The First Annual Halfsies Awards!

Happy Thursday! Are you enjoying your All-Star break? Yeah me neither - I miss baseball. Anyway, consider a paid sub to this here newsletter. That way you can get it in your inbox every single day, instead of just on Mondays and Thursdays!

Presenting The Mets Newsletter first half awards, or The Halfsies! 

The Most Forgettable Met

Six different relief pitchers made exactly one appearance in a Met uniform so far in the 2025 campaign. Some simply returned to Triple-A, waiting for their turn to come around again. Some were plucked off waivers or refused a minor league assignment, never to be seen again. I’m going to give the award to Kevin Herget. Who? Exactly. He pitched the eighth and ninth innings in an 8-3 home win against the Diamondbacks on April 29th, allowing one earned run in the process. The next time he pitched in a major league game was July 1st - with Atlanta. 

The Tom Seaver Award

You know, the Cy Young Award, but make it Mets. 

This is a toughie: David Peterson is an All-Star, and rightfully so. Clay Holmes has been solid. Kodai Senga has been outstanding, but he’s only thrown 77.2 innings. I’m going to give it somewhat controversially to Edwin Díaz. He’s also rightfully an All-Star. As I wrote yesterday, he’s almost as good as he was in his brilliant 2022 season. He’s put together a 1.5 bWAR in just 38 innings. 

Rookie of the Half-Year

Fantastic Max Kranick was the early front-runner, but I’m going to give it to Ronny Mauricio. Mauricio started really slow but actually finished the first half with a 107 OPS+ (100 is league average.) Besides, there aren’t that many options.

Most Valuable Newbie

Clay Holmes and poor Griffin Canning deserve some recognition for their pitching contributions, but come on, you got to give it to that Juan Soto guy. For all the mishegas of his first two months on the team, he leads the team in bWAR (3.9). 

Biggest Disappointment

Ryne Stanek is a candidate - he seems like a cool dude and gifts some of his teammates bread made by his wife, but my goodness, he has a 4.55 ERA and a -0.6 bWAR. Mark Vientos takes the trophy though. Swaggy V’s sophomore season has been a major step backward compared to his seemingly revelatory rookie campaign. He looked good the last few days before the break - he doesn’t want to win this award come October.

I Apologize, I Wasn’t Familiar With Your Game Somehow After All These Years Award

Goes to Jeff McNeil. I was skeptical of McNeil playing center field, but wow, that home run robbery opened my eyes. He’s been around since 2018 and won a batting title and he’s still underrated. 

The Rey Ordoñez Golden Glove

The guy clearly here for his stellar defense and nothing else. Gotta give it to Tyrone Taylor. He has a 68 OPS+ but always seems to make a positive difference every time he starts in center.

The David Wright Leadership Award

Francisco Lindor continues to be the obvious de facto team captain. 

Most Valuable Player

Gonna have to give it to Pete Alonso. He posts up every single day. He has 77 RBI, by far the team leader in that category.  Who knows where the hell the Mets would have been the first six weeks or so of the season without the Polar Bear, who was seemingly the only dude hitting. 

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MLB.com posted a 59-second video titled “Captains of the New York Mets.” The majority of it focused on David Wright. The last 25 seconds were entirely about Francisco Lindor, leading to speculation online that Lindor is going to be officially named the fifth captain in Mets history on Saturday during Wright’s number retirement ceremony. Two hours or so after it appeared online, MLB took the video down. Not suspicious at all! You can still watch it here, thanks to Twitter user @emilyinqueens. 

Lindor ran into Kazuo Matsui at the All-Star Game.

The Mets Alumni Game is coming up on September 13th. It’ll take place before a Met game against the Texas Rangers. Jacob deGrom is a Texas Ranger, so somebody asked him what his thoughts and plans were for the event. deGrom said he’ll watch. After he was told that pretty much everyone except him from the 2015 starting rotation will be there, deGrom singled out Bartolo Colon, saying with a smile that he’s probably still pitching somewhere and he “still has it”, so he’ll probably impress.

Ron Darling and Sean Manaea interviewed each other as part of the Flip the Script series, although to be more accurate, Ronnie interviewed Manaea and Manaea asked him a question or two. Darling brought up his childhood as a Hawaiian-Chinese boy growing up in Milbury, Massachusetts, finding a kinship with Manaea, who was born and raised in Wanatah, Indiana with a Samoan father. 

Congrats to Brett Baty, who got engaged!

And congrats to Catcher/outfielder Chris Suero, who got promoted from High-A Brooklyn to Double-A Binghamton.

The Mets made two international free agent singings: RHPs Aurelvys Batista and Jahzeel Montas. 

9th round selection shortstop Anthony Frobose is going to sign with the Mets. He had previously committed to Rutgers University.

Four Mets made Baseball Prospectus’ midseason top 50 prospect list: SS/CF Jet!(t) Williams (#17), RHP Jonah Tong (#20), OF Carson Benge (#32), and RHP Nolan McLean (#34). It’s telling that RHP Brandon Sproat the GOAT didn’t make the cut.

On this day in 2016, Jacob deGrom threw a complete game one-hitter in Philadelphia. His only two blemishes were a third inning single by the opposing starting pitcher Zach Eflin and an eighth inning walk to Ryan Howard. He struck out seven and faced only one batter over the minimum. 

Tonight is the premiere of the two-hour SNY documentary The Wright Way. I can’t remember any other Met getting a full two hours devoted to them, so this is kind of impressive. It debuts at 6:30 pm eastern and encores at 9pm. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.