Cubs hand Mets 11th straight loss with 10th-inning walk-off

Nico Hoerner’s sacrifice fly off Craig Kimbrel in the 10th inning sent the Mets to a 2-1 loss at Wrigley Field and pushed New York into its 11th straight defeat, the club’s longest losing streak since the 2004 team dropped 11 in a row. What began as another tight April game ended as another late collapse, the kind that turns one defeat into evidence of a much larger problem.

The Cubs kept finding a way to hang around, and then to finish. Pinch-hitter Michael Conforto tied the game for Chicago with an RBI double off Devin Williams in the ninth, wiping out New York’s narrow lead and shifting the pressure onto a Mets team that has repeatedly failed to close out games. In the 10th, Pete Crow-Armstrong started as the automatic runner, Dansby Swanson fouled off two bunt attempts, and Kimbrel’s wild pitch moved Crow-Armstrong to third before Hoerner lifted the deciding sacrifice fly.

For the Mets, the sequence fit the larger pattern of the skid. The losses have piled up through late-inning mistakes, missed chances and a mounting inability to absorb pressure when the game tightens. A team once viewed as a contender is now being measured against a collapse that is starting to define its season more than any individual performance. The standings only sharpened the problem, with ESPN listing the Mets at 7-15 after the defeat.

The historical comparison makes the slide even harder to dismiss as a short-term blip. Eleven straight losses in April does more than dent a record; it raises questions about roster construction, bullpen stability and whether the club has enough leadership to stop the spiral before it hardens into the season’s identity. Baseball-Reference listed the game time at 2:44 with an announced crowd of 35,497, but the larger number was the one attached to New York’s losing streak. For the Cubs, it was another comeback win. For the Mets, it was another night when the margin between a slump and a crisis grew harder to see.