Evaluating the Mets' offense after 10 games

So, how do we feel about the 2026 Mets 10 games into the season? They stand with a record of 6-4, which is a 97-win pace, yet it seems to me that not everyone is happy with that mark, as the Mets opened the year against three teams that finished under .500 a season ago. One thing we should all know by now is that it makes a huge difference when you play a team, as no squad plays the same way over 162 games. If you played the Mets last year in April and May, it was a different thing than playing them in September.

If we take away their series against the Mets, here’s how New York’s opponents are this season:

5-2 Pirates
3-4 Cardinals
2-5 Giants

And that comes with all three teams losing on Monday. So, that’s a 10-11 record – not great but not the dregs we were led to believe based on last year’s records. Perhaps we’d all feel a bit better if the Mets were 7-3, which is what their Pythagorean record is at this point. But the team has bunched the bulk of its scoring into four games, where they are 4-0.

In the four games where the offense clicked, the Mets scored 35 runs
In the other six games, the offense totaled 14 runs
In the six games where the Mets have scored at least four runs, they’re 6-0

It’s definitely encouraging that three of the big-run games came in the last three played, with all but one of those innings coming without Juan Soto, who’s now on the IL. We don’t know for sure how long Soto will be sidelined, but few will be surprised if it isn’t longer than the 10 days his IL stint has him out. Soto was off to a good start - .355/.412/.516 – so his bat will definitely be missed. Hopefully others will continue to step up in his absence.

Whenever you look at an offense over a short period of time – and 10 games certainly fits that bill – you expect three guys to be over-achieving, three guys to be performing more or less as expected and three guys who are scuffling. Let’s see how the Mets’ offense is doing in this respect. We’ll have 10 players to look at, due to three players getting substantial time between 1B and DH.

The Over-Achievers

Mark Vientos – 23 PA, 1.236 OPS
Francisco Alvarez – 29 PA, 1.079 OPS
Luis Robert Jr. – 38 PA, .907 OPS

Expected Performance

Marcus Semien – 41 PA, .741 OPS
Soto – 34 PA, .928 OPS

Scuffling

Brett Baty – 33 PA, .606 OPS
Carson Benge – 34 PA, .406 OPS
Bo Bichette – 48 PA, .474 OPS
Francisco Lindor – 48 PA, .577 OPS
Jorge Polanco – 37 PA, .579 OPS

While my expectations for Semien were substantially lower than what he’s produced to date, the three preseason computer-model forecasts that were available when the Semien projection piece was done had him with the following OPS numbers: .715, .714 and .716 – making a .741 OPS more or less what was expected. And while Soto’s numbers are great, that’s pretty much what’s expected from him.

It’s kind of remarkable that three of the top five guys in the batting order – and five overall - are scuffling and the offense has been as productive as it’s been. This is the group that could easily pick up its production while Soto is out, even if Lindor’s numbers since the start of 2025 have been noticeably worse when he hasn’t hit in front of Soto.

For context, the league average for runs per game here in 2026 is 4.41, while the Mets are tied for seventh with a 4.90 rpg.

One other thing worth mentioning about the offense and the team’s record is that in the first 10 games of the season, they’ve played three extra-inning games, losing two of them. Last year in 162 games, the Mets played 13 extra-inning games, going 6-7 in those contests. That worked out to an extra-inning contest in every 12.46 games. So far, this year’s rate is one extra-inning affair in every 3.33 games. That’s not a pace that will last.

The extra-inning games are sort of a double-edged sword. The offense scored an extra five runs in frames 10 & 11, perhaps making the offense look better than it really is. Yet the other side of the coin is that in those three contests, the Mets scored just three runs in the first nine innings of the game. If they just scored three runs in the first nine innings of each of those contests, they’d have one extra run scored overall and two more wins.

Ultimately, the Mets need more from the five scuffling players, especially once Alvarez, Robert and Vientos come back to earth. And that doesn’t seem like an unreasonable ask, as no one expects Bichette, Lindor and Polanco to be sub-Acunan for very long.