Juan Soto Won't Play Tonight. The Best Team in Baseball Came to Queens Anyway.
Juan Soto signed in New York to play games exactly like this one — a July Sunday against the best team in baseball, the sort of afternoon a $765 million bat is supposed to decide. He'll spend this one on the injured list, a left calf strain filed the day before first pitch.
The Mets are 43-62. The team that was built to own October is closer to the draft lottery than the Wild Card, and the roster that arrives in Flushing today — the Dodgers, 67-38, the best record in the sport — is the one New York imagined itself being. That's the whole story, and the market mostly agrees: Los Angeles is a heavy road favorite.
Which is exactly why the number is the interesting part. Neither starter is why anyone's watching — Sheehan's 5.13 ERA hides a tidier 3.93 xFIP, and Peralta's line (5.01 ERA, 4.51 FIP) says the Mets' rotation isn't the thing that stops Shohei Ohtani (143 wRC+) and a lineup this deep. The question sharps are sitting with isn't whether the Dodgers are better. It's whether a 43-62 team, minus its best hitter, still has any residual brand value baked into that home price — or whether the collapse has already been paid for in full.