The 2023-2025 Mets and the team's self-efficacy

There are instances in all of our lives where we face hard times, ones where we’re just going thru it. And it could be your professional life or your personal life or your hobby/fantasy life – or a combination of all of those things. Everyone reading this was probably devastated the first time they went thru it with a person they were dating. Odds are, you didn’t handle that very well. Hopefully, the more experience you have with disappointment, regardless of the area of your life it arises, the better you’re able to handle it when it crops up again. Because you know it will.

In college, I was introduced to self-efficacy, with a professor who absolutely loved the concept. For those not familiar with the term, it’s the belief in your ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish particular tasks. It’s different than self-worth, which is more general. Self-efficacy is both task-specific and dynamic. It occurs to me that self-efficacy certainly applies to the players on your favorite sports team. And it might apply a tiny bit to the fans, too.

As you well know, the Mets this season went thru it as a team, going 1-10 and a week later sitting at 3-14. It’s safe to say that during this stretch, the team wasn’t hitting well, wasn’t pitching well and wasn’t fielding well, either. During that bad spell, there was a players-only meeting. The players didn’t talk specifics about the meeting but it feels safe to say that in some way, they talked about self-efficacy, even if they were unaware that they engaged it that. Here’s what Francisco Lindor said about what he hopes comes from the meeting:

“Nothing but winning.”

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“This is not a magic thing. Nobody is hoping for that. This is not how it works.

“If that’s how it worked, we would’ve done it probably a while ago. It’s just part of the adversity we’re dealing with.”

You never know how much baseball adversity these players in their 20s and 30s have dealt with previously. They were so much better than their peers growing up that it’s unlikely they dealt with a massive losing stretch in high school ball or travel ball or college. Maybe some dealt with it in the minors – certainly not everyone.

We do know that Pete Alonso, Lindor, Starling Marte, Jeff McNeil and Brandon Nimmo went thru a stretch in 2023 where the team started off 14-7 and then went 3-12 and 22-39. Those five – and others – definitely have gone thru it. The 2024 Mets started off 0-5 and after they recovered from that stretch, from May 10-May 30 went a combined 4-15.

The 2023 Mets never recovered from that poor stretch. Having gone thru it the year before, the 2024 Mets handled adversity much better, ending up with 89 wins in the regular season and advancing to the NLCS.

How will the 2025 Mets fare in this department? After (hopefully) hitting rock bottom with their 3-14 stretch, the Mets have reeled off three straight wins. Perhaps they go on a tear and their collective self-efficacy goes thru the roof. But maybe this is just a short-term blip and they go right back to losing ways. And that’s the thing with self-efficacy. Earlier, it was mentioned that it was dynamic – it can either grow or shrink, depending on the circumstances. Let’s hope that the team’s circumstances continue to trend in a positive direction.

Now, how about the fans?

The fans, too, have been thru the tough times with the team. Everyone reading this went thru the bad stretches in 2023 and 2024, saying nothing of terrible stretches before then, too. But we’ll focus on what’s happened the past two years, as the vast majority of players on the team experienced at least one of these stretches. In a way, the fans have to take their cues from the players, since they’re the ones who actually have control over the outcome.

In all times of difficulty, no matter the source, you have to focus on what you can control. Currently, I’m going thru it with adhesive capsulitis. There’s nothing one can do about having this issue. The only thing within my control is doing the rehab – so that’s where my focus is.

As a Mets fan, there’s nothing to be done from my end about the team’s rough stretch. My focus can be on how lousy they’ve played and the obstacles they face trying to turn it around. Yet my choice is to focus on the fact that this core group has been thru this before and have endured the difficulty. Perhaps if they folded in 2024 like they did in 2023, we would be justified thinking, “Here we go again.”

But 2024 happened.

Like Lindor said, this isn’t magic. There’s work to be done. But the organization, from the owner down to the players, should recognize that nothing that’s happened to date is insurmountable. Hopefully, they all believe in themselves and their ability to perform the task at hand, to play better and to win many more games than they lose.

Do the players believe that? They should; let’s hope that they do. Do you believe the team can do that? Each one of us likely has a different degree of confidence in our favorite team. And that’s okay.

As a child, the phrase, “Can’t see the forest for the trees,” was a difficult concept for me. Of course, it means focusing too much on individual parts and minor details, instead of taking in the overall situation. Without a doubt, 3-14 wasn’t the slightest bit of fun. But that’s a small section of trees in the 162-game forest. The 2025 forest for the Mets also contains a 45-24 stretch of trees.

At the end of the day, the players should be able to fall back on how well they played after a tough stretch in 2024, as well as their terrific start in the first 69 games of this season. And the same goes for the fans, too. The circumstances between the two seasons are far from identical. But no one should need 100% duplication for proof of concept. And the concept is that this is a team capable of recovering from adversity, making the playoffs and doing damage once there.

My belief in this team is pretty up there. Yet with Dedniel Nunez looking like he’s out for the season, it would be nice to pick up an experienced eighth-inning reliever. Because having confidence isn’t always enough. Bob Lemon put it best when he said, “The two most important things in life are good friends and a strong bullpen.”

May you have both of those things in your life.