Laura Albanese: Mets' offense needs a lot more than a positive tweet from owner Steve Cohen

LOS ANGELES — The Mets had just dropped their seventh game in a row to a team that uses their pregame hype reel to call themselves the villains of baseball. Nolan McLean was brilliant, though it was not enough. Francisco Lindor finally looked good at the plate, though it was not enough. Bo Bichette is getting it going, though it was not enough.

After, Mets owner Steve Cohen had this to say via X:

“Nobody likes to lose but I saw some ‘green shoots tonight,’ ” he wrote. “On offense, Lindor had two hits including a home run. Bichette got a double hitting it to left field as opposed to recently being right field prone. Benge got a solid hit. Soto started his running progression today. Semien hit a shot that might have been a home run on a warmer night. Finally, Nolan McLean pitched an outstanding game going 7 innings. Hang in there, fans, we will turn this around!”

Nobody likes to lose but I saw some “ green shoots tonight “. On offense, Lindor had two hits including a home run. Bichette got a double hitting it to left field as opposed to recently being right field prone. Benge got a solid hit. Soto started his running progression today.…

— Steven Cohen (@StevenACohen2) April 15, 2026

This, incidentally, was also not enough.

Though it wasn’t exactly Herb Brooks motivating a bunch of amateur hockey players before The Miracle on Ice, I understand the sentiment: Good times are coming, just stay patient.

There's a funny thing about the Brooks speech. Most people remember the one he gave when they played the Russians — a yarn about how if the U.S. played the Russians 10 times, the Russians might win nine of them.

“Not this game,” Kurt Russell says in the movie adaptation. “Not tonight . . . Tonight, we are the greatest hockey team in the world. You were born to be hockey players. Every one of you. And you were meant to be here tonight. This is your time.”

But there was a second Brooks speech — this one, given before the gold-medal match against Finland.

“If you lose this game, you'll take it to your [expletive] graves,” he said.

He leaves. He pops back in. “Your [expletive] graves.”

April baseball games don’t have quite the heft of Olympic gold-medal matches, but then again, this Mets team missed the playoffs by exactly one game last year. So maybe, as they reach optimal tailspin, they should consider the fact that if they become two-time champions of being the worst team money can buy, that, too, will haunt them to their graves.

Yes, Juan Soto is hurt, and the offense is lost without him. Jorge Polanco, dealing with bursitis, looks to be in agony when he swings. The starting pitching is mercurial — you can count on Freddy Peralta, McLean and Clay Holmes — but David Peterson and Kodai Senga will have you reaching for Pepto-Bismol.

But mostly it’s the high-leverage at-bats, and nothing typified that more than their approach against Alex Vesia in the ninth inning of their 2-1 loss to the Dodgers on Tuesday. The Dodgers, working without Edwin Diaz, who might be primed for an injured list stint, managed just fine with the rest of their bullpen. After withstanding a filthy Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Mets did nothing against Blake Treinen, who recorded one big out, and less against Vesia.

The batters were Polanco, Bo Bichette and Francisco Alvarez.

Let’s take this player by player.

Polanco struck out on three pitches. He took a fastball on the corner for strike one, and then swung at a changeup way outside and a fastball way outside.

Bichette, who last year was the most clutch player in baseball, went down on four pitches. He fouled off the first, laid off a high fastball on the second, and then swung through two sliders that were dancing with his shoelaces.

Alvarez went for broke, swinging at three straight sliders so low, they might’ve been attempting to reach the Earth’s core.

“Ultra aggressive and we just went out of the strike zone,” manager Carlos Mendoza said of those at-bats. “We chased. It’s hard to score in situations like that.”

Mendoza is downplaying it. The Mets are finding it hard to score in any situation. They’ve managed one run— that Lindor home run Cohen referenced — in the last 29 innings. They go into Wednesday trying to solve that particular conundrum against none other than Shohei Ohtani.

If it makes you feel any better, Lindor was sanguine after their loss Tuesday — a game where they managed four hits.

“I felt our at-bats, our intensity as a group, collectively was much better,” he said. “When you face guys like [Yamamoto] things like this are going to happen.”

He’s right. Yamamoto was excellent. But that doesn’t much explain the six losses before this one.

Which is what makes Cohen’s tweet troubling. Sure, we’re only a few weeks into the season, but when your owner is talking about moral victories or "green shoots" (i.e., indications of an upturn), that’s not a good sign. Lindor’s homer doesn’t matter when Yamamoto goes on to retire the next 20. Bichette’s double is great, but not when he gets stranded at second after Brett Baty swings through a strike-three splitter that looked as if it was yanked down by an invisible cord. McLean was great, no argument there.

Soto starting his run progression is something . . . but his return from a calf strain is still weeks away.

So maybe it’s time to borrow from Brooks’ playbook.

No, not the part where someone tells the Mets that this is their time. The part that inspires existential urgency not often seen in mid-April.

“If you lose this game, you will take it to your [expletive] graves.”

Is that dramatic? Certainly. But last year’s collapse is all the proof you need that sometimes a little drama is warranted.