The Mets were one garbage-time home run by Juan Soto away from being no-hit on Wednesday afternoon, dropping their fourth straight and eight of their last 10 as the offense has fallen into another dreadful swoon.
Fourteen straight Mets were retired by Guardians pitching in Tuesday’s 3-2 loss, and on Wednesday, Gavin Williams carried a no-hitter into the ninth inning before Soto clubbed an otherwise relatively meaningless home run to dead center with one out in the inning. Still, it did little to hold off criticism of the team’s performance offensively, and hitting coach Eric Chavez is starting to come front and center.
Several fans have begun calling for Chavez’s job as the Mets have been hitting a tick above .210 as a team for the past two months, their second dreadful swoon of the season already. Over the last nine games, the Mets are batting .189, and Carlos Mendoza pointed to in-game adjustments that are not being made.
“It’s kind of hard to just pinpoint one thing, but if you look at the past few days, we go in with a game plan and haven’t been able to make adjustments as they make adjustments to us as a whole,” Mendoza explained. “As a team, you have to be able to recognize how they are attacking us. You have to be able to do that.”
Many wondered if that was an indictment on the hitting coaches, as they are often expected to help pinpoint how opposing pitchers are attacking their hitters, and offer adjustments to their players. Mendoza quickly noted the work his coaches are doing behind the scenes, but did not hide from the face that the offense has to be better.
“I know our coaches are working really hard and continuing to have those discussions with the players,” Mendoza said. “But at the end of the day, we have to go out there and do it.”
Mendoza lamented “a lot of empty at-bats” in Wednesday’s loss, and that has not been the anomaly of late. Even the team’s stars in Soto, Francisco Lindor, and Pete Alonso have been dreadful over this nine-game stretch from a batting average standpoint, while Brett Baty is mired in a brutal slump of his own. Despite a vaunted top of the lineup on paper, the Mets are in the middle of the pack in terms of OPS and runs scored this season, and are 23rd in the league in team batting average. As their deficit in the division holds at 2.5 games, the bats will have to wake up if New York is to have any shot of accomplishing its lofty goals in 2025.
Anything short of that, and Chavez will likely continue to get heat as fans look for a change.