Is it Too Early to Be Concerned About the Mets?

The regular season is just over two weeks old and fans of the New York Mets are already in a deep state of panic. The Mets haven't done much to calm their nerves, dropping four straight games at home to the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Athletics to fall below .500 at 7-8.

So far today:

-Kodai Senga walked in a run
-Francisco Lindor was out of position on a DP ball, resulting in another run
-Francisco Alvarez passed ball
-Carson Benge committed an error
-The team failed to convert consecutive grounders into outs

It's the third inning. It's 7-1.
— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) April 11, 2026

Saturday's game was part of a disturbing trend for the Mets featuring a lot of mental mistakes. Francisco Lindor made a poor defensive play to extend the third inning, allowing the A's to tee of on a struggling Kodai Senga, while routine ground balls were booted to give the opposition free runs.

"The last thing you want is panic. You've got too many good hitters there that are going through it right now."

Carlos Mendoza talks about what the Mets can do as they deal with their offensive funk: pic.twitter.com/oREUE2r8k3
— SNY (@SNYtv) April 11, 2026

The loss of Juan Soto to the injured list has also posed major issues for the offense, which has struggled to put runs on the board for most of the year. Francisco Lindor is off to an unusually slow start while Bo Bichette, Jorge Polanco, Carson Benge, Marcus Semien and Brett Baty are all struggling at the same time.

David Stearns has also tried to address a leaky bullpen, shuffling out Richard Lovelady and Luis Garcia for Craig Kimbrel and Joey Gerber respectively. Given the fact that the Mets missed the postseason by one game a year ago, the fan base has started to freak out since they think any loss the Mets add in April will be the one to cost them the postseason.

Francisco Lindor was asked what gives him confidence that this year will be different for the Mets:

"It's a different year and we were one at-bat away from turning it around today. We started putting better at-bats as the game went on, but we just didn't finish the job.

It's a… pic.twitter.com/GSXuCJBz1v
— SNY (@SNYtv) April 12, 2026

The road ahead for the Mets looks daunting as their next road trip takes them to the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs without Soto in all likelihood. There is potential for things to go quite badly, especially if they can't win today, but the season isn't over as some portions of the fanbase think it is.

Why The Mets Shouldn't Be Panicking Yet

Saturday's rally by the offense after falling behind 7-1 was a positive sign as the Mets cut their deficit to 7-6 before a back-breaking Luke Weaver meltdown in the eighth. History also shows that guys like Lindor, Bichette and Polanco won't collectively struggle for the whole season, so once they heat up they will start to produce more runs.

It is also a good sign for the Mets that their starting pitching has performed relatively well outside of a bad start from Senga yesterday and two from David Peterson. Clay Holmes appears to have escaped injury after leaving Friday's start with a sore hamstring, meaning the group should perform well going forward.

The Mets are also far from the only team struggling to find consistency early in the season. Two other teams that got off to hot starts, the New York Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers, are also on four-game skids but aren't receiving nearly as much worry as the Mets are.

The league as a whole has also been largely mediocre to this point, with 27 of the league's 30 teams landing somewhere between three games above .500 and three games below the break-even point. The only exceptions are the Dodgers, who are 10-3, on the positive side while Boston and the Chicago White Sox are both at least four games below .500.

Teams have also gotten off to middling starts and done great things down the stretch. Washington infamously started 19-31 and won the World Series in 2019 while the Philadelphia Phillies fired their manager in May of 2022 before winning the pennant. The 2024 Mets were 11 games under .500 in late-May and wound up going to the NLCS that year as fans will remember.

There are still over 140 baseball games left, which is a lot of real estate for the Mets to make a move. Getting Soto back at some point in the next two weeks will help as well but we are at least a month away from having conversations about whether manager Carlos Mendoza is on the hot seat.

If you like our content, choose Sports Illustrated as a preferred source on Google.