I wasn’t going to write about the quote that Tommy Pham gave The Athletic for their piece about how the 2023 New York Mets failed, but I felt it was necessary to ensure our readers were provided with a chance to make their own conclusions.

The quote from Pham to Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, “Out of all the teams I played on, this is the least-hardest working group of position players I’ve ever played with,” has been used as fodder by blowhard radio mouthpieces to continue their previous rampages about the Mets clubhouse issues. And that’s being done without also providing the fact that The Athletic also went on to tell us that Pham held a lot of respect for the work ethic of Lindor, Alonso, and Nimmo–players seen as team leaders.

Also, I should remind folks that the position player core to start 2023 was much the same as the group that was on a 101-win team last season.

Photo by Roberto Carlo

It feels important to note that Pham said this to Lindor during a meeting about ways they thought the team could slow down their June slide that had seen the team fall below .500. The Athletic also passed on that Pham felt comfortable telling Lindor things like this because he saw Francisco as a leader and admired this star shortstop’s accountability.

Pham, known as a player not afraid to speak his mind, was certainly frustrated with the play of a team that Steve Cohen spent a record amount of money on during the offseason to be a contender in 2023. Of course he was frustrated. Everyone from the front office to the fans was upset at how the Mets played in June, which started the collapse of the 2023 team.

No clubhouse that enters the year as one of the favorites to be in the World Series will be all warm and fuzzy when they ultimately end the year with 70ish wins. That also doesn’t mean it was “toxic” like radio personalities on WFAN want to scream about. The Mets are a bad team this year because Edwin Díaz went down with a season-ending injury in March, José Quintana missed the entire first half of the season, Starling Marte was seemingly never 100%, neither Justin Verlander nor Max Scherzer pitched up to expectations, Alonso struggled after getting hit by a pitch, and Billy Eppler was too focused on optionable depth to acquire legit bullpen pieces.

Sure, there are other reasons that you can throw in there, but those feel like the biggest reasons why the Mets were bad this year, whereas talking heads who don’t cover the team daily want to get you riled up about off-the-field stuff.

The Mets 2023 season will end in disappointment after an expected World Series run turned into a midseason selloff, though Steve Cohen is bringing in long-time target David Stearns to run baseball operations in hopes that it won’t happen again in 2024 and beyond.