How the Mets 2026 disaster stacks up against the worst seasons in franchise history

The Worst Team Money Could Buy is a famous book about the failure of the 1992 Mets, a team with the highest payroll in baseball that finished 72-90 and missed the playoffs despite lofty expectations. The book was so inflammatory that author Bob Klapisch was physically threatened by Mets player Bobby Bonilla. Publicity is an inexact science. 

The 2026 Mets could, however, be second-worst, or perhaps even usurp the 1992 team for the worst, most tragically expensive iteration of the New York Mets ever. Hosting their American League counterpart-in-failure-to-meet-expectations, the Boston Red Sox, the Mets have been left in the dust. Boston has won nine in a row, 14 of their last 16 and handed New York a sweep on their way to a gleeful All-Star Break. The Mets, meanwhile, have fallen to 40-57, are all-but eliminated from the postseason and do not even possess many valuable veteran assets with whom they could rebuild at the deadline. 

It is dark out here, and we have to start asking if this Mets team is the worst in all recorded history, or at least tracking to be one of the most pitiful ever. 1992 is the obvious choice, but there are a couple of dark horses to consider along the way. Shoutout to FanSided’s resident suffering Mets fan Zach Rotman for suggesting some other years to consider. It’s gonna be okay man.

Honorable mention: 1962-1967

The Mets' first six years were not exactly a paragon of immediate expansion success, but how could it have been? A baseball team is not just a collection of professionals but a system that needs to be built up and figured out over time. And yeah, for the first six years of Mets baseball, you could say they were, uh, figuring some stuff out.

Between 1962 and 1967, the Mets lost 100 games five times in six seasons, the lone outlier being in 1966 when they lost a mere 95 games instead. That is a pretty spectacular run of complete and utter patheticness, and it absolutely trumps anything we’re going to discuss below. But here’s the thing: bad seasons can’t just be numerically bad — they have to capture the imagination of the fanbase, really drill themselves into your brain through your eyeballs as truly, philosophically, agonizingly terrible. Mets fans were still a new thing in 1962, and the team won the World Series in 1969 after executing a glorious turnaround from the depths of incompetence. It just doesn’t hold up to memory. 

2009: 21st Century Meltdown

Zach told me that the 2009 team was the worst team he can remember watching, and he’s not making things up. This was an utterly unwatchable disaster, with every single good player getting hurt despite hopeful preseason expectations. Because of pre-renovation Citi Field’s dimensions, Daniel Murphy led the Mets with 12 home runs. Yes that is 12, twelve, XII, 10+2 home runs.

Matthew Cerrone, a then-Mets blogger, wrote during the season that Citi Field (which had just opened) perhaps needed an exorcism before the Mets could win. Listing injuries, Cerrone notes the following players had hit the IL: “Carlos Delgado, David Wright, Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes, as well as Brian Schneider, Angel Pagan, Oliver Perez, John Maine, Gary Sheffield, Alex Cora, Ryan Church, and J.J. Putz, who underwent elbow surgery in June — not to mention rookie Fernando Martinez, who had been the team’s starting outfielder at the time.” Someone get in the time machine and get Matthew a glass of water.

The field would be renovated and home runs would return, but the Mets would not be notable again until almost half a decade later. This one really does sting.

1992: The Gold Standard

A legendarily terrible team, and one that’s going to force us to get empirical. Came in with massive payroll and serious hope, left with nothing but tears and a book about how bad they were. Bobby Bonilla being the best player on this team is really the icing on the cake, given the history of Bonilla’s legendarily deferred contract spawning “Bobby Bonilla Day,” which will continue to be celebrated until 2035.

So how bad were the 1992 Mets really. We have the lofty expectations, we have the on-paper talent, we have the payroll. What we need now are some plus stats to figure out how bad they were relative to the rest of the league, since the 1993 team actually lost more games. For ERA+, the Mets had two above-average starting pitchers: David Cone and Sid Fernandez. In terms of wRC+ for offense, the 1992 Mets had six above-average hitters, though none of them were particularly special. Chico Walker and Bonilla led the pack with fine wRC+’s of 125 and 121 respectively. On paper, this team didn’t wind up having any good hitters, though they had a few slightly above-average ones. That’s not really a good investment thesis for the most expensive team in baseball.

Could 2026 actually be worse?

The 2026 Mets have many of the factors that made the 1992 team so depressing: the highest payroll in baseball by a lot; yes, even a lot more than the Los Angeles Dodgers. Preseason expectations? Check. Bold offseason moves that had to pay off lest the fanbase go berserk? You betcha, someone check on Pete Alonso in Baltimore. They also have the hair-pulling magic of a team that can pull a loss from the jaws of victory: 

This is the stuff of legends. So how about some plus stats? Well, the 2026 Mets probably have worse pitching: Clay Holmes and Christian Scott are technically above average according to ERA+, but they have pitched half the innings of the Mets main starters, all of whom have been awful other than Nolan McLean. We will give them 1.5 above-average pitchers. That doesn’t even include Devin Williams, who has not been as bad as his reputation suggests (worst pitcher ever) … but has definitely been quite poor and did just blow a save spectacularly against Boston.

Hitting? Ok, check this out: using a roughly scaled version of the qualifiers I used for the 1992 team, the Mets have five above-average hitters via wRC+, but everyone other than Juan Soto is shockingly mediocre. Soto would be by far the best player on all the teams we’ve discussed so far, but his lack of support throughout the lineup has been the stuff of major league statistical analysis. 

We will, of course, need the kicker stat: wins and losses. FanGraphs has the Mets projected to finish 75-87, which would, of course, be massively disappointing. But that also implies they are five games above .500 in the second half after throwing down a -17 first half. Does anything suggest that will happen?

I think there’s a pretty solid case this season is worse than 1992, if not officially the worst ever (1960s, I mean come on). It will certainly be worth at least one more book, probably a few, and if the copyright holder for The Worst Team Money Could Buy wouldn’t mind being chill and letting me write The Second-Worst Team Money Could Buy, that would be great. We can have our lawyers discuss royalties. 

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