Can Mets, Angels Or Giants Pull A Major League (Movie) Miracle?

Like any parents of a 13-year-old, my wife and I like to think we do our best to expose our child to the finest culture America has to offer.

And thus, on Friday night, we streamed "Major League," the greatest baseball movie of all-time.

Alas, since our daughter is 13 and indifferent at best to baseball, she spent the movie scrunched up across from me on the couch with her nose buried in her phone instead of howling along with my wife and me to a movie that is as funny now as it was in 1989.

Unfortunately for the New York Mets, Los Angeles Angels and San Francisco Giants, the tale of slow-starting Cleveland is also very relevant right now.

The Mets Are 15-24 (And So Are the Angels and Giants)

Because I am totally normal, I immediately thought about the Mets when I heard sinister owner Rachel Phelps mutter her disgust over Cleveland only being 15-24 through 39 games instead of being much worse, which would of course (spoiler alert) make it easier for her to move the team to Miami.

I glanced at Baseball Reference and then looked up at my wife.

"The Mets are 14-23," I said. "If they split the next two games…"

Guess what? They're the Mets, so they did that.

And in their typical fashion, too, first by flirting with a 16-23 record by getting the win out of the way with a 3-1, 10-inning victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday before falling 2-1 Saturday night.

Mark Vientos flied out to the wall in center for the second out of the ninth inning in the defeat. I assume he knew hitting the ball 10 extra feet would endanger this story. Thanks, Mark!

As you may have surmised by the reference to the Angels and Giants earlier, the Mets are one of three teams in the 15-24 club this year. Which is good, I suppose, since misery loves company and history suggests the final 123 games of the season (or 122 in the case of the Angels, who are now 15-25 after losing Friday AND Saturday, because they're the Angels) aren't going to be much better than the first 39 games (or 40 games in the case of the Angels).

How Many Teams Have Begun A Season Exactly 15-24?

Not counting our beloved fictitious misfits in Cleveland, the Angels, Mets and Giants make it 153 teams that have started exactly 15-24 through 39 games, per my usage of Stathead at Baseball-Reference.com. I'm sure this is the type of baseball research project they had in mind when designing the greatest invention since sliced bread.

The three teams at 15-24 through 39 games are the most in a season since 2010, when the Kansas City Royals, Milwaukee Brewers and Cleveland all pulled off the trick. Life imitates art! This is the 15th time at least three teams have been 15-24 through 39 games, though only the 1972 season (with the Brewers, Royals, San Diego Padres and St. Louis Cardinals) had as many as four 15-24 teams.

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Appropriately, there's a little bit of symmetry to how frequently this year's trio of 15-24 teams have opened with this record through 39 games.

The Angels are 15-24 for the fourth time in franchise history and the first time since 2013. The Giants are 15-24 for the fifth time ever and the first time since 1990. And, yup, the Mets are 15-24 for the sixth time and the first time since 2001, which is fitting since that was the most inexplicably feeble Mets lineup I'd seen until this season.

How Many Teams Have Made The Playoffs After Starting 15-24?

Just four of the previous 150 teams to open 15-24 have made the playoffs.

(This again does not count our favorite bunch of make-believe goofballs performing on the shores of Lake Erie, who won the AL East over the New York Yankees in a one-game playoff when Willie Mays Hayes raced home from second on Jake Taylor's bunt. Good thing my daughter wasn't paying attention, because I'm not sure what would have been tougher to explain: The idea that players used to be able to bunt or that teams who tied for a division title used to play a one-game playoff to determine the champ)

Anyway, this puts the Mets, Angels and Giants well into Lloyd Christmas territory in which they're declaring we're saying there's a chance. Sure. There's a 0.027 percent chance one of them is going to make the playoffs…except it's actually only a 0.02 percent chance they're going to make the playoffs because one of the 15-24 teams to make the playoffs did so during the 1981 split season. Sorry to raise your hopes.

• 1981 Kansas City Royals: May as well start with the split season Royals, mostly because they were the first team to make the playoffs after opening 15-24. But their miserable first half (20-30) was wiped away when they got the chance to start anew upon the resumption of the schedule Aug, 10. Kansas City went 30-23 in the second half, including 20-13 after Dick Howser took over for the fired Jim Frey, and lost to the Oakland Athletics in the AL West Division Series.
• 1995 New York Yankees: Another strike-shortened season, another team in the playoffs after a 14-25 start. Again, it's the most Mets thing they need a work stoppage THIS season, one year before the potentially never-ending lockout. The 1995 season was the first with a wild card team in each league (it was actually implemented for 1994, but well, there was that whole strike that ended the season in August thing) and the Yankees overcame their early stumbles to reach the playoffs for the first time since 1981 (wacky). They squandered a two games to none lead against the Seattle Mariners in a five-game loss in the AL Division Series, which ended Don Mattingly's playing career and sent Buck Showalter down a decades-long path of uniquely torturous near-misses in the playoffs.
• 2005 Houston Astros: No strike this season, just the only season in which a team made the World Series after starting exactly 14-25. The Astros, who were four games under .500 as late as Aug. 14 in 2004 before making it to the seventh game of the NL Championship Series, decided to dig an even bigger hole on their way to making the franchise's first World Series, where they were swept by the Chicago White Sox, Good news: Thanks to ESPN, a lot of people have forgotten that ever happened.
• 2009 Colorado Rockies: Fewer than two years after their lone World Series appearance, the Rockies got off to a 15-24 start but began turning things around seven games later following the firing of manager Clint Hurdle. Jim Tracy went 74-42 the rest of the way and the Rockies earned the NL wild card before falling to the eventual NL champion Philadelphia Phillies in the Division Series.

How Much Like Major League Are The Mets, Giants and Angels?

Instead of trying to figure out if any of this year's 15-24 teams can make the playoffs (short answer: almost definitely not), why not determine which one of them is owned by the closest thing to a real-life Rachel Phelps?

Alas, the answer here is also similarly negative. Or positive, in this case?

• It's definitely not the Mets, since Steve Cohen is spending almost $400 million on a team on pace to lose 99 games. This has been a masterclass in mismanagement by David Stearns, Cohen's hand-picked president of baseball operations, but it's not intentional. It'd be more impressive if it was.
• It's also definitely not the Giants, who have been going - cliche alert! - outside the box under franchise catcher tuned president of baseball operations Buster Posey in an attempt to build a contender in the loaded NL West. But Rafael Devers is just as moody in San Francisco as he was in Boston, except now he's unproductive as well. There's not much here to work with for Tony Vitello, the first manager to jump from the college game to the bigs without any professional coaching experience in between. Posey began acknowledging as much by trading starting catcher Patrick Bailey to, appropriately enough, Cleveland on Saturday.
• Rachel Phelps at least had a plan to demolish her team, so we can't even compare her to the Angels' Arte Moreno, who has overseen the majors' longest playoff drought despite having Mike Trout AND Shohei Ohtani on the same team for six straight seasons during that span. Ohtani is long gone and winning titles with the crosstown Dodgers, but the Angels might endure their first 100-loss season ever even with Trout in the midst of a surprising comeback. Moreno's just incompetent, not cartoonishly cunning. So there is that?

Related: Exclusive: Angels outfielder Jo Adell breaks down viral catches

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This story was originally published May 10, 2026 at 9:57 AM.