What Happened to the 2025 New York Mets?

Francisco Alvarez breaking his bat in frustration as part of the 2025 New York Mets, CCed by Liscense 2.0

Let's paint a picture. 2024 was seen by many hopeful Mets fans as a moment where they

finally turned a corner. While their aspirations of a World Series hit a dead end by the hands of

the eventual champion Los Angeles Dodgers, this run had led much hope in Mets fans, as they would have missed the playoffs entirely if they had lost twice on the final day to their rivals in

the Atlanta Braves. After their defeat, this team had a plan to retool the team as some pieces left

in free agency, most notably among the bunch included Pete Alonso and J.D. Martinez, two big

power bats from the Mets lineup, and Luis Severino, who had posted a 1.7 WAR season along with 11 wins and a 3.91 ERA. While they did lose Luis Severino and other notable pieces, they did bring back Pete Alonso on a cheaper deal. They also brought on pitching reinforcements in the form of Clay Holmes, Griffin Canning, A.J Minter and a returning Sean Manaea. Along with his pitching additions, they managed to get the biggest free agent that year in Juan Soto, signing him to a massive 15 year- $765 million dollar contract to be the key in this Mets lineup.

A plethora of betting sites had the Mets as favorites to not only win their division handily,

but to be in the conversation of bringing home their first World Series title since 1986. These aspirations even kept up in the first half of the season, with the Mets holding a record of 44-24, the best record in baseball come June. While they had slipped at the end of June, July saw them bounce back by going 14-10. However, they started to collapse and collapse hard, as August had them going 11-17 along with a 10-15 record in September. They had a tiebreaker on the final day of the season, and all they needed to do was win against the Marlins and have the Reds lose. While Milwaukee had thrashed the Reds, the Mets could do nothing as their bats went ice cold and got shut out by the Marlins to miss the playoffs entirely.

So what happened? When a team has great starting pitching on paper, a lineup that was

objectively better than many all time in the franchise's history, and a front office that will do whatever is necessary to field a competitive team for the Queens faithful, how do they miss the playoffs entirely? There are a few things that I see that led to their downfall, and hopefully will lead to us seeing a revamped 2026 Mets squad that will compete for the division and beyond.

The first part in this collapse was the mid-season reinforcements. Before the All Star break,

their bullpen was not the best as they ranked 15th in the whole league by relief pitchers. For every

Edwin Diaz save, many of the other relief pitchers like Ryne Stanek became the bane of Mets fans' existence for his wild pitching approach, so the bullpen became an obvious need. Center Field was another, as Jose Siri, one of their offseason acquisitions was dealing with a serious injury at the time and was going to miss significant time due to injury. While they did have Tyrone Taylor as a back-up option, he was a better hitter against right handed pitching, so they needed a center fielder that had good splits against lefties and a decent defender to boot.

They hit all their needs at the time of the trade deadline. Trading for flamethrower closer Ryan Helsley, lefty specialists Gregory Soto and Tyler Rogers, and getting their centerfielder reinforcements in Cedric Mullins. The trades for Helesy and Soto had them giving up rather unknown prospects, while the trade for Rogers appeared to look like a drastic overpay by giving up another relief pitcher in Jose Butto, a promising prospect in pitcher Blade Tidwell and outfielder Drew Gilbert, who was a key acquisition in the trade that sent Justin Verlander back to Houston in 2023. These moves were to make them one of the scariest teams on paper, and the general sentiment was that the Mets were about to be a force to be reckoned with down the stretch.

Unfortunately, these changes fell short of the Mets aspirations. Helsley was nowhere close to himself, as he posted a 7.20 ERA with the Mets during his short stint in New York. Gregory Soto also had a rough time as well with a 4.20 ERA, which is a jump from the first half 3.96 ERA in Baltimore. Tyler Rogers saw a dip in his production but was still solid in his half season, posting a 2.30 ERA and ultimately became the Mets' setup arm out of the pen. Given that 2 of the 3 arms were dismal shows that their bullpen was not as sustainable for a deep run as it had ultimately planned to be. Cedric Mullins, who was supposed to man center field, was also significantly below average, especially with the bat, posting a .182 average and upping his walk rate and strikeout rate (11.2% BB and 24.5% K rates). While it would not be fair to put all the blame on these 3 guys specifically, there is a sense of failure towards their reinforcements as they were expected to be improvements towards this great team.

The second cause is their injury report. While it is normal and expected for many teams to go through injuries to pitchers and everyday starters on the team, it hit the Mets especially hard towards their pitching staff. Tylor Megill, Frankie Montas, Griffin Canning, A.J Minter and many more arms went down with long term injuries, with a combination of UCL tears, elbow injuries, and an ACL injury. Jesse Winker and Brett Baty going down for the season as well did not help matters either. You cannot forget Kodai Senga, who has seen limited time in the majors in his recent career due to injuries on and off the mound. Key stars had also missed some time, including Francisco Alvarez, who was out for a good portion of the season with arm issues. While the lineup was great for the majority of the season, these pitching injuries created an overreliance on rookie arms like Jonah Tong, Brandon Sproat and Nolan McLean to help push the Mets to the postseason. It did help in the short term to know what there was in the pipeline,

but leaving these three rookies have extended times in the rotation and leaving them in for high

leverage situations ultimately killed them in the long term, especially during their slide towards the last weeks of the season.

The third thing, and a key contributor to this collapse, is how they managed in one run

games. During games where the Mets were behind by 1 run, they went 0-70, meaning if they

were down one run in the eighth inning onward, it was all over but the crying. There would be no “come from behind” victory for this squad. If they had just won of these games in this situation, this team would have been in the playoffs. This team showed no sense of urgency when they were behind, and a team severely lacking this clutch factor would stand no chance in the postseason. Their hitting approach had them wildly swinging or frozen at the plate, a surprising approach for one of the best lineups in the league on paper. Since their elimination they have completely revamped the hitting staff, so improvements should be coming offensively, as they have some great and talented hitters.

This collapse was a slow motion car crash. Many Mets fans put this on par with 2007,

another time with a great lineup on paper undone by untimely injuries and losing to the Marlins onthe final day. There was also 2008 where they could not close out a game in the 9th along with losing to the Marlins on the final day of that season. While this team has seen significant change in their coaching staff, like a new bench coach, pitching coach and hitting coach. Steve Cohen still has faith in David Stearns and Carlos Mendoza to both lead and construct this team for success in

2026.