When the other teams are bad

Morning Dose: Monday, April 14

☀️ Good Morning:

The Mets played their first series in Sacramento, in a minor-league ballpark, and by Sunday, it looked like they were playing a little league team.

Despite another slow-moving weekend for the offense, the runs started to come as the Athletics looked anything but athletic in the final innings. You knew the series was over when Brett Baty finally joined the party with an extra base hit in the ninth.

Time will tell if this Mets team is a true contender, but one thing we know for sure is there are several other teams who are definitely not as good. This road trip is putting that on full display.

It’s been a very strange start to the 2025 campaign: the vibes are great, but if you ignored the scoreboard and watched the individual games, you would probably guess the Mets are closer to 8–7 than 10–5.

But here they are, in first place in the National League East. The Amazins are the only team who hasn’t lost back-to-back games this season. They have won four series in a row. And they have a favorable match-up ahead of them in Minnesota.

☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!

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Box Score | Full Standings

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◼️ Where is the timely hitting?

Baseball is a game of timing.

It’s not about always about if you get a hit, but more importantly, when you get that hit.

Entering Monday, the Mets haven’t hit much at all, ranking 24th in batting average and 20th in slugging percentage. What’s worse is when they do piece together a rare rally, they seem to squeeze their bats even tighter, hitting just .163 with runners in scoring position, the second lowest average in all of baseball.

The hits started to fall on Sunday, but they still finished the game 3-for-12 with runners in scoring position, leaving 11 men on base.

If it wasn’t for Pete Alonso (and some scattered help from a few others), an offense that is already anemic in clutch situations would be completely flat-lined.

We are nearly three weeks into the season and Juan Soto still doesn’t have a hit with a baserunner standing on second or third base. He has 1 RBI with runners in scoring position. That obviously needs to change over time.