Fan Shot: Asking Lots of Questions

With the World Series officially in the rearview mirror, today’s as good a day as any for a requiem of the 2025 Mets season.

First things first: while I feel pretty confident that the Mets would’ve faired a little better than the Reds and at least put up a fight against the Dodgers…let’s be honest that they weren’t going to win it all this year. Questionable managerial choices may have doomed them in game 162 (see: making the decision to attempt to get 22 outs from a poorly performing bullpen when the score was still 0-0 and Manaea hadn’t actually given up a hit, or strong contact, was asking for someone to be exposed). And that someone was Stanek, but there were deeper flaws in the team, and any magic fairy dust from 2024 had been washed away long ago.

So how are we Mets fans supposed to feel?

Photo Credit: John Jones-Imagn Images

I want you to go back to March for a second. Erase this entire strange season from your brain and try and think about how you were feeling during spring training. Now…what if I told you these 10 facts about the upcoming season:

1.  Juan Soto would play 160 games, finish the season 2 steals shy of 40-40, set a new team record for walks in a season, and win a Silver Slugger and be a top 3 MVP finalist.
2. Francisco Lindor would play 160 games and go 30-30
3. Pete Alonso would play all 162, hit 38 homers, and set career highs in batting average and doubles and win his first Silver Slugger.
4. In 62 appearances, Edwin Diaz would pitch to a 1.67 ERA, allowing only 6 earned runs after April 21st.
5. Brandon Nimmo would set career highs in homers and RBI.
6. The Mets, as a team, would finish 2nd in the NL in homers behind the Dodgers and 3rd in steals behind CHI and MIL.
7. Clay Holmes would make 31 starts and pitch to a respectable 3.53 ERA, while David Peterson would make the All-Star team.
8. The team would call up Nolan McLean to make 8 starts, during which he’d go 5-1 with an ERA just over 2 and nearly 11 K/9.
9. David Stearns would make deadline deals to get 2024 NL Reliever of the Year Ryan Helsley, 2x all-star Gregory Soto, and noodle-armed Tyler Rogers to team up with Diaz in the bullpen.
10. The Atlanta Braves would lose 86 games

You would sign up for that in an instant because that team makes the playoffs. That’s a team that nobody wants to face in a short series. And THAT team sounds fun!

How wrong you would’ve been.

Looking back, there are tons of parallels to the 2007 season (coming off a trip to the NLCS, they start off hot before inconsistent starting pitching and an unreliable bullpen catch up to them, all culminating in a 3 games series vs. the Marlins where they go lose g1, win g2 on a one-hitter, lose must-win g3 to fall out of the playoffs), but those are all surface similarities. The truth is that there is one MAJOR difference between 2007 and 2025 that is more concerning than the similarities.

Back in ’07, we couldn’t believe what was happening. As the Mets crumbled in real-time against the Gnats and the Fish, it was shocking. Glavine’s disasterpiece in game 162 (editor’s note: the hyperlink to the first inning of that game was removed for your safety) felt like a cruel trick (you will never convince me he wasn’t wearing a Braves t-shirt under his jersey that day like a WWE heel). I was angry and watched the next 8 innings with a sense of dread that built with every out until the game and season finished. And I still couldn’t believe what had unfolded.

This year, the final week felt preordained. There wasn’t one reason, one key injury, one fluke play, one bad performance. They lost because of poor pitching (everyone but Diaz and McLean), poor defense, ill-timed strikeouts, and killer double plays. They lost because they didn’t have a reliable starter to stop the bleeding. They lost because the offense would erupt for an inning or two, but couldn’t string together any consistency down the stretch (even an 8-2 lead in the 6th vs. the Cubs that last week felt tenuous). And they lost because they managed like they were out of ideas and options in game 162.

I’m not gonna lie, part of me was hoping the Reds would win their last game so we could say, “oh, it didn’t matter that they blew game 162 because they wouldn’t have made the playoffs anyway.”

Which leads me to that “BIG DIFFERENCE” between 2007 and 2025: the ’07 team deserved to be a playoff team and this year’s squad just didn’t. The 2007 collapse was painful and remains so to this day, while this collapse just feels… well… hollow. And THAT seems worse.

It wasn’t until the playoffs were at least a round old before I could figure out why I felt that way (or rather, wasn’t feeling). With some time to breathe, I started with the specifics. Maybe it was that both Mauricio and Alvarez seemed to forget the count on two separate occasions of game 162, despite the enormity of the situation. Shouldn’t they have been a bit more locked in? Maybe it was hard to feel strongly about a team that appeared to be going through the motions at such a critical point.

Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

I looked bigger picture. On June 12th, they were 21 games over .500, meaning they went 38-55 over their last 93 games (.409 winning percentage). Could the empty feeling be because a team playing .400 ball for over 3 months is hard to believe in?

I’ve also tried to think more deeply, worried that there’s some sort of institutional rot festering and leeching into us, the fans. After a season of Candelita concerts and Grimace, did the 2025 squad become a “25 guys 25 cabs” team a la the 2002 team?

Or maybe it’s simpler than any of that. There’s no argument that last year was magical. The Mets outperformed expectations and had so many fun, exciting, memorable moments, with players stepping up on the big stage. And then they went out and signed Soto in the offseason! Might it be so simple to say that there was no way to avoid some sort of letdown after 2024?

I’m asking a lot of questions about why this team felt so undeserving and I still have no answers beyond the acknowledgement that the end of the season was rotten.

Where does that leave us? Well, personally, I have decided to look to the sages for guidance. And I’ve found two wise philosophers who arrived to the same conclusion. Snoop from The Wire and William Munny from Unforgiven both said eloquently and succinctly: “Deserves got nothing to do with it.” And ultimately, that is why they play the games. It’s why we watch. It’s why I know where I’ll be 3/26/26. As unsatisfying as it is, I have moved forward to the 5th stage of grief: acceptance. This season wasn’t great, but I’ll be back.

The offseason is here, which means the reflections can end and the worrying can start. With both Diaz and Alonso (unsurprisingly) opting out, we can fret and debate about how Stearns should approach those two cornerstones and the salaries they’ll command. Plenty of time to worry about the number of prime years left in Soto and Lindor. Plenty of time to hope that Baty has turned a corner and McLean can sustain what he showed in his cameo. Plenty of time to debate about what can be expected from question marks like Mark Vientos (wow, how much difference a year makes), Jonah Tong, Christian Scott, Jeff McNeil, and others. Plenty of opportunity to wonder about who will be playing CF next year. And plenty of time to play the always-fun game of “Spend Uncle Stevie’s Money.”

Unlike 2007, we’re fortunate this year to have a top 10 farm system and deep enough pockets to solve the team’s problems. There are lots of questions to ask, but thankfully, there’s a good feeling that 2026 won’t be like 2008. LFGM!