Jeff Passan is one of the most respected baseball insiders on the planet. He breaks trades, reports contracts, and generally operates with the kind of measured professionalism you’d expect from someone at ESPN. And then Wednesday night happened, the Mets committed six errors in a single game, and Passan looked at his keyboard and typed five words that will haunt New York for the rest of this season. “This whole season is an error.” Put it in a museum. Retire the tweet. We’re done here.
The Cubs Didn’t Just Beat the Mets — They Embarrassed Them
Let’s set the scene properly because the score alone doesn’t tell the full story. Through three games of this series, Chicago has outscored New York 29-14. That’s not a series. That’s a hostage situation. The Mets have been completely, comprehensively, and almost artistically dismantled by a Cubs team that itself has spent most of this season teetering on the edge of mediocrity.
Sometimes you need the right opponent to find yourself. Chicago found themselves against the Mets. Unfortunately for New York, they found themselves too — and what they found wasn’t pretty.
Six Errors. Six. In One Game.
Wednesday night was the crowning jewel of the carnage. Shota Imanaga served up back-to-back homers in the second inning and it genuinely looked like the Cubs were about to hand the game away. Instead, Imanaga dug in, the Cubs offense kept rolling, and the Mets’ defence completely fell to pieces around them.
Six errors. The first time that’s happened to the Mets since 2014. Not in a decade has a New York team been this catastrophically bad in the field in a single game. And it happened on national television, with the Cubs watching and laughing and scoring runs off every single mistake.
By the time it was over, Passan had already loaded the gun. All he needed was five words to pull the trigger.
Then Chicago Twisted the Knife
As if the six-error nightmare wasn’t enough, the Cubs decided the most ruthless possible follow-up move was to poach David Peterson straight off the Mets’ pitching staff in the immediate aftermath of the loss. Adding insult to incompetence in real time. The ink wasn’t even dry on the box score before Chicago was raiding New York’s roster.
It’s the kind of move that makes you check if the Cubs’ front office has a villain origin story somewhere.
How Did New York Get Here?
Cast your mind back to the offseason and the Mets’ grand rebuild. Out went Edwin Diaz, Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, and Jeff McNeil — a gutting of the clubhouse’s core identity in one fell swoop. In came Bo Bichette, Luis Robert Jr., Marcus Semien, and Jorge Polanco, plus pitching additions in Freddy Peralta, Luke Weaver, and Devin Williams.
On paper, in a vacuum, with the lights off and your eyes half closed, some of those moves made sense. In practice? The whole thing has curdled spectacularly. Wednesday felt less like a bad game and more like the moment the season officially stopped pretending it could still be saved.
The Fire Sale Is Coming — And Chicago Is Watching
The Peterson trade might just be the opening act. A full Mets fire sale feels less like a possibility now and more like an inevitability, and the Cubs are positioned perfectly to benefit. Freddy Peralta has been identified as an ideal rotation target — someone who could slot straight into the top of Chicago’s staff and transform their deadline outlook entirely.
At 40-37, the Cubs aren’t world-beaters yet. But they’re buyers. The Mets are becoming sellers. And given what happened this week at Citi Field, New York might not have much leverage left to demand a premium.
Hot take to close: The Mets didn’t just lose a series. They lost the plot, the defence, their dignity, and a pitcher — all in the space of seventy-two hours. Passan’s five words were brutal, but they were also just accurate. When an entire season can be summarised as a fielding error, you don’t need advanced metrics to understand the problem. The Cubs are coming for Peralta. New York should probably just let him go and start planning for 2027. 🔥
