Mets GM Zack Scott not panicking with club sitting at 7-7 after being swept by Cubs
Mets acting general manager Zack Scott during a spring training workout on Feb. 24 in Port St. Lucie, Fla. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
Is the Mets’ glass half-empty or half-full?
When you’re 7-7, as they were going into Friday night’s series opener against the Nationals at Citi Field, the answer is yes.
"It’s been a mixed bag," acting general manager Zack Scott said in a state-of-the-team-after-14-games address before Jacob deGrom faced Washington.
The Mets returned home after getting swept by the Cubs in a three-game series at Wrigley Field. They continue to struggle with runners in scoring position and had serious defensive lapses in Chicago, most notably by third baseman J.D. Davis, who was back in the lineup after starting Thursday’s game on the bench.
"There’s been a lot of positive things," Scott said. "Obviously, starting with tonight’s starting pitcher and tomorrow’s starting pitcher [Marcus Stroman] and, in general, our starting pitching, I’d say overall, and our pitching, overall, has been really good. I think there’s been some things that have improved. At times, defensively, we’ve seen some improvements. At times, there have been lapses, as you’ve seen recently.
"Offensively, the obvious thing is struggling with runners in scoring position. You never want to dismiss these things. We need to understand why players aren’t hitting better. We know these guys can hit. We know they’re going to hit. It’s always tough to live through that when they’re not, but it happens all the time. It’s kind of normal ebbs and flows. But it doesn’t mean we’re not working towards trying to figure out if there is something there that can be changed. You don’t want to let something go. If there’s something that someone in the coaching staff or anyone else notices, we try to address it. But there could be the mistake of trying to intervene too early. You’re trying to balance those things and we’ve only played 14 games. I mean, that’s what, 8, 9% of the season, and so there’s a lot that we observe along the way, but we just need to be careful not to overreact to. That’s for others to do so."
Scott said that last sentence with a chuckle. He knows losing three in a row in Chicago [and making four errors in Wednesday’s 16-4 drubbing] had some Mets fans seeing red and feeling blue.
But he also knows the Mets have had an uneven schedule with postponements and are just now getting into the rhythm of playing every day. That should help with some of the defensive problems. At least the Mets hope it will.
"We’re coming off a series where we had some pretty bad mistakes," Scott said. "Really, any kind of defensive mistake you can make, we did in one of those games in particular, whether it’s where you’re throwing the ball, where you are backing up or booting balls, making bad throws . . . Again, back to not wanting to overreact, but knowing that these are things that players have to work on. The coaches know these players really well and they know what it looks like when certain players struggle, and they’ve kind of gone through these cycles before where it’s like, ‘OK, this is what we’re going to work on with this guy.’ So they already know those conversations. There’s a process going on behind the scenes to improve that. You just have to continue to have good process when things are going wrong that you’re not freaking out and causing panic in the clubhouse because it’s too short a sample to be panicking about that. But we know guys have been working really hard to get better since day one of spring training, and I think we saw some good signs with some folks. Sometimes people might slip into some old habits and the job is to try to get them out of it as quickly as possible."
Anthony Rieber covers sports media and business and professional sports (you know, games and trades and things). He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since Jan. 1, 2026.
