More Mets uniform updates, and the endless Alonso saga continues

The Mets make another update to their uniforms for the 2025 season. Plus, some interesting Spring Training storylines from years past...

Just Mets is now officially on Bluesky! Follow us, plus co-creators Michael Baron & Rich MacLeod 🦋

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What’s up with the Mets? 🍎

• The Mets have updated their main road uniforms for 2025 and appear to be retiring the home blue jersey (UniWatch)

• The Dodgers get all the headlines, but the Mets have added more projected WAR this offseason than any other team (MLB.com)

• Should the Mets part with No. 2 prospect Jett Williams in a deal for Padres RHP Dylan Cease? (SNY)

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Rumor Mill 💨

• The Cardinals and Red Sox have recently had communications about a trade including 3B Nolan Arenado (Morosi)

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My Top 3 favorite, weird Mets spring storylines… ✍️

Well, it’s February 5th. We’re well into the after hours of the baseball offseason with little to no moves left to be made, yet still a week away from pitchers and catchers reporting and 17 days away until the first exhibition game of the spring.

And Pete Alonso sure as hell isn’t signing anytime soon (or ever at this point?), which leaves us a bit barren when it comes to news these days. So with the promise of a new season shimmering ahead in the distance, it had me thinking back to past Spring Trainings for the Mets. They didn’t all come with the same level of excitement as this one does, but they were never lacking when it came to a weird storyline or two.

So in these final desolate days of this dead period of baseball, let’s reminisce on my favorite three strange storylines from Mets Spring Training over the last decade or so…

…is that Tim Tebow??

I had a similar recollection aloud on Twitter and Bluesky yesterday, but hey, did you guys know that the Mets employed Tim Tebow, the failed NFL quarterback, their farm system for four years?

Yeah, this is one of those parts of the dark Wilpon years toward the tail end that are easy to forget about. But from 2016-19, Tim freakin’ Tebow was a legitimate (and annoying) talking point that surrounded the Mets every year, especially in Spring Training.

Every season grew more and more chatter from reporters and fans so desperate for anything that resembled entertainment that they actually wondered if the Wilpons would ever stoop low enough to promote Tebow to the major league club solely for the spectacle of it all. And, honestly, they probably would have during the 2018 season if it weren’t for Tebow suffering an injury at the end of the season.

Personally, as it all comes back to me now, my fondest memories of that time were watching people get into legitimate debates over the matter, all while Tebow butchered it up in the field and at the plate in the morsel of at-bats they’d actually give him during spring games.

Tebow hit .223/.299/.338 with 18 home runs, 48 doubles, 107 RBI, 327 strikeouts, 27 double plays and a .638 OPS over 287 minor league games in his career. He earned approximately $140,000 from the Mets over that four-year span.

The Yoenis Céspedes Show

If you were a fan of the Mets during the 2016-2020 seasons, Spring Training was truly the time to shine for Yoenis Céspedes.

This man, coming off of the monstrous 2015 post-trade deadline campaign for the Mets that helped them to a World Series appearance, came into the following years with a bang every single time. There isn’t a single Spring Training that I can’t remember there being some sort of big story, drama, or “production” around Céspedes.

It was mostly fun and games at first, with Yoenis showing up to a highly anticipated Spring Training in 2016 in his personalized, suped-up three-wheeled car. It got tons of media attention at the time, and honestly, it was just cool to see any sort of player generate that sort of interest at that time.

The stories that followed over the years were equally as entertaining, though not always for the right reasons.

There was the time that Céspedes and Noah Syndergaard rode into camp riding horses and dressed like cowboys. There was another time in 2019 where Mets fans and the media spent the entire spring talking about Céspedes’ physical appearance and conditioning (he wound up playing in zero games that season). And who could forget the immortal “wild boar” story, where Céspedes supposedly fractured his ankle while trying to tame a wild boar on his Florida ranch right before the 2020 season started. To cap things off, Céspedes later boycotted the media during that Spring Training and eventually opted out of the 2020 COVID-shortened season after playing in eight games.

Pour one out to Yoenis Céspedes: The King of Spring Training.

The People v. Noah Syndergaard’s lunch

Honestly, this could very well be one of the funnier ones on this list. During the spring of 2015, it became a very public story that David Wright, the club’s captain, had scolded rookie Noah Syndergaard for eating lunch during a game – and actually threw his lunch out!

Oh yeah, and Bobby Parnell was apparently there, too.

"If a kid's not playing nice, you take his toys away,” Parnell told reporters after the incident.

Wright was a bit more descriptive and eloquent when he spoke to the media, saying “I'm not a big ranter and raver. When I get on somebody, it's 99 percent private. I'm not going to yell and scream. But when I speak to somebody, when I get on somebody, the point needs to be taken.”

Syndergaard, who was 22 years old and yet to make his major league debut at the time, was clearly surprised by the altercation.

“It was surprising,” Syndergaard told reporters. “There's really no point getting into details about it, but I came inside. I hadn't eaten lunch yet, so I figured it was as good as any a time to eat lunch. I didn't think much of it.”

I’ve talked to a few people who around the team at the time in the decade since this took place, and the main takeaway was simply that as captain, David Wright took his responsibilities seriously – especially when it came to teaching young players the right way to do things. Supposedly, Syndergaard had a bit of an ego at the time, and this was an opportunity for the club’s veteran leader to deliver him a message.

That message seemed to resonate as Syndergaard pitched to a 3.24 ERA, 3.25 FIP, and 117 ERA+ over 24 starts. He was also the only Mets pitcher to win a World Series game that season.

So thanks, David Wright, for pushing Syndergaard to mature a little bit, and for giving us a great joke for the 2015 season on MetsTwitter.

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Around the League 🚩

• The Yankees reportedly re-signed LHP Tim Hill to a one-year, $2.85 million contract with a club option for 2026 (Passan)

• The Dbacks officially re-signed OF Randal Grichuk to a one-year, $5 million contract with a mutual option for the 2026 season

• The Orioles officially signed OF Ramon Laureano to a one-year, $4 million contract