The Mets 2026 season summed up in one word? Disappointing. We don’t want to dwell on it, but we need to talk about it at least once, right? Get it all out of our system? Here’s what we think were the three biggest disappointments from this past season.
Robert Colonna
The biggest disappointment from this season has to be Jorge Polanco. I was very excited for him and thought he was the perfect player to make up for Brandon Nimmo’s production. He was coming off a great season, and all the reports of his time learning first base between games with the Mariners were very positive. He looked great defensively in the few games we saw him there, but injuries prevented the bat from showing up at all. He ended up being one of the worst players in the game, and with how late in the season he got the surgery, it is hard to project when and if he’ll play for the 2027 Mets, or what he will look like.
The next disappointment was Francisco Lindor. He struggled with multiple injuries, and when on the field he did not look like himself. There is a lot under the hood offensively to say he should have been closer to his 2023 and 2025 offensive self, so I won’t get too bogged down by wonky results across a partial season. But this is the third year in a row that his defense has dropped significantly, and it is getting to the point where the Mets may need to question if he is capable of playing shortstop anymore. He is fast approaching the age where the majority of players move off the position. He made constant mental mistakes, and the range was not there to make up for the arm. We can only hope that next year, when healthy, he has enough of a defensive bounce-back to counteract being a year older.
The final disappointment was Freddy Peralta. Freddy Peralta has been one of my favorite pitchers for a long time, and I was thrilled to acquire him. For the first 13 starts, he had a 3.63 ERA, and he looked as expected. Then he put up the worst six weeks of his career and helped cement the Mets as sellers at the deadline. The Mets got a good haul back for him, but he went from a player I wanted to extend to one that I couldn’t wait to see off the team.
David Melendi
Stearns, Peralta and Polanco
I was a fan of Stearns, but I have lost confidence in him. Overall, his moves failed. There is an exciting, young core to build around so hopefully he gets this offseason right.
I thought Peralta, in his prime at 29 and coming off three straight 200-strikeout seasons, would be the ace the Mets needed. And Polanco would handle the adjustment to first base and drive in a lot of runs batting cleanup behind Lindor-Soto-Bichette. This is probably what Stearns envisioned too.
Brandyn Pokrass
When I look at the Mets’ 2026 season, the main disappointments in my eyes are Freddy Peralta, Jorge Polanco, and Mark Vientos.
Peralta, for what the Mets gave up for him, fell flat in so many ways. Early in the year, it was mainly command issues. He would strike out batters, but his inability to give the Mets length taxed the bullpen early. As the season went on, he started giving up much more hard contact, spurred by further command issues. Whatever New York tried with the righty, it simply didn’t work. Peralta has seemed to figure things out with Tampa, but it will always be a what-if when it comes to his tenure with the Mets.
As for Polanco, it feels like the infielder’s health and the Mets’ poor roster management with him led to the disappointment. He never found his footing as a player in New York this year, especially after the injury flared up around Opening Day. New York should never have relied on him as a primary or semi-primary first baseman. However, a relatively healthy Polanco may have done enough to make the lineup a bit deeper. With his absence and struggles, the bottom of the order continued to struggle for large stretches in 2026.
Lastly, Mark Vientos. What more is there even to say? 2024 looks to be a true mirage in every sense. His fielding has never improved, his plate discipline fell off a cliff, and his power vanished for large stretches of time. I could have highlighted a few other options here, but it feels like the Mets were counting on Vientos to contribute in a decent capacity. That just simply never transpired. Maybe Vientos can rebound on a new team, but it feels like his tenure in New York is over.
Andrew Steele-Davis
My three biggest disappointments are David Stearns, Freddy Peralta, and Francisco Lindor.
Stearns never really learned from his mistakes in 2025. In fact, he doubled down on them, which was just an absolute disaster. I still think Stearns got it wrong by letting Pete Alonso go, but he’s got to make the moves he thinks are right for the team. However, you will never convince me that thinking replacing Alonso with a combination of Jorge Polanco and Mark Vientos was ever going to be a smart idea. Stearns made a ton of other mistakes too, but the whole Alonso debacle really set the tone for the entire year.
I think we all thought Freddy Peralta was going to be a stud in Queens, and it is still somewhat perplexing as to why things never really worked out. I always loved watching Peralta pitch, and it was really disappointing that he couldn’t be the ace this team needed.
Finally, I found the entire discourse around Francisco Lindor so frustrating and disappointing. Yes, Lindor had arguably one of the toughest years of his career, although it was clear that injuries played a part in disrupting his whole game. However, there were sections of the fanbase that made Lindor out to be some kind of bust in a Mets uniform, when the stats and the eye test tell a completely different story. And all the trade talk was just garbage. Lindor is still an important player for this franchise, and I am confident that he will have a big bounce-back season in 2027
Jorge Eckardt
It’s obvious, and it’s been said already, but the biggest disappointment for me this season was Freddy Peralta. Acquired to be this team’s ace, he was anything but. There were very fair reasons to believe his 2025 season was an outlier, and the perception of him was a little inflated coming into the year, but anyone who claims they expected him to be as bad as he was is lying. There was no way to see this level of ineptitude coming.
Next up is Bo Bichette. Similar to Peralta, there were reasons to be concerned about Bichette. And I’m not talking about moving to third, either. He wasn’t great there, but he was fine (1 OAA when playing 3B). The drama over him playing “out of position” was always incredibly silly. He’s a shortstop moving down the defensive spectrum. That happens all the time. Unfortunately, his mediocre defense was just about the best part of his season. Bichette disappeared offensively early in the season when the Mets badly needed him to step up while Soto was out. When you sign the contract he did, the onus is on him to step up. He didn’t. And don’t buy the line about him “getting better” in the second half or “figuring it out.” In four of the six months, his OPS was .708 or lower. That includes July and September. And he never hit in the clutch, which really was the main thing the Mets signed him to do. Being “clutch” is generally something that isn’t very sticky … except for Bichette it almost was. His high-leverage OPS this year was .682. Before this year, he was never below .792 in a full season. Even in 2024, when his overall OPS was .598 in 81 games, his high-leverage OPS was .774. In just about every way imaginable offensively, Bichette was a massive disappointment. Now, the Mets are likely stuck with him.
Finally, the third one is Mark Vientos. It’s probably popular (and fair!) to blame the decision-makers, but at some point I think you also need to hold the players accountable. Many of the failures this year, especially related to the two listed above, stem from players having seasons well below what even the harshest critics could have expected. Jorge Polanco will be the popular answer here, but I have a hard time truly blaming a guy who just could not stay healthy. Disappointing for sure, but I’m going to be more critical of the players who actually did play and fail. That leads us to Vientos. It’s really very simple here. After 2024, he looked like a potential foundation piece for the future. His 2025 was brutal, but he earned an opportunity to try and rebound. His 2026 cemented the fact he should never take another at-bat as a New York Met.
Mojo Hill
Three disappointments that stick out are Kodai Senga, Freddy Peralta and Jorge Polanco.
I believe I picked Senga in one of these roundtables before the season as a player I predicted to have a big year. Not only did he not have that, but he failed spectacularly in the rotation — so much so that he got demoted to the bullpen. He was better in the bullpen, even collecting more saves than Edwin Díaz for the Dodgers, which was a fun thing to follow, but his bullpen ERA still ended up pushing 5. His season ERA was a brutal 7.34 with a WAR approaching -2. Even with some good bullpen outings mixed in, it was just a miserable season for a guy who was fantastic as recently as the first half of last year.
Peralta’s season was just objectively disappointing, as others have discussed. If you’d said before the season that Peralta wouldn’t be on the Mets by the end of the year, you’d know things must have gone wrong. I actually thought Peralta was okay for his first handful of starts, with the caveat that he wasn’t going very deep into games. But he went from okay to disastrous in a hurry, and overall had a rough go of it during his brief tenure in Queens.
And then Polanco, who was a risky signing from the beginning, but had upside if he could be anything like his 2019, 2021 or 2025 self. Instead, he had by far the worst season of his career. I mean, the fact that he got hurt isn’t terribly surprising on its own, but he played in his fewest games since 2015 and had the worst hitting stats of his career. Even a hypothetical worst-case scenario before the season probably would have looked better than the way things ended up going. And to see Pete Alonso simultaneously have a great year in Baltimore undeniably runs salt in the wound.
Jack Ramsey
The biggest disappointments to me were the Mets’ leadership: Mendoza, Stearns, and Cohen. At the end of the 2024 season, it seemed as though the Mets had the leadership at the top that would lead them into the next generation. Over the last 14 months, any ideas close to that have come crashing down, and it has begun to cost jobs. Their 2025 collapse still seemed to plague Mendoza at the start of the season, and it was clear that his time with the team was coming to a close. He was responsible for their on-the-field play, and it was among the worst in the game under him. Cohen and Stearns waited too long to make a move with Mendoza, and it cost the team the chance to turn the season around in time. In a season where two interim managers took their teams to the playoffs, it is hard not to speculate if changing managers in May would have allowed the Mets to take a different deadline approach. Cohen and Stearns seemed to be the dream duo as recently as last August, but they now need to regain the trust of the fan base in a major way in 2027. The magic of the 2024 playoff run is gone, the aura of “Uncle Steve” has faded, the old core is broken up, and the Mets haven’t made the playoffs in three of the last four seasons. Mets fans need to see a winning team next year, or it could cost Stearns a second contract with the team. At that point, all that would be left is Cohen.
Mathias Altman-Kurosaki
Jorge Polanco is the biggest disappointment of the season. Playing first base was always going to be a challenge, but he was also brought in to solidify the middle of the lineup, and he was a no-show for most of the year. He was the main source of all the Pete Alonso discourse throughout the season.
Freddy Peralta is the second-biggest disappointment. Like Polanco, Peralta came to New York after the best season of his career. He was expected to be the ace, and frequently came up short. Luckily, the Mets were able to get a solid return when he was dealt to the Rays.
Lastly, I expected a lot more from Francisco Alvarez. He took a big step forward in the second half of 2025, but it felt like he took three steps back this season. All of the Mets’ young players showed great progress except Alvarez. Perhaps he rushed back from his torn meniscus in May, and that hampered him. Still, it’s hard not to question if he’ll have a role in the team’s future.
Johnluke Chaparro
The three disappointments that stand out to me are Carlos Mendoza, Freddy Peralta and Kodai Senga.
What Andy Green did with the ballclub and the clubhouse once he came in really shone a light on how lacking Carlos Mendoza was in many areas. That’s not to say that Mendy isn’t a smart baseball man by any means, but it seems that he was disconnected from a lot of things going on off the field, as well as on the field. A lot of his faults from last season bore their ugly head this season. He didn’t have much of a feel for the game at times, which cost the Mets dearly. The players didn’t seem to resonate with him, and it was evident in how they played on the field and in how they spoke, in contrast to Andy Green. I really liked Mendoza and thought after 2024 he was going to be someone the Mets were going to keep around for a while. I was wrong, and I hope that Andy Green can become the guy Carlos Mendoza was supposed to be.
I’m not sure what type of player Freddy Peralta is, but it seems as if New York was not the place for him. I am still in shock at how someone who was Top 10 in Cy Young voting the season before could fall off a cliff so hard, when he had every resource available to him. Maybe the Mets needed to adjust some things with him more, or maybe he needed a hard reality check. The talent is clearly there but it kills me that he couldn’t figure it out here. Just disappointing and incredibly underwhelming.
To conclude, I mention Senga because a lot was riding on him, and there were a lot of positive signs in his favor that seemingly told us all that he was ready to break out and be the starter the team needed him to be. Alas, that wasn’t the case and was probably one of the worst starting pitchers I’ve seen take the mound for some time. It’s hard to watch games when they are down 3-4 runs after two badly-timed hits or home runs, and it seems like Senga ran into that problem often. The silver lining of this all is that he seemingly has become an effective reliever and has given himself another reprieve with the Mets, and I hope he can take that chance and run, because I really like Senga and I still think he has a place here.
Nick Kalantzopoulos
I’ll go with Peralta, Polanco and Bichette.
I never thought Freddy Peralta was the shutdown ace some Mets fans did, but I certainly thought his floor was much higher than a 4.99 ERA.
This might be my most hard-to-believe-I’m-serious Mets opinion: But I genuinely believe that Jorge Polanco is a good hitter when healthy. Unfortunately, it appears as if the Polanco the Mets acquired is a lemon. He dealt with Achilles bursitis within the first week of the regular season. The Mets’ handling of him in terms of the injured list was so puzzling that the truth behind it might be illuminatingly depressing. They initially kept him off the IL and had him play through it. That didn’t work. It was then made public that he was still dealing with the issue during rehab, and they didn’t shut him down and have him get surgery until way too late. In theory, he would be fine for the start of the year, but that’s already in doubt. That tells me the team thinks that surgery would be so detrimental it could cost him next year as well. Unfortunately, before surgery, he was so injured he was unplayable. Either way, I think it’s more likely that Polanco is done as a quality major leaguer than him being healthy enough to succeed for the Mets next year.
As for Bo Bichette, for a fanbase that doesn’t take long to boo players or turn on them completely (some that have had massive success on the team before) the fact that the sentiment towards the man they gave 42 million dollars to this year to provide a 97 ops+ isn’t totally negative is bonkers to me. There were a ton of “well, during (insert here) allotment of time he’s actually been good!” And the OPS during whatever duration that was was never above 900. And whenever you cherry-pick the best of a season, it should be extremely good.
To be fair, he performed well at third, which might have been the fans’ number one Met concern heading into 2026, but he didn’t hit nearly well enough and provided next to nothing on the bases, which isn’t something you’d expect from someone who was a lifetime shortstop before this year.
Matt Mancuso
Failure to garner quality starting pitching depth
It’s common knowledge that teams must use 10-12 starting pitchers throughout a season to win at a sustainable rate. When the bottom of the Mets’ rotation fell out, and boy did it fall out in May, it caused the “uncapped downside scenario” that David Stearns referenced in the postseason press conference. After the 2025 club suffered the same rate, it was disappointing to see Stearns not to learn his lesson and not augment the 2026 club with quality starting pitching depth.
Failure to make quick changes – at the outset of the season, the Mets clearly made a plan: have their ‘Plan A’ guide them to a postseason berth. This “Plan A” consisted of the expected suspects: Jorge Polanco, Freddy Peralta, Luis Robert, Mark Vientos, the list goes on.
The issue: Plan A’s rarely work out. Polanco, Peralta, and Marcus Semien suffered lost seasons while Vientos, Robert, Juan Soto, and Francisco Lindor missed extensive time. The Mets should’ve shifted Jared Young to an everyday role earlier and made reactionary moves to account for the losses of Soto, Robert, and Lindor. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to opine on what should have been done, but nonetheless, it’s the job of a front office to expect the unexpected.
A paltry offseason – over the winter of 2025, the Mets’ front office went wheeling and dealing. Out went their homegrown core. In came a bevy of risky, high-ceiling players. Almost none of their offseason moves worked out. Was it unluckiness? Bad Process? A Combination of Both? Who’s to say?
Simply put: when the dust settled, the moves didn’t change the needle. If anything, it moved it backwards. Front offices can’t be expected to hit 21 all of the time, but it’s fair to say the Mets’ FO didn’t even sniff double digits with their winter moves.
