It was a confounding, frustrating season even before we learned it would be a fracture in the Mets’ timeline, with stalwarts we’d grown used to shipped off or allowed to depart and their replacements still yet to take shape. One day it will all seem like a logical story; for now it’s just baffling. But onward we go, in good times and bad as well as times we’re not sure about yet, so it’s time to take stock of the season’s matriculated Mets.
(Background: I have three binders, long ago dubbed The Holy Books by Greg, that contain a baseball card for every Met on the all-time roster. They’re in order of arrival in a big-league game: Tom Seaver is Class of ’67, Mike Piazza is Class of ’98, Francisco Alvarez is Class of ’22, etc. There are extra pages for the rosters of the two World Series winners, the managers, ghosts, and one for the 1961 Expansion Draft. That page begins with Hobie Landrith and ends with the infamous Lee Walls [1], the only THB resident who didn’t play for the Mets, manage the Mets, or get stuck with the dubious status of Met ghost.)
[2]Welcome to the study rug, fellas!
(If a player gets a Topps card as a Met, I use it unless it’s a truly horrible — Topps was here a decade before there were Mets, so they get to be the card of record. No Mets card by Topps? Then I look for a minor-league card, a non-Topps Mets card, a Topps non-Mets card, or anything else. That means I spend the season scrutinizing new card sets in hopes of finding a) better cards of established Mets; b) cards to stockpile for prospects who might make the Show; and most importantly c) a card for each new big-league Met. Eventually that yields this column, previous versions of which can be found here [3], here [4], here [5], here [6], here [7], here [8], here [9], here [10], here [11], here [12], here [13], here [14], here [15], here [16], here [17], here [18], here [19], here [20], here [21] and here [22].)
Off we go into the wild blue and orange yonder….
Juan Soto: It all seemed a little underwhelming somehow. Some of that was gigantic expectations — 15 years, $765 million tends to drown out everything else — and some of that was the season’s curdling into murkiness and then disaster. Soto wound up with 43 homers and 105 RBIs, which is pretty far from a down season, so maybe it’s us. Or maybe it’s that by now we’re braced for impact when it comes to the first season for a high-profile acquisition — ask Carlos Beltran or Francisco Lindor about that. (Hey, their later years turned out pretty well!) Soto’s Met career got off to what in hindsight should have felt like a foreboding note: On Opening Day he came up against Josh Hader with two out in the ninth, runners on first and third, the Mets down a pair of runs and a storybook ending set to be written … and struck out. On the other hand, Soto turned into a base-stealing machine, swiping 38 bags after never stealing more than 12. If you’d like more foreboding, though, that came under the tutelage of Antoan Richardson, who was allowed to go work for the Braves as one of the Mets’ offseason subtractions. Soto gets a 2025 Topps card, which is its own oddity: He’s Photoshopped into an old-style Mets away uniform, which he never wore because the team ditched that classic design for something that looks like it was made in a basement on Canal Street. Good Christ, I have to write how many more of these?
Clay Holmes: Hey, it wasn’t his fault. The hulking former Yankee reliever pitched pretty well as a Mets starter, aside from fatigue that had to be expected given a difficult shift in responsibilities. He saved his best moment for last, coming up big in a Game 161 wipeout of the Marlins. Unfortunately, there was a game the next day too, one that Holmes could only watch. 2025 Topps card.
Hayden Senger: Not all MLB success stories are glittering ones, nor need to be. Senger was drafted in 2018’s 24th round, which no longer exists, and hadn’t exactly got rich as a pro ballplayer: He spent last offseason getting up at 5 am to stock shelves at Whole Foods. He entered 2025 as a glove-first minor-league catcher, the kind of CV that often lacks that final call to the Show, as MLB teams have a maddening habit of finding backup catchers on other MLB rosters instead of in their own ranks. But Francisco Alvarez’s broken hamate bone opened the door for Senger to make the Opening Day roster. His debut came in that fateful ninth inning that ended with a K for Soto; shortly before that Senger was sent to the plate against Hader with the bases loaded and nobody out, looked overmatched, and struck out. He didn’t do much at the plate the rest of the year either, but try and tell him the year wasn’t a success. Topps Heritage card using the ’76 design. 1976 was the first year I collected cards, so the Michigan blue and yellow chosen for the Mets back then look right to me even though I know they aren’t.
A.J. Minter: A burly, bearded ex-Brave, Minter was brought in to give the Mets a reliable lefty arm in the pen and pitched pretty well in April. But in his 13th appearance, he delivered a ball in Washington and came off the mound with an arm shake and a grimace. He’d torn his lat, ending his season and starting a sad parade of injuries to bullpen lefties. Safe to say that wasn’t the plan. Topps gave Minter a Heritage card in its High Numbers series, preventing me from having to admit him to The Holy Books as a Brave.
Griffin Canning: An Angels reclamation project (honestly that sounds like a redundancy these days), Canning looked like a successful Mets reinvention along the lines of Sean Manaea and Luis Severino, riding a reconfigured pitch mix to early-season success. He became an early favorite of mine, too: I loved his mechanics, which were beautifully fluid while also admirably compact. Then it all came crashing down: In late June Canning watched from the mound as Lindor fielded a grounder and by the time the ball smacked into Pete Alonso’s glove, he’d crumpled as if shot and was lying on the infield grass. It was a ruptured Achilles, and the end of his season. Topps Heritage card.
Jose Siri: Siri built a reputation in Tampa Bay as a flashy center-field wizard who struck out a ton but could also hit balls to the moon, but it all went wrong very quickly as a Met: Two weeks into the season, after indeed striking out a ton, Siri fouled a ball off his shin, an innocuous mishap that turned out to be a fractured tibia. He was rusty when he returned in September and endured a nightmare game at Citi Field: Over the course of four pitches, a ball popped in and out of Siri’s glove, ending up as a double, and a bad route turned a single into a triple. Two ABs later, Siri came to the plate with boos raining down and was promptly zapped with a pitch-clock violation. He struck out in that AB, struck out in his next one, and was then pinch-hit for Cedric Mullins, whose arrival was greeted with cheers. (Mullins then … wait for it … struck out.) Siri never had another AB as a Met; he ended up with an .063 average, two hits, and having to remember that fans actually preferred seeing Mullins trudge to the plate instead of him. Now that’s a bad year. Topps Photoshopped him into a Mets uniform for Heritage; they should have added a bag over his head.
Max Kranick: A postseason ghost in 2024, Kranick became corporeal in April and earned early plaudits as a courageous reliever with a talent for wiggling out of tough spots. Unfortunately April was a small sample size; Kranick fell back to Earth in May, got sent down, and soon needed a second Tommy John surgery. Old Topps card as a Pirate.
Justin Hagenman: Turns out his first outing was his best one. Hagenman was pressed into service against the Twins in a mid-April bullpen game and did yeoman work, at least until his statistical line was blemished by after-the-fact crumminess from Jose Butto. (You may remember this game as an early installment in one of my least-favorite 2025 serials, The Revenge Tour of Harrison Bader.) Hagenman appeared now and then later during the season, mostly in mop-up duty. Hey, it’s a living. Topps Heritage card.
Jose Azocar: Collected some hits in April as a fourth outfielder, went zero for May, and became a Brave in June. Have to confess I remember none of that. 2024 Topps card as a Padre.
Jose Urena: A lion-maned veteran reliever, Urena logged one day as a Met, pitching not particularly well during a laugher against the Nats but still earning a save because that’s what the rulebook says. He then spent May as a Blue Jay, June as a Dodger, August as a Twin and September as an Angel. Wheeee! He’s now a Rakuten Golden Eagle. Double wheeee! Old Topps Heritage card as a Padre, one of the few things he wasn’t in 2025.
Kevin Herget: Herget took the baton from Urena in the middle-reliever parade of guys you probably don’t remember either. Middle relief has always been a spaghetti at the wall business, but new rules about options have made managing the last bullpen slots truly ruthless, with teams content to bring a guy up, put him on waivers or release him, then reclaim him after another team’s done the same. The Mets plucked Herget out of the Brewers’ farm system in the 2024 offseason, called him up for a lone appearance at the end of April, put him on waivers, watched (maybe) from afar as he made a lone appearance for the Braves, claimed him from the Braves, used him in five games over three months, made him a free agent at the end of September, then signed him again a week before Christmas. Harget went to Kean University; I own a Kean University beach towel though I have no idea how it came into my possession. Some old card as a (Springfield) Cardinal.
Brandon Waddell: A lefty journeyman who’d pitched in both Korea and China, Waddell stood out (mildly) from the relief mob by logging 11 appearances and being at least reliable-adjacent. Which means you’ll see him again in some uniform next year — possibly even ours — and for whatever subsequent years he shows up and demonstrates that he’s still left-handed. Syracuse Mets card.
Chris Devenski: I first saw him at an unseasonably warm end-of-April bullpen game and my reaction was, “Who the heck is that? When did they call this guy up?” Such are the joys of the reliever parade. Devenski’s end-of-season numbers wound up being pretty good, or at least good enough to get a contract with the Pirates for 2026. Syracuse card.
Genesis Cabrera: Best known for throwing a pitch that hit J.D. Davis in the ankle during a feisty Mets-Cardinals game back in 2022, the prelude to Yoan Lopez drilling Nolan Arenado and a lot of pushing and shoving that saw Alonso tangle with Cabrera and the immortally monikered Stubby Clapp. Honestly that was more memorable than anything Cabrera did in six up-and-down appearances for the Mets in May as they looked for a lefty to replace Danny Young, who’d replaced Minter. Cabrera then collected 2025 paychecks from the Cubs, Pirates and Twins, AKA the Full Urena. Let’s use Cabrera’s Mets tenure as an opportunity to celebrate the inexplicably Canadian Stubby Clapp, whose father and grandfather also went by Stubby; as does his oldest son; and whose wife is named Chastity Clapp. I am not making any of that up. Syracuse card issued after Cabrera had come and gone.
Blade Tidwell: Once a moderately heralded Mets pitching prospect, Tidwell made his debut in May against the Cardinals and it was a pretty typical maiden voyage: some pitches made and some not made on the way to an ugly bottom line that wasn’t as bad as the numbers, provided you squinted a little. Subsequent outings required more squinting and the Mets shipped Tidwell to the Giants at the trade deadline along with Butto and Drew Gilbert. Tidwell’s still young and finding his way, but that felt like the opposite of an endorsement. 2025 Topps card.
Austin Warren: There are 1,450+ innings in a big-league season and it takes a lot of arms to get through them. This bit of wisdom appears in every THB chronicle, because it’s true. Nothing personal, Austin. Syracuse card.
Jose Castillo: A husky lefty reliever, Castillo’s road to the Mets was a bit odd: He imploded against them in late May while pitching for the Diamondbacks and was wearing blue and orange a little more than a week later. Since the beginning of September he’s been employed by the Mariners, the Orioles, the Mets again and is now a free agent. I suppose this is why middle relievers rent instead of buying. A card as an El Paso Chihuahua, which I feel bad about but was the best I could do.
Jared Young: Once-upon-a-time Cubs prospect came over to the Mets after stop-offs in Memphis and Korea and didn’t leave much of an impression. One of a growing number of ballplayers who sneak into Topps sets with autograph-only cards, yet another sign of civilization’s rot. Syracuse card.
Justin Garza: Five June appearances, none of which I remember. A 2025 minor-league card as a … I have no idea what team this is, actually. At least he’s not a Chihuahua.
Tyler Zuber: Pitched two not very good innings for the Mets in June, became a Marlin, and returned to Citi Field at the end of August to face his old team during Jonah Tong’s debut. I was in the stands and registered Zuber’s arrival but had completely forgotten his approximately 20 minutes of Mets service time. Zuber then gave up seven earned runs in a single inning, which I suppose is one way to be memorable. If you’re curious, yes, he displaced Don Zimmer and is currently the 1,287th and last man on the all-time Mets A-Z roster. Syracuse card.
Frankie Montas: Montas looked solid against the Mets as a Brewer in the 2024 wild card series, possibly leading to his signing a two-year deal with New York. It didn’t exactly work out, as Montas was felled by a torn lat in spring training and then pitched abysmally while rehabbing at Triple-A. With no real alternatives, the Mets summoned him to start against the Braves in late June. That went well, but his next start was a shellacking in Pittsburgh (I was lucky enough to see it in person) and he then alternated pedestrian outings with getting lit up, followed by exile to the bullpen. His year ended with the revelation that he needed Tommy John surgery; he was DFA’ed and will get paid $17 million to be hurt next year. 2025 Topps card.
Richard Lovelady: Mets fandom had a titter over the veteran lefty going by “Dicky,” though I wonder if Richard “Stubby” Clapp wanted a word. (Stubby Clapp, unexpected star of the THB Class of 2025!) Exactly what the newest Met wanted to be called led to a spirited discussion on SNY, with Gary Cohen’s eyebrow audibly arched (no really, you could hear it) and someone in the truck presumably told to be aggressive about cutting Keith Hernandez’s mic. Whatever those on a first-name basis called him, Lovelady spent the summer appearing and disappearing from the roster, with not particularly impressive numbers. The Mets must have liked something they saw, though, as they made him their first offseason free-agent signing. Old Topps Heritage card as a Royal.
Jonathan Pintaro: A flaxen-haired reliever who’d opened eyes in indy ball, Pintaro was cuffed around by the Braves in his lone MLB appearance, with Edwin Diaz forced to ride to the rescue at the tail end of a not particularly close game. This is an inherent unfairness of The Holy Books: Pintaro could spend a decade as a reliable contributor and still be stuck with this sour cup of coffee as his entry. Here’s hoping he makes this more than a theoretical injustice. 2025 card as a Binghamton Met.
Colin Poche: I was in the park for Poche’s lone appearance, the middle game of the series in which the Mets stepped on about 50,000 rakes [23] while getting swept by the Pirates. Poche relieved Huascar Brazoban and turned a narrow Pittsburgh lead into an impossibly wide gulf. That sucked, but it isn’t what annoys me most about Poche. That would be his pain-in-the-ass baseball cards. He has a 2020 Chrome autograph card and a 2023 Tampa Bay team-set card, both nonstandard; I wound up needing two copies of the former and haven’t been able to secure the latter. Fortunately this hasn’t cost a lot, since Colin Poche cards aren’t a particularly hot commodity, but I’ve now conservatively spent 10 times the duration of his ineffective Mets tenure trying and failing to secure his annoying baseball cards.
Zach Pop: Another one-gamer, Pop’s second pitch as a Met became a home run onto the Soda Plateau for fucking Austin Wells, who looks like a guy who pesters other Little League dads about buying an above-ground swimming pool. In all, Pop’s Mets career consisted of nine Yankees faced, five of whom hit safely. Not a way to endear yourself to much of anybody, least of all me. Old Topps card as a Marlin.
Rico Garcia: Garcia made his debut in the same game Pop did, and fared better — enough for the Yankees to grab him off waivers from the Mets eight days later. He appeared in one game for the Yankees, returned to the Mets via a tit-for-tat waiver claim, and was soon an Oriole. If it’s this exhausting for us, imagine what it’s like for actual middle relievers. Syracuse card.
Alex Carrillo: Another example of how you can have a good year without good numbers. Before 2025 Carrillo’s organized-baseball career consisted of a few innings of a rookie ball as a Rangers farmhand in 2019. He then spent four years in indy ball, where work with a pitching lab, better nutrition and an improved workout regimen upped his fastball velocity from the mid-80s to triple digits. An acquaintance of Carlos Mendoza’s saw Carrillo pitch in the Venezuelan winter leagues, which led to a Mets contract and a July call-up. It didn’t go too well — a 13.50 ERA will leave a mark — but it’s still a pretty good story. As for baseball cards, Carrillo doesn’t have any, so I had to make him one.
Gregory Soto: Ryan Helsley and Cedric Mullins caught most of the slings and arrows launched by fans upset about the Mets’ trade-deadline debacle, but Soto was quietly terrible too. His numbers looked good but were fundamentally dishonest, as he specialized in letting inherited runners score, with a side gig of not paying attention when he needed to. (That second-to-last loss against the Marlins … oof.) After the season Soto vamoosed to Pittsburgh; they can fucking have him. Old Topps card as a Tiger.
Ryan Helsley: Mind-bogglingly terrible as a Met, with his maladies mostly blamed on pitch tipping and accompanied by an arglebargle of fancy metrics insisting that he was better than he was, which would have been more convincing without nightly evidence that Helsley was not better than anything except throwing oneself down a flight of stairs. (Maybe not even that.) The Mets didn’t help by stubbornly sticking with Helsley’s entrance extravaganza, so jaw-droppingly high camp that Siegfried and Roy might have suggested dialing it back. Eventually the Mets let Helsley’s nightly failures arrive without a concussive light show; by then we just wanted him to go away. Given the fickle nature of relievers, I’m sure he’ll be just fine for the Orioles next year. I also don’t care. A horizontal Topps Chrome Update card. I hate horizontal cards. It’s perfect.
Cedric Mullins: Arrived from Baltimore and immediately made you wonder if he’d been replaced en route by a defective clone. Mullins hit .182, looked meh in center field, and he played with his head up his ass at key moments — witness the sequence against Washington where Daylen Lile ran into a wall, Luis Torrens raced around the bases to score, but Mullins stood around and then got himself belatedly thrown out at second. (Mullins was given a reprieve and returned to first via some mild ump shenanigans, so of course he immediately got doubled off; if you don’t remember, this was the Jacob Young game, perhaps the most tooth-grinding loss in a season that featured plenty of them.) Mullins is now a Ray; when I heard they’d signed him I went full Gollum: “LEAVE NOW … AND NEVER COME BACK!” Re baseball cards, I generally try to pick cards that make the players look good, with rare exceptions: Vince Coleman looks like he just ate a lemon on his 1992 card, and it’s perfect. Mullins’ Topps Heritage card depicts him in asphalt and purple, wearing a ridiculous oven mitt and the sheepish expression of a man who’s just screwed up, and it’s perfect.
Tyler Rogers: A sidewinding reliever, he got traded on the same day as his identical twin brother, which must have been quite the afternoon for Ma Rogers. It’s probably just lingering dismay over how the season crumbled, but I have to ask if he was actually good for the Mets, or just better than Helsley or Soto. When Rogers signed with the Blue Jays I wasn’t sad but also thought, “Has it gotten so bad that no one wants to be a Met?” Topps Chrome Update card; it’s a horizontal but in this case that actually works.
Nolan McLean: A former two-way prospect, McLean was summoned in mid-August with the Mets once again in freefall and immediately looked like he belonged. He beat the Mariners in his first outing (complete with a nifty behind-the-back grab), the Braves in his second, the Phillies in his third (completing a sweep) and the Tigers in his fourth. He finally took an L in his fifth start, a singularly unlikely 1-0 loss in Philly. McLean’s final line? 5-1 with 57 Ks and 16 walks in 48 innings. That will that play. And the intangibles were impressive too: McLean demonstrated he could size up hitters and exploit them, and proved apt at strategizing on the fly when his pitches proved disobedient. A pitcher to dream on, and one I can’t wait to watch again. Syracuse card; he gets a full-fledged Topps offering next month.
Jonah Tong: A Canadian kid with mechanics that looked like a Xerox of Tim Lincecum’s, Tong blitzed his way through the minors in 2025 after adding a change-up to complement his riding fastball and ungodly curve. Was he ready? Given the Mets’ increasingly shaky playoff hopes, by the end of August it didn’t really matter. Tong’s debut at Citi Field saw the Mets pin 19 runs on Miami, the most runs they’d ever scored in a home game, and a flashback to the 17 they’d bequeathed Mike Pelfrey in his debut. (Somewhere in Texas, Jacob deGrom had to be gritting his teeth.) As it turned out, Tong still had things to learn: Of his four subsequent starts, one was good, one was so-so and two were beatdowns. (The opposing pitcher in one of those beatdowns? Jacob deGrom.) So no, he wasn’t ready, but it’s not on Tong that the Mets asked him to be a miracle worker instead of just a promising rookie pitcher. He’ll take his next steps in February, which should be fun to watch. Topps Pro Debut card, he’ll get something better in 2026 Series 1.
Brandon Sproat: The third member of the Mets’ kiddie pitching corps, Sproat looked very much like a work in progress over his first four big-league starts, which it might have been kinder to have him make in 2026. Again, there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with an initial quartet of appearances yielding the assessment “work in progress” — plenty of solid careers have started with less than that. Here’s hoping that Sproat’s maturation process — and that of his two fellow rookies — includes not letting the stench of his teammates’ failures linger. He deserved better. We all did. Topps Pro Debut card.
Dom Hamel: An August call-up yielded no appearances, making Hamel briefly a Met ghost. He escaped ectoplasm the next month with a lone inning against the Padres in which he yielded three hits but escaped being scored on when Luis Arraez was tagged out at second an eyelash before teammate Elias Diaz (told to slow down by a too cool for school Manny Machado) touched home. That was odd; so was Hamel becoming the 46th pitcher the Mets used in 2025 and thereby setting an MLB record. It’s not a record I expect to last given the newfound roster churn we’ve discussed several times already: Relievers Wander Suero and Dylan Ross weren’t called on during a game and so went into the Holy Books as 2025 Met ghosts instead of the 47th and 48th pitchers used. (Bet they’re disappointed not to have a larger role in this extended meditation on lousiness and failure.) Hamel is now Rangers property, so perhaps his talent for escaping jams is real. Syracuse card.