In his first year with the Mets after signing a 15-year, $765 million deal, Juan Soto is having trouble matching last year’s Yankees numbers. (AP Photo/Aaron Gash)

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Hopes of a Subway Series are fading fast for New York’s baseball teams.

Both clubs start this week in their home ballparks, where their records are better, but remain embroiled in bad losing streaks.

The Mets have lost seven straight for the second time this season and 11 out of 12 while the Yankees have gone 20-31 – nearly one-third of the season – since June 13. For the teams that rank second and third in payroll, according to Roster Resource, that is not good return on investment (he site lists the Mets at $339 million and the Yankees at $295 million).

Where They Stand

The Mets stand second in the National League East at 63-55 but that’s 5½ games behind front-running Philadelphia and only 1½ ahead of hard-charging Cincinnati for the NL’s final wild-card spot. The Yankees are third in the AL East at 62-56, 6½ behind first-place Toronto and 2½ behind the arch-rival Boston Red Sox, who currently reside in second place.

Both teams have actually slumped since seeking to beef up their rosters at the trade deadline. The Yankees, bedeviled by a bad bullpen, added relievers Camilo Doval, Jake Bird, and David Bednar, plus third baseman Ryan McMahon, while the Mets brought in four two-month rentals in prospective free agents Cedric Mullins, Ryan Helsley, Tyler Rogers, and Gregory Soto (no relation to Juan). Helsley, Rogers, and Soto are all relief pitchers, while Mullins is a center-fielder who once had a 30/30 season.

Since the Mets began life as a 1962 National League expansion team, they have met the Yankees only once in the World Series. That match-up, in the year 2000, went to the Yankees in five games.

When 2025 spring training started six months ago, however, both teams were considered serious contenders – mainly because they spent heavily in the free agent market.

The Mets even gave former Yankee Juan Soto a 15-year, $765 million contract that was the largest and longest in professional sports.

The Yankees countered by spending money designated for Soto to sign Max Fried, arguably the top starting pitcher in free agency, to an eight-year, $218 million deal that was the largest and longest ever given a left-handed pitcher.

World Series Goal

Seeking their first world championship since 2009, the Yanks also added one-time National League MVPs Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger, plus erstwhile All-Star closer Devin Williams.

The Mets, who haven’t won a World Series since 1986, weren’t silent after signing Soto in a spirited bidding war. They also signed free-agent pitchers Clay Holmes, Frankie Montas, and Sean Manaea and traded for Griffin Canning, another pitcher, and Jose Siri, a speedy center-fielder who has spent most of this season sidelined by injury.

Both teams have big bats that have been as silent as Marcel Marceau.

Since the All-Star break last month, the Mets have a team batting average of .216. All-Star shortstop Francisco Lindor, one of the chief culprits, has gone 3-for-27 with 10 strikeouts, one home run, and a solitary run batted in over the 12-game skid.

Even Soto, bypassed for the All-Star team, has been so erratic that he’s likely to miss last year’s career peak of 41 homers. His batting average is down 37 points from 2024, when he hit .281.

Cleanup man Pete Alonso, the 30-year-old first baseman, managed to break Darryl Strawberry’s club home run record when he hit his 253rd Sunday but otherwise has been cold. His lack of production is partly responsible for the fact that the opposite has outscored the Mets, 43-25, during the past dozen games.

Seeking 500 Homers

Both Alonso and Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, owner of the American League’s single-season home run record (62 in 2022), have their sights set on 500 home runs – a likely guarantor of a plaque in the Hall of Fame gallery. Judge has hit 352 and plays home games in a far more favorable ballpark.

But Judge, 33, is fighting age as well as enemy pitchers. He was hitting .392 on June 12 but .239 in 41 games since. Even a 10-day IL respite that resulted from an elbow injury hasn’t helped the sleeping slugger. In four games since returning, he is 3-for-15 with no extra-base hits.

Injuries have intervened on both sides. Yankees starting pitchers Gerrit Cole and Clarke Schmidt both went down with elbow injuries that required Tommy John surgery. The Mets were forced to improvise when Manaea, Montas, Canning, and projected staff ace Kodai Senga were sidelined.

For the first three months of this season, the Yankees coasted. They had the best record in the big leagues on June 12 at 42-25. Judge was flirting with .400 and Fried was the front-runner for the Cy Young Award, which would have been his first.

But Fried has been floundering since, posting a 7.00 ERA over his last seven starts while insisting the blister issues he encountered earlier this year had not returned.

“We’ve been through a bad two months,” manager Aaron Boone told reporters, “but we’re still in playoff position now. You can pick out a number of teams that were in worse position than we are but still went on that run. We have the people to do that.”

Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, a former Yankees coach under Boone, agreed. “We can’t be looking at the standings,” he told Mike Puma of The New York Post. “We have got to start getting the job done.”

Posting a 5.18 team ERA in August – especially when coupled with the anemic attack – won’t do it.

Unless both teams personify the baseball cards of their stars, two of baseball’s best-compensated clubs could be sitting on the sidelines in October.

As Casey Stengel might have said, “Who woulda thunk it?”