Mets overcoming cold bats on a cold day bodes well for 2026 outlook

By the end of last season, 0-70 had become as much of an indictment of the 2025 Mets as an ugly statistic. Steve Cohen even made a point of referencing it in his press session at spring training in February, as if still finding it hard to believe his ballclub had gone the entire year without winning a game in which they’d trailed after eight innings. Such futility demanded some examination: was the absence of dramatic comebacks fluky or did it hint at some lack of esprit de corps on the '25 Mets?

David Stearns and Cohen clearly decided on the latter, overhauling the roster and, as Cohen noted on that day in February, bringing in proven clutch hitters in part so 0-70 didn’t happen again. And so as the Mets pulled off the unlikeliest of comeback wins on Saturday night at Citi Field , defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-2 on Luis Robert Jr. 's 11th-inning three-run home run , both the owner and president of baseball operations had to feel as warm and fuzzy, wherever they were watching, as the players were bitterly cold on the ballfield.

As it turned out, the win wouldn’t have changed the 0-70 stat last year, as the Mets were tied 0-0 after eight innings on this day. But suffice it to say that coming back not once but twice in extra innings, on a day when they couldn’t get a big hit for nine innings, made for a memorable comeback and perhaps reason to believe this indeed will be a team with more grit, more toughness than whatever happened to last year’s ballclub. Especially considering it seemed the Mets had blown their opportunity to win the game in the 10th, when their best hitters, Francisco Lindor , Juan Soto , and Bo Bichette all failed to get the winning run in from third base after Mark Vientos and Luis Torrens had delivered clutch singles to get the game tied.

All Lindor and Soto needed were fly balls to get the run in, but couldn’t deliver. And Bichette, who has been hailed as something of a clutch-hitting savant with the numbers to prove it, lifted a routine fly ball to right for the third out, three innings after striking out in the eighth with the go-ahead run on third. But that’s baseball, of course.