Total meltdown…

The Mets completed their inevitable collapse on Sunday in Miami. Their off-season has arrived early, and ungluing this collapse will be hard for this franchise.

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What’s up with the Mets? ⚾️

• The Mets lost to the Marlins and were eliminated from playoff contention silently with a 4-0 loss in Miami (box)

• The Mets used eight pitchers in an effort to stave off elimination on Sunday - Sean Manaea started and pitched pretty well over 1.2 IP, but after Brooks Raley got four outs, Ryne Stanek and Tyler Rogers combined to allow four runs in the fourth inning, which was all Miami needed to kill the Mets season

• The Mets mustered just four singles and a double on the afternoon, and went 0-for-8 with RISP on the day

• The Mets finished with 83 wins, and went just 38-55 after June 12. They were 0-70 on the year when trailing after eight innings

• Pete Alonso said he will opt out of his contract at the end of the season, but Edwin Díaz said he wasn’t sure if he would be doing the same

• At present, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza’s job is not in jeopardy, although the same can’t be said for members of the coaching staff (SNY)

• David Stearns will speak to the media from Citi Field at 3:30 PM today

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Playoff Race 🏁

The Reds lost on Sunday to the Brewers. The Mets merely needed to win on Sunday to win the third wild card in the National League.

They did not do that.

As such, with their loss to the Marlins, the Mets were eliminated from playoff contention, regardless of what happened with the Reds, who won the tiebreaker over the Mets, thus winning the third wild card.

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Play of the Game 😢

The play that sticks out the most to me was when the Mets had the bases loaded and two out, and Pete Alonso was at the plate. He hit a ball 116 mph, but right into the glove of Javier Sanoja.

That line out ended the Mets only threat of the game, and their last true chance of winning the wild card this season.

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This collapse won’t go away, either… ✍️

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Disaster. Catastrophe. Massacre. All words that quite possibly puts this 2025 season mildly for the Mets.

I recall late last year when the Mets were in that pennant race. Mets owner and CEO Steve Cohen asked the fans publicly to show up to Citi Field after a sparse crowd was present for an end-of-year game.

Not only did the fans respond by showing up for the remaining games, but they had a continued show of faith and loyalty by showing up with high energy for 80 games this season. The Mets drew over 3 million fans to Citi Field after a promising 2024 season that saw this club get to within two wins of the National League pennant.

The fans did their part for sure in 2025. The Mets, however, did not. The fans deserved far better than what they got on Sunday afternoon, and the pit in your stomach you slept with last night. Citi Field is an expensive place to go in a world that is only becoming increasingly more expensive, but you all spent your time, money, and energy on the Mets over the last six months and deserve a hell of a lot more for investment than what you ultimately got.

As Juan Soto put it after Sunday’s coffin-nailing game, this was a failure on all fronts by the Mets, the players, the coaching staff, and the front office.

We can discuss all of the things we have talked about for the last four months over and over and over again. But in the end, there isn’t just one thing that went wrong. One thing doesn’t send a club on a 38-55 spiral since June 13. It wasn’t just Pete Alonso’s bad throw to first that day, it wasn’t just the ensuing pulled hamstring in Kodai Senga’s leg. It wasn’t just Francisco Lindor’s broken toe, or just Ryan Helsley’s pitch tipping, or Griffin Canning’s bad step, or simply an overused and overexposed bullpen, or Juan Soto’s slow start, or Sean Manaea’s injuries and harsh regression, it wasn’t just their 0-70 when trailing after eight innings, and so on and so forth.

It’s all of it and so much more.

New York Post

It was also the construction of the pitching staff, plus the poor evaluations of the players David Stearns brought in. It was their inability, unwillingness, or both to correct their massive starting pitching problems at the trade deadline.

But also this blind faith that despite their slow bleed-out, it would all be fine. They would turn it around, start playing better, and get into the playoffs one way or another.

Hope isn’t a strategy.

The irony of it all is, all they needed to do was win on Sunday. The Reds lost, which means one win meant the Mets would’ve had 84 wins, the Reds 83, and the Mets would be in Los Angeles this morning getting ready for the Wild Card Series tomorrow.

Or, maybe they could’ve won one more game against the Nationals last week too. Or, one more game in their series against the Marlins in New York a month ago.

Or, maybe not play musical chairs with the rotation in late June when their pitching staff truly imploded.

Or, maybe not go with openers and bullpen games at that time, either.

Or, maybe call up Nolan McLean - who was obviously ready while the team in New York was rotting away - after they were unable to procure a starting pitcher at the trade deadline.

Or, maybe they could’ve had more of a human element to their off-season evaluation when it came to deciding on which pitchers they were bringing in. We talked so much last winter about going to the well too much by trying to fix flawed pitchers and the risk associated with it.

Or, maybe they could’ve just merely shown up on Friday, or on Sunday in Miami.

New York Post

Yeah, there were many things which led to this collapse and a team that might ultimately prove to be the most disappointing in franchise history.

The Cohens spent $340 million on the 2025 payroll. The team won 83 games, which equates to $4.1 million per win. That’s a hell of a lot of coin for them to be sitting at home today, rather than in a hotel in Los Angeles.

This can only be described as a total flop and a massive failure from the front office down to the dugout. How does a team with a $340 million payroll that starts 45-24 win just 38 more games and miss the playoffs in a system where 40 percent of the teams make it?

It’s horrible, sickening and disgusting.

Now, this isn’t a passion thing, and this isn’t an effort thing. It’s not a clubhouse thing either, no matter what you want to believe. Teams from an external perspective always seem to have good clubhouses when they win, bad clubhouses when they lose. And teams don’t lose because of a lack of effort. They were all trying. Tirelessly trying. They didn’t want this, they know it’s unacceptable, they felt the pressure even if they don’t want to admit it, and they know that collapses like this lead to major changes.

Lindor said so himself.

But it was a talent thing, it was a performance thing (from the players up to the GM), it was a focus and engagement thing (look no further back than at Friday’s mental meltdown, among others) and clearly a misallocation of some of that $340 million that was spent on this roster this season. The rotation - before Frankie Montas or Sean Manaea threw one big league pitch this year - was pitching way over its head but nonetheless was the best in baseball through June 13, which was in part why the Mets were 45-24 through the season’s first 69 games. Sure, they weren’t throwing a lot of innings, the bullpen was being overused, and again, they were overachieving.

But once that went south, so did everything else. Their defense went in the sewer. Their bullpen flamed out completely. Their rotation became mostly uncompetitive even with Manaea and Montas. The lineup proved to be unquestionably top-heavy albeit elite, and they couldn’t outhit their uncompetitive pitching for the final 93 games of the season. Even when their offense clicked over the final two months of the season, they were still losing because they couldn’t catch and throw and they simply couldn’t pitch.

Oh, and the countless number of the mental mistakes…

They were, by the end of the year, arguably one of the worst teams in baseball. And certainly far from the best. It just goes to show that how much an owner spends doesn’t always matter.

New York Post

So, what now?

Well, it looks like Mendoza’s job is reportedly safe, for now anyway, whether you agree with that or not. But I do think major functional changes are coming organizationally. Aside from a facelift to the coaching staff, which just seems likely, there needs to be a complete about-face on the entire player evaluation and acquisition process. They can’t employ the same acquisition strategy again, especially when it comes to pitching. They need surer things for their rotation, they need surer things for their bullpen, fewer reclamation projects, if’s and maybe’s, and perhaps assume a different kind of risk in a reformed process.

They also have to decide if both Pete Alonso and Edwin Díaz are a part of their solution. To me, that’s a no-brainer. It’s difficult to be better going forward without them - they’re among the best at what they do, and the Mets should have no problem retaining them when they eventually opt out.

But we can talk about them individually in the days and weeks ahead.

For now, the Mets have to process this embarrassing failure. They have to figure out what the infrastructure is going to look like between now and the end of the World Series. David Stearns probably needs to offer more than blanket platitudes about the failure of this season when he speaks to the media later today, and focus on what went wrong and give pragmatic answers as to how his team plans to fix this and ensure this was merely a bump in the road.

The thing is, no matter what he says, collapses stick to franchises like glue. They become a part of a franchise’s fabric and identity. They don’t go away. Consider how long it’s been since the collapses of 2007 and 2008, and fans and media still talk about it.

And the truth is, a lot of that good faith that was built from 2024 has probably been lost. That will need to be earned again.

This one isn’t going away either. Not until this is fixed and the Mets win the World Series. We are just going to keep talking about it, fearing it happening again, until they change the narrative around the franchise.

Remember, the front office is as smart as the record says they are. Or, as smart as a collapse says they are.

Always remember that.

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Around the League 🚩

• The Blue Jays beat the Rays 13-4, securing their first AL East title since 2015

• Aaron Judge singled and scored in the Yankees 3-2 win over the Orioles, finishing with a .331 batting average and the AL batting title

• Trea Turner went 0-for-2 in the Phillies 2-1 win over the Twins, but finished with an NL-best .304 batting average to win the NL batting title

• The Giants beat the Rockies 4-0, sweeping them over the weekend and sending Colorado to their 119th loss of the season

• The Guardians won 9-8 to officially erase a 15 1/2 game deficit over the Tigers and secure the AL Central title for the second straight season