The New York Mets made history during Wednesday's loss to the San Diego Padres, but not exactly the good kind.
With the major league debut of right-handed pitcher Dom Hamel, the Mets set a new MLB record for different pitchers used in a single season. Hamel was the 46th pitcher to appear for New York in 2025. The 2024 Miami Marlins held the previous record.
Hamel pitched one inning on Wednesday night, allowing three hits but holding the Padres scoreless. The 26-year-old played in 31 games for the Mets’ Triple-A affiliate, the Syracuse Mets, this season. He held a record of 4-6 and posted an ERA of 5.32 across 67 ⅔ innings.
Those numbers aren’t exactly eye-opening, to say the least. During a time when the Mets are barely clinging to their postseason spot, debuting a pitcher who was rather average in Triple-A signifies the desperation coming from New York.
Since August 1, the Mets have a record of 16-27. The team has crumbled as we stray further from the trade deadline. The Mets' bullpen and starting rotation have been more of a revolving door than any other team in baseball history. Their history-making season reflects a team that can no longer rely on its seemingly promising pitching staff.
Starting pitchers David Peterson, Kodai Senga, and Sean Manaea have not looked like major league-caliber rotation pieces since the deadline, with Senga even being optioned to Triple-A. This has left the Mets with no choice but to insert three rookies into the starting rotation: Jonah Tong, Brandon Sproat, and Nolan McLean. The reliance on three rookie starters as you push to claim a playoff spot is not a recipe most teams would like to follow. As expected, the results have been mixed.
Mets’ President of Baseball Operations, David Stearns, recently said that if he had known how the season would play out, the trade deadline certainly would have looked different for New York.
"If I knew exactly how our season was going to play out, absolutely,” Stearns said to reporters when asked if the trade deadline would have been different with the benefit of hindsight. “But we make the decisions we make at the time with the information we had. I'm very comfortable with the process we went through that led us to those decisions.”
Mets fans are the furthest thing from comfortable with 10 games left in the year. They are 2-8 in their last 10 games, and hold just a 1.5 game lead on the final Wild Card spot in the National League. They wrap up the three-game series against the Padres today at 1:10 p.m. EST.