Mets’ positive momentum halted in frustrating loss to Nationals as familiar problems return

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WASHINGTON — The Mets cannot afford to lose more games like Wednesday’s.

New York dropped a 5-4 decision to the Nationals on Wednesday night, with Kodai Senga digging an early hole and the offense falling short of a late-inning comeback. A modest three-game winning streak is over, and the Mets are now 6 1/2 games behind the Phillies. The Reds could tie New York for the final wild card with a late-night win in Anaheim.

On Tuesday, the Mets submitted their most complete performance in weeks — the kind that reminded you how they once owned the sport’s best record earlier in the season. Wednesday was a return to the form of the past two months, during which they’ve been one of the National League’s worst teams.

For the Mets to qualify for the postseason, let alone advance once there, they will need better from Senga and an offense that slumbers too often against middle relievers.

Let’s start with Senga, whose last outing against Atlanta had been a promising step forward. He couldn’t maintain that momentum on Wednesday against a Nationals lineup that entered the day with a sub-.700 OPS for the season.

It started with a small mistake that snowballed.

Kodai Senga’s next start will come on four days of rest for the first time this season. (Greg Fiume / Getty Images)

The right-hander had retired the first six Nationals on 19 pitches; his first inning, in particular, was about as sharp out of the gates as he’s been all season. To start the third, he’d gotten ahead of Dylan Crews 0-2 before missing with four straight pitches out of the zone for a leadoff walk. (True, Senga’s 2-2 sinker looked to catch the bottom of the strike zone; home-plate umpire Todd Tichenor, however, did not grant that slice of the zone all night, which is why Washington manager Miguel Cairo finished the game in his office rather than the dugout.)

Crews ran on the first pitch to the following hitter, Drew Millas. Because Crews was running, catcher Luis Torrens reached his glove out to quicken his throw down to second, and Millas’ swing knocked Torrens’ glove clear off his hand. That was catcher’s interference, putting two men on with nobody out. Those two runners scored on a C.J. Abrams infield single (on which Abrams beat Senga to the bag) and Josh Bell’s sacrifice fly.

An inning later, the contact was harder: Two doubles and a triple to score two runs, all on elevated secondary pitches when Senga was ahead in the count. A Bell homer in the fifth, on a cutter left up, made it 5-1 Washington.

The Mets have challenged Senga to be in and around the strike zone more; prior starts contained too many non-competitive pitches. Wednesday included the opposite, with too many deliveries catching meaty parts of the strike zone.

“A couple of pitches (were) middle-middle,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Especially when he was ahead, he left pitches right in the middle, and they made him pay.”

“I was able to attack the zone well, but I couldn’t finish them off,” Senga said through interpreter Hiro Fujiwara.

Since he threw four scoreless innings in his return from injury just before the All-Star break, Senga has allowed 21 runs (18 earned) in 27 innings. That’s a 6.00 ERA. He hasn’t earned an individual win since June 12 — the afternoon against the Nationals when he injured his hamstring — and after going 13-4 in Senga’s first 17 starts this season, the Mets have dropped the last three.

Senga’s next start will come on four days of rest on Monday against Philadelphia. He hasn’t thrown on four days of rest all season.

“It should be no problem,” he said.

It looked as if the Mets would get Senga off the hook in the sixth inning. Facing Nationals pitcher Brad Lord a third time, the lineup finally built a rally around two walks and two doubles to pull within one. That’s when the Nationals turned a precarious lead over to the National League’s worst bullpen.

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— New York Mets (@Mets) August 21, 2025

But Cole Henry, Shinnosuke Ogasawara, Clayton Beeter and José A. Ferrer combined to throw 3 2/3 scoreless innings. Henry stranded the bases loaded in the sixth and Ogasawara, Beeter and Ferrer faced the minimum over the last three frames, requiring all of 26 pitches among them.

It isn’t the first time of late that the Mets have had a prolonged silent stretch against an opposing bullpen. It’s happened in tight losses to Cleveland and Atlanta, as well.

“We want to be aggressive in the strike zone, but we’ve got to swing at our pitches,” Mendoza said. “At times we’re swinging at pitchers’ pitches when we’re ahead in the count.”

To make matters worse, Brandon Nimmo left the game in the second inning with a stiff neck. Nimmo has had to deal with occasional neck issues since a 2019 injury; he suggested he should be fine in the next day or so. He compared it to a similar bout of stiffness he experienced in May, when he left one game early and missed the next two.

With the loss, the Mets dropped to 12-12 against the three teams behind them in the NL East: Miami, Atlanta and Washington. The Phillies are three games better against that trio; that’s half the difference in the division right now.

(Photo: Greg Fiume / Getty Images)

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