Mets lose 4th straight as life remains a cornucopia of pain

Reds 7 Mets 2 (Citi Field, Flushing, NY)

Mets record: 22-32

Mets streak: Lost 4

WP - Nick Lodolo (1-1)

LP - Nolan McLean (2-4)

Seat on the Korner: Nick Lodolo

We select a Star of the Game and virtually invite him to take his Seat on the Korner — just as Ralph Kiner did on WOR-TV Channel 9 during the early days of the New York Mets.

Continuing the tradition of Rheingold Beer sponsoring Kiner’s Korner, this season every seat is proudly presented by The Main Event Restaurant & Sports Bar.

With locations in Plainview and Farmingdale, The Main Event features 80+ HD TVs, fresh daily seafood, and Black Angus certified steaks—so you never have to choose between great food and the big game.

Stop me if you've heard this before: A starting pitcher comes into a game with a 7.20 ERA and gives up one run in six innings against the Mets. Sound familiar? It should. I've written 19 game recaps so far, and six of the seats on the Korner have featured the opposing team's starting pitcher (and three of my last five). But good for Nick, leading the Reds to victory over Nolan McLean and the Mets.

Need to Know

• Nolan McLean threw 78 pitches in 3 and 1/3 innings (the shortest start of McLean's young career), with only 47 of those pitches being strikes. He gave up seven runs on five hits, two walks, and two hit batters (plus a run scoring wild pitch), while striking out six.

• McLean has now given up 13 earned runs in his last nine innings of work over his last two starts. His ERA has ballooned to 4.40 on the season.

• Five Reds runs came courtesy of the 7th and 8th hitters in the lineup. Spencer Steer drove in three runs on a force out and a two-run single, and Tyler Stephenson drove in two with a homer.

• Juan Soto missed his second consecutive game due to illness.

• Marcus Semien batted cleanup for the first time this season. His home run in the 6th inning cut the deficit to six runs. Semien went 2-for-4 and also hit a ball hard in the 7th with two runners on but was robbed of a hit by Sal Stewart.

• Bo Bichette went 3-for-4 and raised his average to .227 on the season.

• Jonathan Pintaro pitched 2 and 2/3's hitless innings, striking out three, walking one, and helping to save the bullpen, who gave up one hit in 17 outs today. Austin Warren and Tobias Myers also chipped in.

• This was the 24th game out of 54 where the Mets scored two runs or less.

• The Mets are now 60-87 in their last 147 games.

Turning Point

McLean had struck out the side in the first inning. It looked like his last start against the Nationals was a mere blip on the screen.

But in that Washington start, you could argue that it fell apart for McLean after he hit Drew Millas with a pitch, which led to James Wood's inside the park grand slam. In today's start, McLean led off the second inning by going 0-2 on Sal Stewart. Then he hit him with an 88-mph changeup. It was all downhill from there as he gave up two runs that inning, another in the third, and four in the 3rd before being mercifully pulled with the score 7-0.

Three Keys

Pack Up the Moon and Dismantle the Sun

With Clay Holmes on the IL and Freddy Peralta just now trying to escape the reputation of being a five inning pitcher, the rotation goes as Nolan McLean goes. It's a lot to ask of a guy who has made 18 starts in his major league career.

So when McLean has two bad starts in a row, with the stuff that he has, of course there is going to be a feeling of despair among the fan base. (And by feelings of despair, clearly I mean that we're all pretty much convinced that the season is over.)

That home run by JJ Bleday came on the tail end of a Keith Hernandez soliloquy about how he liked to look for pitches that were his strength: fastballs on the outer half. That pitch was a fastball on the outer half of the plate that was right in the bright red of Bleday's heat map. You're not going to win a lot of games throwing fastballs in the red portions of heat maps.

Put Away the Ocean and Sweep Up the Wood

The Mets had one chance against Nick Lodolo when he started to get wild in the 5th and the Mets had two runners on. But Mark Vientos swung at a 2-2 pitch that would up hitting him to end the inning.

Vientos had looked at a changeup in the lower part of the plate down the middle on a 2-1 pitch, then swung at that 2-2 pitch. The Mets have scored six runs in the last five games, and that's a microcosm of why. There's just no plan. There's no semblance of a plan. There's no hint of a plan.

Nothing Now Can Come to Any Good

My favorite part of this game may have been when the booth was talking about injuries, and Keith asked "What's going on with (Luis) Robert?" And all Gare could reply was "nothing".

That's the state of the 2026 Mets season: Nothingness. Falling behind by two runs and feeling like it's 20-0. Discussion about an injured player ending with the realization that there's nothing to look forward to. Nothing in the present, nothing in the future. Nothing to see here.

My other favorite part of this game was the realization that David Stearns may have traded Mr. Met for a cat.

Perhaps that was the final straw that spurred fans to chant "Fi-re Ste-arns" in the 9th inning.

I guess the fire sale has begun. We wish Mr. Met well. Maybe the Korean team he was traded to is in the hunt for a playoff spot. Maybe the cat can hit better than Cedric Mullins.