The Mets are asking for patience fans may not have
Starling Marte plays in his first Winter League game in six years. Plus, how the Mets are asking their fans to wait.
What’s Up with the Mets? 🍎
OF Starling Marte played in his first Dominican Winter League game since 2017 and went 1-for-3 while playing right field
John Gibbons deepens his special bond with the Mets after being hired as bench coach (MLB.com)
Rumor Mill 💨
Free agent OF Jorger Soler may have to settle for a two-year contract (Passan)
The Mets are asking a restless fanbase to wait… ✍️
It’s been a long road for Mets fans... For some, they’ve been waiting 38 years to witness a championship again. For others like myself, they’ve gone their entire lives without ever seeing one.
So to have an offseason such as this where it has become clear that the organization is going to ask this fan base to once again wait out another year and be patient is rather challenging.
The Mets have made the postseason just once over the last seven years, and three times over their last 17 seasons. In that time, the team has won two playoff series, one National League pennant (all in 2015), and no world championships. In the Steve Cohen era specifically — while things have certainly improved in a major way with the club’s payroll, transaction aggressiveness and focus on improving their analytics and farm system – the results haven’t exactly been there yet.
The team had a miraculous 2022 season after an aggressive offseason, winning 101 games and at times looking like the best team in all of baseball. It was the second-most wins in a season in Mets franchise history and should have been a year-long coronation for a club that rarely gets that. And yet because of a September stumble (and, of course, the Atlanta Braves), the regular season ended with an incredibly bad taste in everyone’s mouths as the Mets fumbled away the National League East and had to settle for a Wild Card berth. From there, the Mets played just three more games and lost in the first round of the playoffs to a team that won 12 less games than they did.
Aside from that quick flameout in 2022, the other seasons in the Cohen era have gone even worse. 2021, his first full season owning the team, had a nice start but saw the team completely collapse down the stretch due to underperformance and a myriad of clubhouse issues. The team also unwisely traded a top prospect for a rental in Javier Báez and didn’t even wind up competing for a playoff spot in the end. Báez eventually signed a long-term deal in Detroit.
Then came last season, one that started with a lot of hype coming off of that 101-win campaign, and boy was it a slap in the face. One could say that it’s the most disappointing season in Mets franchise history, winning just 75 games after being baseball’s biggest offseason spender and coming into the year with big expectations.
So, after all that, for this organization to be asking this fan base to likely wait out what we now expect to be a middling 2024 season and waste yet another year of our baseball-watching lives just doesn’t sit well. I understand the organization feeling as if it needed to hit a soft reset button after the oldest team in the league fell on it’s face last year, and that has a lot of merit, but I think a lot of people expected there to be more activity this offseason and a bigger focus on trying to make the 2024 club competitive.
There is, of course, still time for David Stearns and company to do that, though every single indication and report as this offseason has gone longer has been that the Mets are not in on any major free agents, and we already know that they’re hesitant to trade their bigger assets as they continue to build up their farm system. For some, it’s going to be hard to swallow going into a year knowing the team likely isn’t going to be very good following a year as miserable as the last one.
Sure, baseball is weird and maybe they have their own little run similar to the 84-win Diamondbacks from this past season or the 86-win Phillies from the year before, but it’s not something you can necessarily count on. And it certainly wasn’t what a lot of people hoped for.
Hot Stove 🔥
OF Teoscar Hernández could be close to a decision with the Red Sox, Dodgers and Angels showing interest (Pepen)
Japanese free agent LHP Shota Imanaga only has until January 11th to sign with an MLB team before his posting window closes
The Padres will not be hiring a bench coach for the 2024 season
I am very disappointed in your last article. You sound a lot like the 8th grade babies that are complaining and whining about the Mets on other Met platforms.
I am sick of it. Go root for another team if you need that instant gratification and don’t understand the importance of building a sound foundation - whether it be a building, company or a baseball club. My suggestion is you either wake up to how you BUILD QUALITY or move to another club that satisfies your need to feel ok as a baseball fan.
Personally, I am quite pleased that Stern and Cohen are slowing things down to build within. Too many years have gone by with poor judgement by the lousy leaders in the front office for the Mets. (Especially GM) and flash buying players for crap contracts in addition to trading young talent for PR headlines. ENOUGH
Least you forget the frugal ignorant owners of the Wilpon days. They ran the club into the ground only occasionally putting a star player in the club to keep a false hope that the club was good
Part of the reason they fell apart last year is because they hired an old fashioned manager who had a great reputation by the media, but who I saw LOST AT LEAST 25 games on his own. He was Not Popular with the fans - hated the media- and managed his players with too much micro managing.
NO CREATIVITY - please - I can go on and on. He lost the club right after midway season. It was obvious to me (a Met fan from their 1st game in the league), that he belonged at best, in the front office, but not on the field. The year before the team had a better spirit and Diaz - not surprised they did well. But, like a building that needed INTERNAL repair, the decay finally manifested.
THEN THERE IS THIS YEAR - and the first order of business is to clean up the debris that others left before Stern took over.
Then an important piece was to place quality coaching on the club and instituting player development paths so the future will be much more steady. So many had to be fired - cleaning out years of painting the outside and ignoring the internal work the club needs to be a perennial winner.
I am happy that Stern IS NOT giving out long contracts (with exceptions for young players that have the potential for greatness). He has created a path. Now the TRUE MET FANS will walk that path with Sterns and Cohen.
New starts require fans to STOP
1. Thinking a rich owner can fix it with money
2. constantly review and bring up past years of disappointment (as you did in your Substack) and bring that thinking into this year,
3. Worrying that we are not keeping up with the Joneses (in this case the Yankees)
4. Not enough PR on MLB or newspapers to make them feel good.
All moves that indicate that such immature fans have given little or no thought to how to build anything. Those years are HISTORY and have NOTHING to do with the METS now
So now we will see if we have a fan base in 2024 that can exhibit some reflection and thinking of what it means to be a MET FAN