NL Wild Card Standings: NY Mets moving up by inches when they could use yards

On June 1, the day began with the New York Mets trailing the Arizona Diamondbacks for the final NL Wild Card spot by 5.5 games. They were even ahead of the Miami Marlins at the time, holding down the 12th best record in the National League.

After a 3-3 road trip that felt more successful considering how it began, the Mets are 5 games out of a NL Wild Card spot. The half-game improvement happens to include the Marlins leaping them by a game and a half as well, putting one more team in front of their challenge to overcome a 12-game losing streak.

It stunningly hasn’t made a difference that they’ve been 7-3 in their last 10 while the Diamondbacks are just 3-7. The Marlins, for what it’s worth, have been an even 5-5. We can’t discount how much better the Mets have performed lately. However, the team is only taking baby steps forward when they are in need of rattling off a bigger run.

The Mets need to be better than good to make up ground in the NL Wild Card standings

Beating up the St. Louis Cardinals this week, the owner of the first NL Wild Card spot, helps. It also doesn’t solve the issue of passing over all of the teams between them and the third Wild Card spot. The San Diego Padres looked worse than their record is. The Cincinnati Reds may be fraudulent. There’s no way the Marlins or Washington Nationals are all that much better than the Mets over an equally competitive 162-game schedule.

Aside from simply winning games, the Mets need help from everyone else. The Padres and Reds play this week which means someone has to win and steal some momentum the Mets could gain. The Marlins and Diamondbacks play each other. Do we want the debt snowball (have the Marlins quickly fade out) or the avalanche (the seemingly more competitive Diamondbacks tank) to help us out? All the Mets can control is winning games themselves.

Because everyone is talking about it, the Mets went into June 1, 2024, only 4.5 games out of a NL Wild Card spot. That’s better than where they are right now. In a year where the NL was weaker than the AL, 11 games under .500 isn’t as daunting.

A 16-8 June full of Jose Iglesias, Grimace, and comebacks galore pushed the Mets to one game under .500. The .666 winning percentage deal with the devil still wasn’t enough to snatch a Wild Card spot quite yet. For all of their effort, the Mets gained only 2.5 games in the standings. They trailed St. Louis by a pair heading into July.

Gaining 2.5 games in the standings in June 2024 required the Mets to win two-thirds of their games. Is this year’s team capable of it? They don’t face anyone in June who has a worse record than theirs. Playing .500 won’t be acceptable enough because while there are months to catch up, the August 3rd trade deadline represents a choice bigger than one season.

NL Wild Card Standings as of June 8, 2026
Cardinals 35-28
Phillies 35-30
Diamondbacks 34-31
Padres 33-31 (0.5 back)
Pirates 34-32 (0.5 back)
Cubs 34-32 (0.5 back)
Nationals 33-33 (1.5 back)
Reds 31-33 (2.5 back)
Marlins 31-35 (3.5 back)
Mets 29-36 (5 back)

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