After a hot start to 2025 and leading the National League East divsion for an extended amount of time, the New York Mets are now 48-37 and a 1.5 games behind the Philadelhia Phillies. The Mets do still currently hold the top wild card spot in the NL but their expectations are much higher than that.
The Mets were swept this past weekend by the Pittsburgh Pirates and have lost 13 of their last 15 games. This brutal stretch of underperformance has led Mets’ owner Steve Cohen to apologize to fans on social media.
Tough stretch , no sugarcoating it . I didn’t see this coming . I’m as frustrated as everybody else . We will get through this period . Our injured pitching will come back over the next few weeks . It is unlikely the team’s hitting with RISP will continue at this weak pace. Keep…
— Steven Cohen (@StevenACohen2) June 30, 2025
While this post doesn’t call anyone out directly, you have to imagine that Juan Soto feels some added pressure to improve. In the offseason, Soto signed the richest deal in sports history, a 15-year contract worth $765 million.
85 games into his first season with the Mets, Soto is hitting .258 with 20 homers and 47 RBIs. Believe it or not, this stat-line is not quite good enough for Queens.
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Mets’ owner apology to fans puts more pressure on Juan Soto
While Soto’s power numbers are quite impressive, let’s take a look deeper besides his home run total and RBI. The biggest complaint Mets fans can have so far is Soto’s inability to knock in runners in scoring position. Soto is batting .147 and owns a .596 OPS with runners in scoring position. That’s not great.
Soto was brought to the Mets to be the difference maker in the lineup that could carry them to a World Series. Obviously there are other aspects to the game of baseball that are out of his control, but in the eyes of the Mets’ organization, Soto is not living up to expectations.
Cohen’s straight forward apology on X is something you do not see very often from teams’ owners. However, Cohen is fully aware of how tough the Mets fan-base is to please.
With the Atlanta Braves dominating the NL East over the last several seasons and the Philadelphia Phillies claiming the division title a season ago, Mets fans are growing impatient. They are tired of having a loaded roster with high expectations just to be let down by either missing the postseason or facing a quick exit in October.
As mentioned in Cohen’s post, this Mets lineup is far too talented to continue struggling this heavily, especially with runners in scoring position. Then again, hearing those words from the teams’ owner could result in players pressing even more at the plate resulting in continued struggles. With Soto being the highest paid player in the league, all eyes will be on him moving forward.
