start, not merely whether he is technically well enough to do so.
Senga had another rough outing this week, pushing his ERA on this rehab assignment to 5.25 in 12 innings. Whether he is still figuring things out physically with the back discomfort that sent him to the injured list initially, or whether he is just struggling to find his command and best stuff, he is struggling again. And the Mets cannot afford to have any more starting pitchers figuring things out at the major league level.
It’s possible the Mets' sheer lack of starting pitching will mean they give Senga one more chance in the big leagues. But I would not expect him to get many chances after that.
