Opting for the Fun of It

Pete Alonso didn’t hesitate after the final frustrating game of a frustrating season ultimately torpedoed by frustrating losses. He was asked if he planned to exercise the opt-out clause in his contract in order to test the open market, and he said yes. Edwin Diaz wasn’t quite so quick on the withdraw; he’d have to discuss it with his family, he said, but he sure as hell didn’t immediately rule out becoming a free agent. Eventually, Edwin joined Pete in declaring his availability. Three days after the World Series, both men filed.

Back on September 28, following the defeat to the Marlins that ensured the Mets would have nothing to do with the 2025 World Series, neither Met evinced any hard feelings toward the club they’ve helped define since 2019, let alone an overwhelming desire to bolt. Pete affirmed he’s “loved being a Met,” while Edwin insisted, “I love this organization.” Their sincere affection notwithstanding, they are professionals who have business decisions to make. If business brings them back, that will be swell. If business takes them away, that will be a shame. “They’ve been great representatives of the organization,” David Stearns said at November’s General Manager Meetings, the precursor to December’s winter meetings. “We’d love to have them both back.” Implicit in our POBO’s benign endorsement was having them back could happen if the price, encompassing length and dollars, is right from a Met perspective. If front office executives didn’t have to worry about such matters, there wouldn’t be much need for them to meet multiple times per offseason.

It’s not easy to detect overwhelming individual value following a season when no single Met produced quite what was required to transcend a massive accumulation of frustration and shove this team as a whole where it seemed so close to getting. Yet when the Faith and Fear in Flushing Awards Committee (FAFIFAC) convenes to select a Richie Ashburn Most Valuable Met, we always find somebody — even in the stone downer seasons that were far less competitive than 2025 and encompassed no player with numbers up to the standard of some we saw posted in 2025. In 2023, for example, when the Mets lost 26 more games than they had the year before and were never a factor in the postseason race, we were sorely tempted to name Nobody as our MVM. We resisted the temptation because, honestly, FAFIFAC doesn’t find opting into Nobody much fun.

We will not deny that…

• Nobody in 2025 lifted the Mets onto his shoulders;

• Nobody in 2025 elevated the Mets into the playoffs they were mathematically on target to make from April deep into September;

• and Nobody in 2025 proved particularly valuable when it came to preventing the gradual decline and emphatic fall that plopped the Mets one tiebreaker shy of the third and final National League Wild Card.

But despite our pervasive frustration, we’re not going there. Offseason reflection and perhaps rationalization perennially yields an MVM, maybe more than one. Even in the lousiest of Met years, of which we’ve experienced a few. Even in the frustratingest of Met years, of which few were more frustrating than this one — for even within the spelling of frustration there can be found fun.

And within what fun there was to experiencing the 2025 Mets, you inevitably found Pete Alonso and Edwin Diaz. We opt to honor them as Faith and Fear in Flushing’s co-choice for the Richie Ashburn Most Valuable Met award. Alonso and Diaz do have business to attend to, as does the ballclub that they’ve called theirs for seven seasons, but we don’t mind copping to a touch of sentimentality in making this selection.

Pete? We’ve grown accustomed to his bat.
Edwin? We’ve grown accustomed to his saves.

They’ve been here longer than almost any of their teammates. They’ve filled critical roles from the moment they settled in. They’ve starred and starred again. We know who they are. We know who they’ve been. They’ve filled us with anticipation more than dread, 80/20, at least. They’ve come through when needed more often than not.

There is some lifetime achievement factored into this decision, as well as some of what wasn’t as present in 2025 as it had been in 2024: vibes. Flawed as they could reveal themselves at a given moment, you welcomed Pete and Edwin into the spotlight when they strutted into it. Those good vibes we felt at the sight of them weren’t only about personality and familiarity. They were performance-derived.

Pete Alonso crashed into 2025 with a certified Player of the Month entrance. Twenty-eight runs batted in before May. A .343 batting average. Eleven doubles to go with seven homers, indicative of not just a slugger but a hitter in a groove. When he re-signed in early February, he sat 26 home runs shy of the franchise record. April ensured beyond any doubt that he’d make it there by summer. On August 10, in the weeks following his fifth All-Star selection, Pete passed Darryl Strawberry, belting the 253rd longball of his major league and Met careers, epochs that had been one and the same since their very beginning. The power show that earned him his first Silver Slugger continued clear to the 161st game of the season, when Pete was as Pete could be, not only delivering the first two runs of a necessary 5-0 victory in Miami (on his league-leading 41st double, then his 38th homer, bringing his RBI total to 126), but summing up his pregame prep afterward for Steve Gelbs:

“I’m wearin’ Juan Soto’s socks, I put on Francisco Lindor’s eyeblack, and then I used Brandon Nimmo’s lotion. So, all my teammates, I’m just thankful for the good vibes.”

Gelbs asked Alonso when he decided to borrow his peers’ gear. Pete responded with his why:

“Anything for a win.”

By late in the season, anything for a win implied Edwin Diaz would be coming in. To save a game. To save a chance to win a game. To save what was left of the season. His two scoreless innings in Game 162 spoke to either Carlos Mendoza’s desperation or sound judgment. In the fifth inning, on the heels of stints from Sean Manaea, Huascar Brazoban, Brooks Raley, Ryne Stanek, and Tyler Rogers, Mendy called on Edwin. The Mets were down, 4-0. The Mets’ closer couldn’t get the Mets closer, but he was the best and perhaps only bet to keep the damn thing from getting away. Sure enough, Diaz faced six batters and retired them in order. It didn’t help prevent the 4-0 loss that ended 2025, but it was all Edwin could give, and he gave it when needed most.

That was usually in the ninth inning. None of the righty’s ninth innings stands out more in recent memory than the one that arose when Diaz was wearing only one good shoe. The two-time 2025 Reliever of the Month — he’d made the All-Star team in July and be named the NL’s Reliever of the Year in November — unleashed the entire Edwin experience in an early-September outing in Cincinnati that, by itself, could be reaired as a Mets Classic.

It’s 5-4, Mets.
He gives up a leadoff single to Ke’Bryan Hayes
He walks Matt McLain on a full count.
He walks TJ Friedl on four pitches.
The bases are loaded.
He strikes out Noelvi Marte on a full count.
He goes to one-and-two on Elly De La Cruz.
He changes his shoes on the mound..
He finishes striking out De La Cruz.
He elicits a grounder from Gavin Lux.
He scampers to first base while Luisangel Acuña tracks down the ball a sizable distance from his position at second base.
He receives Acuña’s toss from the outfield grass ahead of Lux reaching the bag.
It’s still 5-4, Mets.
The game is over.

Letting a ninth-inning lead slip away is out of no closer’s purview. Loading the bases usually foreshadows such a shift in momentum. But Diaz is as capable of striking out batters in a tense situation as he is of letting runners score. Previously, he hadn’t shown an automatic instinct to cover first, but he worked on that in 2025. As for the shoes…well, a spike broke off, and he did something about it. Edwin changed his shoes and perhaps perceptions that a ninth inning on the precipice of going monumentally wrong automatically plunges from a cliff.

The escape in Cincy yielded Diaz his 26th save of the season. That he didn’t have a whole lot more than his final sum of 28 at season’s end reflects more that went wrong with the Mets as a whole than many Edwin’s innings going awry. His teammates seemed to studiously avoid presenting him with save opportunities in August and September, yet when the trumpets sounded for Diaz, he was as close to his 2022, pre-injury incarnation as could be reasonably hoped. Edwin threw more innings than he did in his signature season and compiled an ERA+ (248) nearly as staggering as he did three years before (297).

Imperfections resonate in the course of a season, especially one as frustrating as 2025. Diaz isn’t great at holding runners on. Alonso occasionally makes his pitchers lunge uncomfortably for throws to first. But, boy, imagine the Mets since 2019 without their contributions. Hell, just their presence is Amazin’. Pete has played in every Mets game since June 18, 2023, a franchise-record 416 in a row. In a year when Mendoza tapped 43 different Mets to pitch in relief (including three position players), Diaz remained ostensibly available day after day, on the active roster for every single game, joined by only Stanek in the durability department.

Nobody is irreplaceable, but good luck slotting in somebody else in their respective niches. We as a people could be forgiven for forgetting there was life before Sugar and the Polar Bear. If you’re crafting an all-time Mets team or two, Edwin has earned prime consideration to be designated Metropolitan history’s top righthanded reliever, outpointing Jeurys Familia by now (without being quite the mixed bag Armando Benitez was). Keith Hernandez is a longtime Mets fan’s instinctive choice for first base into eternity, but Pete has slugged his way into at least undeniable second-team status. Before there was OMG, Pete was the acronym activator who changed how we hashtag (#LFGM). And, due respect to even the legendary lefties like Tug and Jesse and Johnny from Bensonhurst, before there was Timmy Trumpet, there was nothing like it.

Quietly, the Mets have maintained a recognizable core to their cast, a feat that seems remarkable in light of how common turnover has become at the big league level. We know Alonso and Diaz like we know Nimmo, McNeil, Lindor, Marte, Peterson, and Megill; younger or more recently arrived Mets like Alvarez, Vientos, Baty, Senga, Manaea, and Soto all feel like part of our extended family, too. Family can warm you all over. They can also drive you crazy. These members of our Mets family together have produced successes as well as frustrations. You live with that as a fan. Maybe you have no choice. Honestly, it’s refreshing in this day and age to know who’s on the team year after year.

When I became a fan, I knew who was going to comprise the heart of the Mets most every year. There were successes and frustrations then. We welcomed some new guys along the way, we got to know them, and we rooted for the reconfigured version of our Mets family. We believed in them. The belief wasn’t always cashed in, but we had our guys. This core, fronted as much by Pete and Edwin as any of their long-term teammates, has given us enough to believe in. It doesn’t mean you don’t reckon with the breaking up of portions of the band, especially when sticking with the same players is deemed a detriment to moving forward, but I think it does mean you ought to proceed with extreme caution before deciding to swap out some of your most proven and impactful instrumentalists.

I have no idea who would play first base and hit more than 30 home runs annually if Pete Alonso isn’t a Met. I have no idea who would reliably secure ninth-inning leads if Edwin Diaz isn’t a Met. These have been the guys we’ve wanted to see, the guys we’ve conditioned ourselves to crave in that mythic big spot, the guys who planted in us confidence that we knew what we’d be getting and we’d be glad we got it. Sometimes we didn’t get the desired outcome, and that sucked. But usually we got what we anticipated, and that rocked.

Maybe it still will. Yet if one or both among Pete Alonso and Edwin Diaz should sail, this seems as good a moment as any to say out loud that not only have they been wonderful Mets, but having them here has been incredibly fun.

FAITH AND FEAR’S PREVIOUS RICHIE ASHBURN MOST VALUABLE METS
2005: Pedro Martinez (original recording)
2005: Pedro Martinez (deluxe reissue)
2006: Carlos Beltran
2007: David Wright
2008: Johan Santana
2009: Pedro Feliciano
2010: R.A. Dickey
2011: Jose Reyes
2012: R.A. Dickey
2013: Daniel Murphy, Dillon Gee and LaTroy Hawkins
2014: Jacob deGrom
2015: Yoenis Cespedes
2016: Asdrubal Cabrera
2017: Jacob deGrom
2018: Jacob deGrom
2019: Pete Alonso
2020: Michael Conforto and Dom Smith (the RichAshes)
2021: Aaron Loup and the One-Third Troupe
2022: Starling Marte
2023: Francisco Lindor and Kodai Senga
2024: Francisco Lindor

Still to come: The Nikon Camera Player of the Year for 2025.