The 2025 Mets and how all questions don't need perfect answers

There’s no doubt that certain things went right for the 2024 Mets. You could name three things and your buddy could name three things and there might not be any overlap among your answers. Bottom line is you don’t win 89 games – especially when you’re expected to be .500 – without some things going right. But let’s not pretend it was all smooth sailing. Let’s remind ourselves what went wrong last year.

Francisco Alvarez missed nearly two months, a span where the club was terrible.
Pete Alonso’s productivity fell for the second straight year.
Jeff McNeil was rotten for the first half and then got hurt once he turned things around.
Brett Baty was handed the Opening Day 3B job and flopped.
Francisco Lindor had a .617 OPS thru the first 47 games of the season.
Brandon Nimmo had a .596 OPS in his final 264 PA.
Harrison Bader was terrible outside one 99-PA stretch.
Starling Marte was limited to 94 games due to injuries.
J.D. Martinez saw his OPS drop 168 points.
Kodai Senga pitched in just one game during the regular season.
Adrian Houser was lousy as a starter and then was busted to the pen before being released.
Edwin Diaz had just 20 Saves and blew seven save opportunities
Adam Ottavino flopped as the team’s primary setup reliever.
Jake Diekman posted a 5.63 ERA before being released.
Jorge Lopez melted down on the mound, threw his glove in the stands and was released.
Yohan Ramirez had a 7.56 ERA and was released.
Michael Tonkin had a 5.14 ERA and was released.
Paul Blackburn, Brooks Raley, Christian Scott and Drew Smith all suffered season-ending injuries.

And this is hardly a definitive list, with no mentions of how lousy some backup catchers were and failing to list the injuries for replacement relievers who had good seasons when healthy.

Without doing this for every team that finished over .500 – it’s hard to say where this slew of bad things rates. It just feels like a substantial list. But even if this is just an average amount of bad fortune for a winning team, it just goes to show how everything doesn’t need to break right for a squad to have a good year.

As you probably know, I’m manually converting my old articles from WordPress to Substack. And it’s striking the difference between how fans were reacting after the 101-win season and getting bounced in the first round of the playoffs in 2022 and how the same fans are reacting after 2024’s trip to the NLCS. And even though the Mets lost several players off that ’22 team, they made big swings in free agency, which left almost everyone cocky about their chances in 2023.

Cocky is about the last word you’d see written about the fans this offseason.

The vast majority of fans are pleading for several additions. And not just bench-player types. They want to see a big bat – preferably Alonso – a top of the rotation starter and a key bullpen piece. Oh, and they want bench players, too. Preferably Jose Iglesias. And they wouldn’t turn their nose up on an outfield upgrade, either.

After making all of the high-profile moves that fans wanted to see in the offseason, the 2023 Mets finished 75-87. The team reacted by bringing in a new PoBO and a new manager. The PoBO is one that fans wanted the team to grab for at least two years before he became available. And now that he’s here, they just don’t approve of the way he builds a team, despite how well it’s worked, both here and in Milwaukee.

There are a ton of question marks around the team as we get ready for the start of Spring Training. And it’s guaranteed that some of those question marks will be answered in a negative way. Yet not all of them will result in failure. And any question mark that results in a positive answer only pushes the team forward.

And let’s not forget what happened in ’23, when the great answers didn’t deliver great results.

At some point, we have to place some trust in David Stearns, that he knows how to assemble a winning team. You don’t need to be in lock-step with him on every move or non-move – and it wouldn’t be healthy if you were in total agreement. But we need to look at the big picture, the one where the Mets are trying to build a sustainable winner.

Outside of Juan Soto – the Mets have Soto! – no one added this offseason came with a contract greater than three years. On the way to building a sustainable winner, the decision was made not to add a potential anchor that drags the team down in years four and beyond. That seems like a smart decision to me for where the Mets are in the success cycle. And that more than makes up for the decision to sign Griffin Canning or trade for Jose Siri.