The New York Mets scored 12 runs on Tuesday night. In 202 previous occasions where they reached that number, they won all but one. Now it’s 200-3.
The Kansas City Royals came back from a 9-4 deficit at Citi Field and hung 16 runs on the board. The final was 16-12, and the box score reads like a comedy of errors if you’re a Mets fan. But the numbers underneath it tell a stranger story.
Bob Nightengale of USA Today pointed out after the game that the Mets are now 200-3 all-time when scoring exactly 12 runs. When they score 11 or more, they’re 325-5. So this kind of collapse isn’t just bad. It’s historically rare.
The offense did its job early. Juan Soto went deep. The Mets piled up nine runs in the first four innings, including a chaotic first that had everything but a final score that held up. The problem was the pitching staff couldn’t stop the Royals from answering back. And once Kansas City got rolling, the Mets bullpen had no answer.
This wasn’t a case of the bats going quiet. The Mets kept scoring. They just couldn’t keep the Royals off the board. Kansas City put up 12 unanswered runs at one point, turning a comfortable lead into a blowout loss that will sit in the record books for all the wrong reasons.
For a team already buried in a miserable 2026 season, this one stings more than most. It’s one thing to get blown out. It’s another to score enough to win on 90 percent of nights and still find a way to lose. The bullpen has been a problem all year. Tuesday was just the most extreme example.
The Royals deserve credit for grinding. They kept extending innings, forced the Mets into high-leverage situations early, and never let up. But for New York, this loss exposes everything that’s gone wrong in one single game. Enough offense to win. Not enough pitching to hold it. And now a footnote in franchise history that nobody wanted.
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