Tom Brennan - Mets Kiddie News and Thoughts

 

A BIG ZACH ATTACK

It is possible that Zach Thornton has leapfrogged over Jonah Tong.

In Thorton’s Friday night start, he threw six shut out innings in AAA, allowing just three hits in a walk, and fanning nine batters.

In the previous day’s game, Jonah was beaten unmercifully.

By the same opponent that Thornton whupped.

Tong? 1.2 IP, 7 runs, two homers allowed.

That says “LEAPFROG” to me.

THE WINNER OF THE AWARD FOR SLOWEST START GOES TO…

Yonaton Henriquez.

After a very good season in 2025, I was expecting big things.

But through Friday, Henriquez was just 4 for 50 (.080) with Brooklyn.

Hey…. I fib you not.

Close runner up?

R.J.Gordon.

After a very good season in 2025, I was expecting big things from R.J.

But through Friday, Gordon had made five starts this season.

In those five starts, he had a total of just seven innings.

His ERA exceeds 21.00, and his WHIP exceeds 3.00.

You can’t even use the old adage that he is getting his work in.

Seven innings in five starts disqualifies him on that count.

If you want to flip my two man ranking order there, feel free.

QUESTION…

Would you trade rhe Mets’ Nolan McLeam for Cam Schlittler, straight up?

The Cam Man is 6-1, 1.35, 0.78 WHIP in 10 outings this year. Cy Young?

Our guy is great. Cam is…deGrom ++?

Oh, and the Mets won. 6-3. Benge and Soto had 5 hits, everyone else had 3.

And Brooklyn lost 1-0, and sits at .182 after 37 games. I like .282 better.

And Randy Guzman launched his 8th rocket. At 117.6 MPH.

Have a blessed Sunday, everyone.

And remember… 

While Clay Holmes got hurt only because he was not wearing full body armor, the personal decision to wear body armor is only one that you can make for yourself.

I kind of like the White Knight look, myself.

Tom Brennan: Players With Injury Histories Should Not Be Acquired Willy-Nilly; Next Man Up?

LUIS ROBERT

Mets Injury Poster Child, Rehabbing For A Mere $125,000 Per Game 

David Stearns said this on Tuesday:

“We absolutely have to look at our risk assessment on injured players,” Stearns said. 

“We know we’re taking a level of risk when we bring players in with injury histories.”

“We’re feeling that risk right now, and it hasn’t helped that a number of our players have gotten hurt at the same time.”

“It’s not something that we necessarily anticipated, and it’s something we need to look at.”

Well…to that, I say…

You are the baseball decision maker for the franchise. You darned well have to do more than cross your fingers and acquire players with injury histories. You have to, to use your words, “necessarily anticipate”.

Montas, Robert, and Polanco are just 3 very expensive injured puppies that immediately come to mind in that regard.

Then Alvarez goes down, joining Lindor, Tauchman, Mauricio, and Young on the IL with extended stays.

Me? I prefer bumbling to crumbling. 

Anyway…

In January, not knowing some of the newly acquired players anywhere near as well as the Mets should have known them, I wrote this:

“I will throw some numbers at you:

110, 127, 139, 138.

That’s how many games Luis Robert, Marcus Semien, Bo Bichette, and Jorge Polanco were in last year.

Collectively, employing my considerable mathematical skills, that comes out to 134 combined games that they were NOT in. 

Or, looked at another way, they missed 27% of the 162 games.

So, for those concerned about where Baty and Vientos will get their ABs, those concerned citizens of Metsville should keep in mind that they no longer have to play on the same roster as Messrs. Nimmo and Alonso who, combined, missed just 7 games last year, or just 2% absence, for the percentage-minded among us. 

The Iron Men of 2025 are gone. The Part Timers are here.”

How prescient that turned out to be.

Nimmo and Alonso combined missed just 2 games this season thru mid-week.

They were Iron Men in 2025, and are Men of Steel in 2026, too.

We have a team of Putty Men now. Men seemingly made of Clay.

David, I must say: naivety is not an intelligent strategic strength. 

It can lead to franchise disaster.

Oh, and back to Alvarez…

Alvarez is hurt - again? I say…Trade him whenever his value is high. 

Why? He will likely get hurt again…and again…and again. 

Based on his track record.

He takes a licking and just stops ticking. 

Oh, and…

Misery, it seems, loves company in Queens…

HOLMES JOINS THE METS’ FREAKY LENGTHY INJURY PANDEMIC

 RED ALERT!!

 NEXT MAN UP…

The Mets lost two on Friday night:

First, they lost 5-1 to the superior Yankees.

Then they lost Clay Holmes, too. How?

“Clay Holmes was pitching in the fourth inning at Citi Field when Yankees DH Spencer Jones struck him on the right leg with a 111.1 MPH comebacker. The right hander stayed on his feet, even going as far as to jog after the ball, before receiving a visit from Mendoza and a trainer - even then the concern did not immediately present itself. After a couple of warm-up pitches, Holmes said he was fine and remained in the game, throwing 6 straight balls but recovering to strike out two more batters.”

He then came out of the game, and got x-rayed.

He found out that he had a broken fibula. 

I fib you not.

Everyone was surprised… 

But not me. You see…

The curse is real. An inch to the right or left, and he’s just bruised.

Clay Holmes was not injury-prone.

He was healthy as a horse.

Now, he might return by late July.

A Devastating Blow.

I guess, as of Saturday AM, that Jack Wenninger is next starter up.

It is a matter of “Wenn”, not if.

If so, I have a suggestion for young Jack: 

Wear body armor on the mound.

RVH - Part 1: How Bad are the Mets

 

The Mets are 18–25.

That is the only record that counts. No one gets standings credit for context. No one gets a playoff spot because the roster was banged up, the rotation was unsettled, or the expected record looked better than the actual record.

But if the goal is to understand what this team really is, not just react emotionally to what it has looked like, context matters.

And the context says something important.

The Mets have not simply been bad. They have also leaked wins.

Through 43 games, the Mets are 18–25. Based on runs scored and runs allowed, using the standard MLB Pythagorean formula, their expected record is closer to 20–23. More precisely, the weekly model puts them around 20.4–22.6.

That does not make them good. But it does suggest they have left roughly two wins on the table through sequencing failures, close-game losses, bullpen leakage, and inconsistent execution.

That distinction matters more than it may seem.

At 18–25, the Mets look buried. In the current National League Wild Card picture, they sit seven games back. That sounds like a team fading toward irrelevance before Memorial Day.

But at roughly 20–23, the Mets would look very different. They still would not look good. But they would be much closer to the crowded middle of the Wild Card race, near the cluster of National League teams hovering around 20 or 21 wins.

That is not contention in the strong sense.

It is survival.

It is relevance.

It is staying close enough for health, regression, and reinforcements to matter.

That is the real cost of the leaked wins. The difference between 18–25 and 20–23 is not cosmetic. It is the difference between feeling buried and still feeling within striking distance.

The weekly breakdown helps tell the story:

Week	W-L	RS	RA	RDiff	RS/G	RA/G	Weekly Expected	Cumulative Expected
Wk 1	2–1	22	15	+7	7.33	5.00	2.0–1.0	2.0–1.0
Wk 2	4–3	38	24	+14	5.43	3.43	4.9–2.1	6.9–3.1
Wk 3	1–5	14	28	-14	2.33	4.67	1.3–4.7	8.8–7.2
Wk 4	0–6	11	35	-24	1.83	5.83	0.6–5.4	9.2–12.8
Wk 5	2–4	18	22	-4	3.00	3.67	2.4–3.6	11.6–16.4
Wk 6	3–3	25	24	+1	4.17	4.00	3.1–2.9	14.7–19.3
Wk 7	3–3	22	26	-4	3.67	4.33	2.6–3.4	17.2–22.8
Wk 8	3–0	22	8	+14	7.33	2.67	2.6–0.4	20.4–22.6
Total	18–25	172	182	-10	4.00	4.23	—	20.4–22.6

The obvious disaster came during Weeks 3 and 4. That was the April collapse. Across those two weeks, the Mets scored 25 runs and allowed 63.

That was not bad luck. That was poor baseball.

The expected record during those two weeks was almost identical to the actual collapse.

But outside that stretch, the picture becomes more layered.

Week 2 was probably the first major missed opportunity. The Mets went 4–3, but their run differential suggested something closer to a dominant 5–2 week. They scored 38 runs and allowed only 24. That was one of the strongest underlying stretches of the season.

The inability to fully convert that into wins may have quietly set the tone for the weeks that followed.

Then came the recent stabilization.

Weeks 6 and 7 were important because the Mets played almost exactly to their underlying numbers. They went 6–6 while their expected record over that period was roughly 5.7–6.3. That suggested the chaotic variance of April might finally be fading.

Week 8 took that one step further.

The Detroit sweep was not just three wins. It was three wins backed by the scoreboard underneath the scoreboard. The Mets scored 22 runs and allowed only 8. They averaged 7.33 runs per game, matching their Week 1 offensive peak, but this time paired it with elite run prevention at 2.67 runs allowed per game.

That is the first truly balanced week of the season.

Before the sweep, the Mets looked like a team trying to stop the bleeding. After the sweep, they look at least temporarily like a team that may have found a foothold.

The last three weeks now matter. Across Weeks 6, 7, and 8, the Mets are 9–6 with a +11 run differential. That does not erase the April collapse. It does not make the full-season record acceptable. But it does begin to shrink the distortion created by the winless Week 4 road trip.

That can be interpreted two ways.

The optimistic interpretation is that the Mets stopped the bleeding and are beginning to stabilize.

The harsher interpretation is that they merely beat up on Detroit at the right time and still remain well below where they need to be.

Both can be true.

The Mets are still in trouble. An 18–25 record is not a rounding error. They dug a real hole. They do not get to explain away April.

But the Pythagorean view helps clarify the hole. This is not a team with no pulse. It is a team that played terribly for two weeks, leaked several winnable games around that collapse, and has recently started to perform more like a competitive baseball team.

That is why the next few weeks matter so much.

The standings say the Mets are in trouble.

The Pythagorean record says they have underperformed.

The Wild Card picture says the gap between buried and relevant is only a few wins.

And the Detroit sweep says there may finally be some stabilization.

That does not guarantee recovery.

But it does suggest the story of the 2026 Mets may not yet be fully written.

The Mets may still be bad.

But after Week 8, we may finally be getting closer to learning whether they are broken, or whether they have simply been late to stabilize.