“This summer, the Mets suffered so many difficult, late defeats in close games that no one on the team, surely, could have escaped the chilling interior doubt — the doubt that kills — whispering that their courage and brilliance last summer had been an illusion all the time, had been nothing but luck.”
—Roger Angell, in the wake of the 1970 season
The New York Mets have achieved baseball’s state of intermediate grace, a slot within MLB’s postseason matrix, eleven times in their 64-year history. In every one of the seasons that followed, their subsequent won-lost record paled in comparison to that which merited celebration. On average, Mets teams in those years after won twelve fewer games than they did during the preceding years when champagne flowed at least once.
1969: 100-62
1970: 83-79
1973: 82-79
1974: 71-91
1986: 108-54
1987: 92-70
1988: 100-60
1989: 87-75
1999: 97-66
2000: 94-68
2000: 94-68
2001: 82-80
2006: 97-65
2007: 88-74
2015: 90-72
2016: 87-75
2016: 87-75
2017: 70-92
2022: 101-61
2023: 75-87
2024: 89-73
2025: 83-79
As you can see, not all falls from graces are created equal. A couple of times, the tumbles were modest and hardly mattered — twice the Mets returned to the playoffs in those years after; once they advanced further in those playoffs than they had the year before. This was when playoff spots were more accessible than they had been when the Mets first earned one, if not as accessible as they would become in the most recent season in which the Mets failed to grab one, the season that ended Sunday in Miami with a 4-0 loss to the Marlins.
In 2025, the Mets’ record was 83-79, six games off the pace of the 2024 Mets of increasingly sainted memory. Unlike 2000 and 2016, despite the availability of more postseason berths than ever, this presented a problem. Had the Mets gone 89-73 as they did a year earlier, they would have cruised into the 2025 playoffs. Had they won a single game more, they would have eked in, but that would have been fine, at least until an 84-78 Mets squad was eliminated in due order, because very few teams with so few wins get very far in a postseason. Yet it’s been known to happen, and we were willing to find out if it could again.
Had 83-79 qualified us, we would have taken that, too. It came damn close to doing so. The 83-79 record with which the Mets completed their business was the same as that which will be carried into the postseason by the Cincinnati Reds, a feisty bunch that backed into clinching, pushed giddily into their bubbly by the feistless Mets, ass over teakettle, despite their own last-day 4-2 loss at Milwaukee. The Reds, a couple of hot weeks in September notwithstanding, were no great shakes in 2025. Actually, they were the same shakes as the Mets, except along the way to shaking out with an identical 79 losses, they won the season series between them and us, and that represented the difference between getting to go on or having to go home. There was a time when a tiebreaking game would have been played to determine postseason entry, but that’s simply not done anymore. And, honestly, if we’re determining which 83-79 team deserves to not be a league’s sixth postseason entrant, maybe baseball’s powers that be shouldn’t sanction spending one more minute on it than necessary.
I seem to be obsessing on the won-lost record rather than the game that sealed it. Yes, the Mets played nine more futile innings on Sunday. Yes, it boiled down to one panicked inning of middle relief and one scorching bases-loaded line drive that landed in a glove. Yes, it was the Marlins, official doer-in of last-ditch Met playoff hopes, who did in last-ditch Met playoff hopes once again. Yes, it was the Marlins’ World Series, except unlike in 2003, I wasn’t pulling for them to beat New York.
Give the Marlins credit for coming to play the role of spoiler with zest. Give the Mets another demerit for barely showing up when everything was on the line. Or maybe the Mets played to the best of their 2025 ability, which is a frightening thought. Then again, we were just presented 162 games’ worth of evidence that the Mets weren’t able to get done the minimum that needed doing to get where it once seemed there was no way they weren’t going. Their ability as a unit apparently topped out at 83 wins and 79 losses.
If I may be Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man character for a moment, in my day, our team didn’t play mediocre baseball for the vast majority of six months and still have a chance on the final day to be eligible to win the World Series unless somebody shouted in our face that we had to believe. If we were going to finish barely over .500, we’d simply give up before the last week of September and we liked it — we loved it!
Maybe we didn’t love it, but we lived with it. Flibbity-floo, I grew up rooting for Mets clubs that fell short of falling just short. The 1970 Mets, the first team I ever followed from the beginning of a season to its end, went 83-79. They made the bulk of September painful by discovering ways to lose to the eventual division champion Pirates and almost everybody else down the stretch, a stretch in which their chances expired four days before the season did. When their world title defense got them no higher than third place, I processed third place, even at seven years of age, as where they belonged. Finish first, keep playing. Finish third, keep walking.
Eighty-Three and Seventy-Nine locked in as the Mets trademark record in my mind a year later, 1971. At the last home game of this season, while my friend Ken was still ruing how September 1970 got away (gently ask him about Willie Montañez when he was a callup on the Phillies, I dare ya), I drifted to the next July. The 2025 Mets, as every schoolchild by now knows, started 45-24. Only the AP History classes probably mention that in 1971, the Mets sat in first place with a record of 45-29 on June 30. The next thing I remember — and I really do remember this — was the Mets went out and lost 20 of their next 27 games, exiting the NL East race as they spiraled. At 83-79, they finished tied for third, no tiebreaker of any kind applied to decide whether theirs was the best 83-79 record extant.
The Mets won 83 games in a 156-game strike-shortened season in 1972. It made for a better winning percentage than the previous two years, but proved irrelevant to the pennant race’s conclusion. The Mets won 82 games in 1973, the aberration of all aberrations in the four-division era. In 1975, the Mets won 82 games again, and they had a chance when September started, but by losing significantly more than they won after September 1, they transmitted to their loyalists that 82 wouldn’t be enough. The 86 wins of 1976 were stitched mainly from window dressing that materialized when the lone playoff spot on the table was too many seats up from where we’d positioned ourselves to stay by Memorial Day.
A slightly OK record, shorn of any given season’s context, was always a slightly OK record. You could be disappointed. You could be a rationalist. You could tell yourself next year would be the year we’d get back to where we were in 1969. You would be absolutely wrong about that last one throughout the 1970s, especially the late 1970s, but you recognized that a team that posted a record of or something like 83-79 was probably not going to be a playoff team, and if a team with a record like that did make the playoffs, you were entitled to use the word miracle like it was used in ’69.
That was all before Wild Cards existed. Wild Cards, from the mid-1990s on, have served roughly the same purpose the Mets did in 1962, per what the old Dodger Billy Loes said then upon his brief springtime dalliance with the expansion club:
“The Mets is a very good thing. They give everybody a job. Just like the WPA.”
In the modern baseball sense, the Wild Card makes every half-decent also-ran a potential contender while in the course of also-running. In the Wild Card era, prior to this season, the Mets had one 83-79 finisher, in 2005. That was the first year of this blog. We got our hopes up as August was becoming September, and we had our hopes quashed as the Wild Card we were seeking slipped from even theoretical reach. Still, it was a mostly fun year. The arrow was pointing up from the seasons before, and our next stop was first place in 2006. We didn’t necessarily know it was coming, but we could settle for finishing a little out of the race if we could be convinced better times were directly ahead. The 83-79 Mets of 2005 added Delgado, Wagner, and Lo Duca to Wright, Reyes, Beltran, and Martinez en route to becoming the 97-65 Mets of 2006. It was a very convincing transformation.
The 2025 Mets had something their 1970, 1971, and 2005 predecessors in 83-79 finishes didn’t. They had four shots to make the playoffs. They could win the division, or they could win one of three Wild Cards. Three! They drew none.
None!
Roger Angell wrote of the 1970 club, “Why the Mets failed to survive even this flabby test, falling seventeen games below their record of last year, is easy to explain, but hard to understand.”
Leonard Koppett wrote of the 1971 club, “You couldn’t fairly pinpoint any one fact, or one person” that would help explain or understand why a team that was once sixteen games over .500 landed only four above the break-even point, but he did lament, a couple of seasons later, “Everything considered, 1971 was probably the least satisfying year the Mets had ever experienced.”
Adam Rubin quoted Fred Wilpon on the subject of the 2005 club, “We had times where we were in similar positions in years past, and you didn’t see the same vibrancy on the field I think you do now. I think it’s progress. I’m not sure it’s success unless you are in the playoffs, and we’re not in the playoffs. So that part is a disappointment.”
These were all pretty measured, realistic responses to Met seasons whose records were slightly OK. Conversely, I’m not sure how to respond to this Met season with the very same record, this Met season that echoed the audible post-1969 sighs of 1970 and the post-June swoon of 1971. Despite maintaining the services of several extremely able players for the season and seasons ahead, I don’t sense palpable progress outside of the stuff flashed by a few very inexperienced pitchers, and after the way 2025 didn’t build off 2024, I’m not about to, at this instant, elevate my hopes for 2026. Although there is no more 2025 for the New York Mets, it’s too soon to tell myself next year will be the year we get back to where we were in any of those eleven years that extended into postseason. If I thought about it, I’d think they could, but I thought about it this year and thought they would, and I was dead wrong.
When the Mets won on Saturday via a 5-0 shutout and kept themselves alive for one more day, I did tell myself that no matter what happened Sunday, I’d be at peace with however it ended. I stopped telling myself that by Sunday morning, but it really was gratifying to watch the 2025 Mets one more time — for the 83rd and, as it turned out, final time — be the Mets we thought they’d be. The Mets who did have that Amazin’ start; the Mets who did fill their ballpark and elicit honest enthusiasm; the Mets who intermittently quelled our doubts. Those Mets didn’t show up for Game 162. It was fairly predictable, based on what the Mets had become, but it was still baseball season then, and during baseball season, we do like to imagine somebody is shouting in our face that we have to believe, even if it’s only an irrepressible inner voice we’re straining to hear.
Life is better when it’s baseball season, no matter that some baseball seasons yield nothing better than a slightly OK record, no matter that some baseball seasons crash rather than fall from grace. I didn’t much care for this Mets baseball season within the context of hoping for more Mets baseball, but I hoped for it, regardless. And I cared down the season’s last swing, which generated a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of Francisco Lindor, who cautioned us that this year might not contain the wonders of last year when this year was still next year.
“Nothing’s promised in this game,” Francisco told reporters who gathered around him in the visitors’ clubhouse at Dodger Stadium minutes after the Mets were eliminated from the 2024 NLCS. “Every year, whether you have the same guys or not, it’s a different year.” Lindor and his teammates could do no wrong then. They just couldn’t do everything. In 2025, Lindor and Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo and Edwin Diaz, joined by Juan Soto, did much, but they could do only so much, and nobody else could do very much. Or if the lot of them could, they didn’t. Still, for Game 162, I put that learning aside. On the final day of a season when everything’s on the line, nothing that happened before the final day matters…except everything that went right or wrong for 161 games is why the final day plays out as one of those final days when everything matters.
This final day, Closing Day of 2025, played out as its own kind of horrible. It produced precisely the same record as a few seasons that came along way back when, but it felt worse, probably because something was on the line at the very end, probably because it just happened. Give it time. It might not get better, but next year forever remains next year.
Thanks for sitting alongside us for however many seasons you’ve sought out our section since 2005. Last year, this year, next year — we’re always gonna finish here.
I really hope that my last Mets memory of Pete is not the look on his face after that stupid f**king outfielder on that stupid f**king team caught that ball.
Greg and Jason, thanks for all of what you guys do all year, every year.
Pete’s expression was a dead ringer for the guy in the Heineken commercial who can’t believe his buddy has begun drinking without him.
I really hope someone can explain why the Marlins and their fan base hate the Mets so much. After all, they have gotten the best of us when it counted, finishing off three disastrous collapses, swiping Jose Reyes, and winning a World Series over the Yankees after we could not.
Is it general hatred of New York? Left over from the Derek Jeter ownership days? Taking a team picture while there was heartbreak on the other side of the field is pretty classless. You didn’t win anything – you merely were the better team this weekend. Just go about your business and act professional. Take your picture if you must but stop whooping it up like you just won the pennant. GKR had every right to be indignant.
I think their inferiority complex must stem from the Mets fans taking over their soulless stadium whenever the Mets are in town, but they have only themselves to blame for their failure to draw fans in large numbers. It’s not an easy task, especially in the South, to compete with not only the NFL but also college football, but it can be done. Or maybe I, like GKR, am just a little bit testy myself today!
forgive me greg if you addressed this above – but i’m at work so i’ll have to finish reading your piece tonite:
has another met team ever failed even *one* late inning comeback?
that’s always been such an integral part of the mets DNA – the Believin'[TM] that has so often kept us – believing.
i’ve believed in mets teams that had ultimately awful seasons. still their unwillingness to give up was inspiring.
i learned to expect this team to blow leads and was rarely proved wrong.
the suspense was in *how* they’d do it on a given evening.
yesterday it was spelled out all to clearly when raley was pulled for stanek.
a low hanging, rotten fruit.
This is an unofficial finding, but from 1962 through 2024, the Mets won at least one game per season in which they came to bat trailing in the 9th inning (slightly different from saying behind after eight, because it includes rallying in the bottom of the ninth after falling behind in the top of the ninth), with two exceptions as far as I could glean without cracking open every single winning Mets box score: 2003 and 2017.
thanks greg.
even more unofficial. i can’t recall a single season where the mets didn’t rally and prevail in the 9th.
just another feature of this team that was so bizarre.
may there never be another like it! [/unkinx]
As a poignant end to the year, in the 8th inning GKR mused how cool it would be if, finally in game 162, they came back and won in the 8th inning or later. I could tell by the tone of their voices that they knew, as we did, that would never happen.
It’s true that this team generally has not done well the year after making the postseason. I have yet to draw a cause/effect relationship to this phenomenon; i.e. that making the postseason has some effect on next year’s record. As you quoted Lindor, “Every year, whether you have the same guys or not, it’s a different year.” I’ll remember that quote all winter.
For ever since I can remember I’ve categorized Met seasons based on W-L record. 100 wins = excellent, 87-99 = Good, 76-86 = mediocre, 63-75 = poor, 62 and under = bad.
This year’s team positively embraced mediocrity. I was disappointed yesterday but far less than many other years as for over a month there’d been no real expectation. Maybe the team would hang its hat on the season’s start long enough to get a WC but we just wasn’t very good.
And this year’s team may have generated fewer strong feelings from me as a fan than any in the past 53 years. Sure, if a player didn’t cover a base or know how many outs there were or do something else boneheaded I was frustrated, but far less than most other seasons. I remember the series from last year where Diaz blew a save – think it was in Arizona – in late August and I was pissed, convinced it would finally doom the year. This was right before he came back and saved one the next day and we went on a tear. I could name half a dozen other highs and lows, times where what the team did would bother or excite me for hours. I don’t have moments like that from 2025.
In the end, I suspect within a couple of years this season will be one of the most forgettable I’ve ever experienced, one I recall almost no details of. I don’t like being an apathetic fan. But this is what the 2025 Mets have inspired in me.
Thank you Greg and Jason. One of the few pleasures of the season has been reading you.
The game Edwin saved in late August 2024 against the Diamondbacks was THE game that ultimately put the Mets into the post-season, because that was the game that gave the Mets the tiebreaker over the Diamondbacks at season’s end.
I hope Stearns and Cohen DO tear this thing down. Too many streaky hitters in our “Phony 4.” Lindor has way too many cold streaks every year, and that noodle arm of his can’t even reach first base.
Sick and tired of hearing the same positive comments from Lindor, Pete, and Nimmo every freakin’ night:
“We have to be better.”
Well, shut up and BE better, then.
Believe it or not, the most insightful comments would come from the extremely unlikeable Soto, who has to be the most disappointing player in this regard:
Those stats of his are so misleading when compared to how many games he actually prevented us from winning.
Thanks Greg and Jason for another year of stellar consistency.
I’m happy to “finish here” with you both.
I’ve been cheering for almost 60 years for this team.
the chemistry of the organization was off. Despite his superlative statistical performance, Soto
never gave me the impression he was happy to be a Met. Also, anyone paying attention could feel the glacier like freeze out between Lindor and Soto. Lindor, a phenomenal athlete, doesn’t impress me as being a World Champion type leader, that so many NY teams have had, for many reasons, most glaringly, from strangling squirrel, the thumbs down fiasco, and taking over a year to give squirrel the new vehicle he promised him. Seemed like Soto gave Baty a new vehicle almost immediately, without a promise. Mendoza made so many head scratching decisions it’s hard to believe in him. Fundamentally? I lost count of how many unforced errors they made this year and throughout the entire year outfielders were fighting over who would catch fly balls – Piker league pukey stuff. And Stearns lost luster after he failed to bolster the starting pitching at the deadline. And Cohen? He spends, commendably, but the Mets smell right now and a fish rots from the head,, so you have to wonder what role he’s played in creating an environment where a team, many times during the year, didn’t play with any sense of urgency or competence, particularly when the season was literally on the line. As Greg lays out above, the Mets have always been heartbreakers. Comes with the territory.
Quite troubling is our management team as well. The supremely arrogant Mendoza HAS TO stop taking out effective starting pitchers in the 5th and 6th innings just because a couple of guys hit a ball hard (and into outs, BTW). His ultimate objective appears to be to follow “the process”, rather than to actually win games.
Since nobody will take Lindor’s or Soto’s contract, maybe Pete and Nimmo need to go, as well as McNeil and Vientos. Finally, I fully dread how out of shape Soto will look in a few years, as he will make the overweight and out of shape Juan Legares look like Felix Unger to HIS own Oscar Madison.
Greg, you know why we loved it and lived with it? Because every single season, in general, the urgency began in June and did not let up until September. Now that the playoff bar has been severely lowered, we now care more about the 6th best team in each league, rather than the great teams battling for first place.
I wish we could put the genie back in the bottle, but the pathetic public seems to love it.
Tomorrow will be my 78th birthday. Last year, the Mets gave me a great birthday with the stunning victory in game 1 in Atlanta. In 2007, a certain lefty who spent most of his career as a Brave gave me a miserable birthday. Thus year, I’ll just feel a void as 12 other teams are in the dance.
Of course, this season would have been a lot worse without the creative recaps from Greg and Jason every day.
Thanks, guys. I’m looking forward to another great year from FAFIF in 2026, regardless of how well or poorly the Mets play.
Greg and Jason, I thank you for doing this on a daily basis year after year, as it is SO much fun, whether we win or (mostly) lose. You both are extremely smart and talented writers.
And you attract the smartest and talented commenters as well! :)
Thanks guys.
It was so apt that this season was doomed in one inning by a Mendoza panic move (Raley out and Stanek in) and utter failure by Stearns’ key pickup Rogers.
Will be interesting to see if any of the numerous mid-level prospects we gave up for two useless months of Rogers, G. Soto, Helsey and Mullins pan out. Odds are, a couple of them will.
It is, as it is every year, an absolute privilege to experience the highs and lows of a season with both of you. Mediocre baseball is better than no baseball at all, and I’ll remind myself of that in mid-November when it’s all done.
For whatever reason the Mets just never got that spark back after the Grimace anniversary (still hard to believe that Pete taking out Senga’s hamstring happened one year to the day). I don’t buy into the character angle… it was obvious from the beginning of the season that the Mets had no starting pitching and once a few guys went down, it was over. Stearns loading up on bullpen arms at the deadline when we needed an SP is a pretty glaring mark against him (and trading for Mullins instead of Bader… oof). Hopefully he’ll learn his lesson. And hopefully Generation MST3K will work out for us.
We have to cheer for the Mariners now, right?
“Stearns loading up on bullpen arms at the deadline when we needed an SP is a pretty glaring mark against him”
IMO his single biggest mistake for the season (though I’ll never understand signing Montas over Severino) was not bringing McLean up in July. I believe it’s usually after sometime in June which gives the extra year of team control. McLean was ready and everyone knew our sp was a problem. You’ll never convince me that wouldn’t have gotten us at least one more win. And I don’t know why Dylan Ross didn’t come up around September 1.
Nice for McLean that he’s still rookie-eligible next season. Been nicer if he was in LA with the rest of the team right now.
There are any number of teams in the AL that have attractive story lines including the Mariners, Guardians, and Tigers, and I would be happy to see one of these three come out on top. The Blue Jays winning would be OK, too, although ultimately not as satisfying. The Red Sox have worn out their welcome with me, and as for the other team the less said the better.
I can’t find anyone to root for in the NL. I suppose the Reds will be the sympathetic candidate over there, but I’ve always hated the Reds, starting with loathing Pete Rose, moving along to the 1973 NLCS, being thoroughly revolted by Marge Schott, but most of all because they took Tom Seaver from us. I’d rather see anyone, even The Team that Shall Not Be Named above, win it other than the Reds. The Dodgers are imperious, the Padres have ruined several seasons for the Mets recently, the Phillies are our true, natural rival ( and I know this is petty, but I would shed no tears if Bryce Harper never wins a ring, because his face always seems to be in a permanent sneer). That leaves the Cubs, for whom I developed a distaste for in 1969, and who have won a World Series within the last decade while we will be up to four decades and counting next year ( and not to discount the lifelong suffering of so many Cubs fans I know and love before that); and the Brewers, who I guess would be my pick by default.
Who am I kidding? I’m going to pay next to no attention to these playoffs because I’m much more concerned with the hot stove and Pete’s situation. Maybe when the World Series finally comes around, I’ll follow the games more closely, but my true rooting interests have already shifted to Michigan football, and I suspect the next time I truly care about the outcome of any athletic contest will be the last Saturday in November in Ann Arbor.
I agree with pretty much all of this, but I would note that the Reds “took Tom Seaver from us” because he was offered to them.
True enough (and I guess it was the White Sox, and not Cincinnati, that “took him” from us) but at least in those days, we didn’t have to play the Sox multiple times a year, and for those of a certain age having to see pics of Tom Seaver in that Reds uniform, or especially at Shea was just existentially wrong. The only time I remember seeing Tom in his ChiSox uniform was his 300th, and of course that was mitigated by our takeover of Yankee Stadium. As for the Red Sox, I’m sorry Tom was injured, but at least we were saved from the ultimate Hobson’s choice of rooting against him for all the marbles. Whenever I think of Tom Seaver as an un-Met, it’s as a Cincinnati Red, pitching his no-hitter, on the cover of People magazine, in a portrait by Andy Warhol, and it’s the ultimate cognitive dissonance. Even the New York Times knew it, as his obituary reads in part:
“….the seasons he spent away from New York seem like little more than a footnote, because few players in baseball history have had the impact on a team that Seaver had on the Mets.”
But I digress. For this and all the other reasons, I hate the Reds.
Remarkably, the Mets have still played in a legitimate post-season series two years in a row just one time in their history, 1999-2000 (and though they won the pennant in 2000 after falling a game short of it in 1999, many of us consider that 1999 team to have been the better squad, and the more enjoyable and memorable season). I don’t count 2016 as a full-fledged post-season appearance because they went out in a one-game wild-card round.
But if we’re comparing seasons to other seasons, I kept hearing echoes of 1991 as this year’s team continued its slow, inexorable slide (NOT a “collapse,” which is sudden, and shocking, and distinguishes the horror of 2007 from the scourge of 2025).
In 1991, the Mets were 53-38 on July 21. They proceeded to lose 23 of their next 27 games and finished the season 77-84. As July turned to August, Frank Viola, a 20-game winner the year before, pitched remarkably the same way former aces David Peterson and Sean Manaea pitched this August and September. Howard Johnson went out and played his ass off every day, while seemingly almost everyone else around him just went through the motions those last 2 months. And, of course, the team benefited from the upbeat clubhouse presence of first-year Met Vince Coleman during this tailspin (readers, please seek out FFIF’s entry on the nine layers of Mets hell if you haven’t already. It should be required reading, especially for those less familiar with Vince Coleman).
The 2025 Mets didn’t have any Vince Colemans on it. They weren’t an unlikable group. They just played some very unlikable baseball from June 13 to Sept. 28, which is a really long time to suck and expect to get away with it.
Any blog that begins with a Roger Angell reference is A-OK with me. The years ’70-’73 were different in that those of us privileged to have watched the meteoric rise in ’69 were expecting some magic at the end of each of those seasons, not some foretold disaster (see #7 below). We did however, get to enjoy some “meaningful games” in September this year, to reference one of the former Mets owners. In any case, to the extent that David Stearns has the sense to read this blog (and related comments), I offer up the following roadmap to success in ’26. Rather than wax poetic about “run prevention,” please consider the following moves (humbly submitted):
1) Check in on Skenes, he already has an apartment in NYC, would be a natural (ignore any Kris Benson talk).
2). When talks for Skenes inevitably go nowhere, sign Framber Valdez (a lefty and more importantly a winner who doesn’t beat himself).
3) Bring back heart and soul clutch hitter Wilmer Flores to be our modern day Rusty (Mets were a remarkable 0-70 in games they trailed going into the 9th this year).
4). Tell Carson Benge and Jett Williams that one of you will be our starting centerfielder in ‘26 and have an open competition (either that, or sign Bellinger as a stopgap to play there because we need someone with a strong arm with Nimmo in left).
5) Fix the pen, overpay for guys who have been through tense games before and are not learning on the fly. If Diaz opts out, let him go and get somebody cheaper and more reliable. Give Dylan Ross a chance to be the closer or 8th inning guy.
6). Trade McNeil for whatever you can get, let Mauricio learn how to hit a breaking ball at Syracuse and leave him there until he can, and either trade Vientos or sit him down and tell him they will fine him $1,000 every time he tries to pull the ball instead of hit to rightfield.
7). Speak to Gary Cohen about curbing his penchant for Eeeyore-like negativity, it is not helpful on any level and leads to fan group therapy sessions.
Thanks for a great blog season. For the Boys from Flushing, see you next year. Unless you’re playing somewhere else, in which case you’re only a tribute video away.
Just learn how to win one more game a season. Please?
First of all, many thanks to our fearless chroniclers. Greg and Jason, you make the good times sweeter and the bad times bearable. This time, barely bearable, but you did put this season in perspective in a way that I appreciate.
One thing I will say. When my son asks me this Passover why this year’s 83-79 team is different from all the other 83-79 teams, I will tell him that this year, we thought we had the second coming of the ‘86 Mets. Literally. The comparisons were being made as late as mid-June. This was seen as one of the all time great Met teams. Then the other shoe fell. I have never seen a more complete, horrible fall from grace. And it happened overnight. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen, and as a Met fan for a half century, I’ve seen plenty.
A few thoughts –
The final blow wasn’t the last game. It was what happened afterwards – the acceptance, the calm. I wanted to see anger. I wanted to see frustration. Then again, if this team had any fire in their belly, they would still be playing baseball right now. They were a soulless bunch this year.
Which brings me to the manager. Mr. Mendoza seems like a nice guy, but he’s gotta go. No team manager should survive a team collapse this monumental. Many of his moves this year were either too careful or too panicky or just puzzling. He managed like he didn’t want to get blamed if anything went wrong, and that never works. He is a big part of what happened this year, and what didn’t happen.
Another thing which I seem to say every year, win or lose. I don’t know who’s running the Mets fitness program, or their medical program, but it’s a disaster. It’s been a disaster for so long that I don’t even remember when it wasn’t a disaster. Players constantly injuring themselves. Guys coming back too soon from injuries, or not soon enough. Pitchers consistently unable to make it out of the fourth inning. The constant parade of Richard Loveladies in the bullpen due to the last 15 relievers down for TJ surgery. It’s been going on so long and with so many players that it can’t be just a coincidence or bad luck. And it’s never been addressed, not by the Wilpons or the Cohen regime.
As for the batters, I have never seen such misleadingly bloated statistics. It seemed like Juan Soto was trying to set a record for most one-run homers hit in the eighth inning of 19-3 blowouts. And I’ve never seen such pursuit of individual records that had nothing whatsoever to do with actual team wins and losses. We got two 30-30 guys? Alonso overtook Straw? Yay. How many wins did all that get us – especially at the end?
As for the front office, I think that they’ve spent too much time the last few years admiring themselves in the mirror for their supposed brilliance. Their plan stopped working in mid June, and they spent the rest of the season trying to Scotch tape over the problems. They didn’t bring up the young pitchers until it was way too late. And for all the purported genius of the Steve Cohen scouting department, they have never had a single good deadline acquisition. Not one. The Wilpons have actually had more success than they did in that regard.
I could go on (and on and on), but you get the idea. We Jews have a saying this time of year: May the old year end, with all its curses. Time to move on. I’m hoping for an extremely active offseason. There better be.
Another thing which I seem to say every year, win or lose. I don’t know who’s running the Mets fitness program, or their medical program, but it’s a disaster. It’s been a disaster for so long that I don’t even remember when it wasn’t a disaster. Players constantly injuring themselves. Guys coming back too soon from injuries, or not soon enough. Pitchers consistently unable to make it out of the fourth inning. The constant parade of Richard Loveladies in the bullpen due to the last 15 relievers down for TJ surgery. It’s been going on so long and with so many players that it can’t be just a coincidence or bad luck. And it’s never been addressed, not by the Wilpons or the Cohen regime.
THANK. YOU.
I simply do not understand this either. We all know that injuries are part of the game and have to be managed and sometimes the team gets hit worse than in other years and sometimes the team gets hit worse than other teams, but our….conditioning, I guess…has been so bad, for so long, that systemic failure is all that is left as a reason/excuse.
Stearns’ usual response to this is that everybody has injuries and that this is just the ‘randomness’ of it all. “Nothing to see here!”
And Mendoza will usually say ‘that’s baseball,’ and that every loss is the same as every other loss.
No anger, no fire, no nothing.
Too bad Mendoza will be back.
I don’t have any data here, but are the Mets really that unique in regard to injuries? It seems to be a sport-wide trend…
For now, just thank you to Greg and Jason for another year of faithfully creating the narrative of the Mets season.
I’ll have more to say later but right now I’m still pissed off about how it went and how it ended and every reminder that the Mets are not playing tonight.
I second all the thanks to Greg and Jason.
Thank you for being our grace all season when we can’t get any from this team.
This final day, Closing Day of 2025, played out as its own kind of horrible. It produced precisely the same record as a few seasons that came along way back when, but it felt worse, probably because something was on the line at the very end, probably because it just happened.
The Reds fell behind the Brewers about the same time the Mets fell behind the Marlins in both game 162s’ 4th inning. Which means the Mets knew the 3rd wildcard was theirs to win yet failed to score even one run the rest of the game. In the end, they left no doubt of what the 2025 Mets were.
The Reds were beaten soundly and swept by the Dodgers in the wildcard round. As much as I wanted the Mets to stagger their way to the 3rd wildcard and hoped they’d flip a switch overnight, I believe they would have fared no better than the Reds. In the long run, the Mets are better off completing the collapse, leaving no room for illusion, and compelling Cohen, Stearns, and Mendoza to examine everything and change anything. The core needs to be broken up.
The 2024 season made me think the organization was making fundamental improvements underlying the success and those improvements would blossom moving forward, starting with 2025. The mystic and now-discredited pitching lab, etc.. The 2025 season showed last year’s success was just luck, the same kind we’ve seen in other one-off seasons. At least in 2016, the Mets won the top wildcard. The lolMets of the 2025 collapse was as bad as ever. Small comfort, at least the ex-Mets-laden Giants didn’t win the 3rd wildcard.
Here’s something to smile about, Metsies, a 5-star, “Amazon #1 New Release” detailing like never before how Casey Stengel took helm of the ’62 Mets and overcame impossible odds to save New York City baseball forever — “How the Worst Was Won”. Now in discussions to be brought to the big screen! Check it out: https://shorturl.at/gLpdg