2 NY Mets players who deserve an apology, 1 who hasn’t quite earned his

Expectations are a funny thing. From the moment you formulate in your mind, they seem completely logical and air-tight. It's almost like when you truly expect something to happen, it's a near lock that things will play out the way you envisioned in your head. Then you look at the 2026 New York Mets and feel like you're starting to lose your marbles.

Not many things have gone as the Mets and their fans had expected heading into the regular season. For the most part, that's led to some truly negative results. However, in a couple of cases, the negative view was what was taken from the start, and now we owe those guys an apology. In another, things have been so much worse than expected that it's worth calling out that player for being a true net-negative to the club.

These two Mets players deserve apologies (at least with regard to certain aspects of their games)

Let's apologize to Bo Bichette's glove

Bo Bichette was brought to Queens to mash and also provide a more contact-oriented bat to address the all-or-nothing approach that was at times too prevalent last season. Thus far, that's been an epic disappointment.

However, the expectation was a trade-off of offense for defense, and even early in the season, we were speculating that he'd soon be moved to DH. With that said, Bichette hasn't just been better than our admittedly low expectations; he might actually be legitimately good at the hot corner.

Through 270 innings, he's posted two outs above average, a fielding run value of one, and zero defensive runs saved. The outs above average mark has him ranked as the fifth-best of 21 qualified third basemen. Sorry, Bo, it looks like we were wrong about your glove work.

Let's apologize to Freddy Peralta and his efficiency

Folks were expecting an ace, but his stumbles out of the gate completely derailed fans' insistence that he must be extended. The right-hander had hopes high in large part because of his ace-like 2.70 ERA last season. Fortunately, Peralta has begun rounding into form, and while his 3.52 ERA isn't quite on the level he produced last season, things are moving in the right direction.

Peralta's a strikeout pitcher with a propensity to walk a few too many batters. That's brought up questions about efficiency. At times, he has had inefficient starts, and he's yet to complete more than six innings in any given start. With that, though, it's worth examining what role walks have truly played.

The soon-to-be 30-year-old is issuing free passes at a 9.8% rate, slightly elevated from the 9.1% marke he recorded in 2025 and 9.4% in 2024. Comparatively, that's not a huge jump. With the introduction of ABS, the entire league's walks have gone up. In 2025, the average walk rate was 8.4%. It's been roughly that rate for the last several seasons. However, now with the new challenge system, the league-average walk rate has spiked up to 9.9%.

Considering that baseline, Peralta's year-over-year jump and current performance are actually pretty good in the walk department. Elsewhere, his peripherals are actually pretty much in line with last season.

This Mets version of Peralta owns a 3.66 xFIP and a 3.81 SIERA. Last year's version posted a 3.85 xFIP and 3.68 SIERA. They're basically the inverse of each other, and these metrics are the two best indicators of future performance. All this is to say, Peralta has pitched pretty much as well as he did last year. It's really our expectations that have been out of whack. Sorry, Freddy!

This Mets player doesn't deserve an apology

Marcus Semien's all-around game

Listen, everyone knew what was up with the Marcus Semien-Brandon Nimmo trade. The point was to save some money down the road. Still, there was some belief that Semien would continue to play Gold Glove defense as he did last season (or close to it), while his below-average bat wouldn't be bad enough to tank all of his value.

Instead, Semien has seen his wRC+ fall from 89 in 2025 to an untenable 53 as of May 5. Even worse, his defense has fallen off with a minus-one rating in both outs above average and defensive runs saved. Putrid offense plus subpar defense has led to him subtracting 0.4 fWAR from the Mets so far this season.

The salt in the wound is that Jeff McNeil is having a turn-back-the-clock season with the Athletics. All in all, Semien's play has been the worst-case scenario this year. Sorry, Marcus, but you have to be better.

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