These Ghosts Won't Fade So Easily...
The collapse of the New York Mets won't just stick with them for 2025, but for many years to come.
The New York Mets 2025 season may have come to a crashing halt on Sunday evening in Miami, but it’s effects have barely even begun to be felt.
We all know the story – New York went from baseball’s best team for over two months, flying high at 21 games over the .500 mark in mid-June, only to crash and burn for the final three-and-a-half months. The fall was slow; less of a collapse and more of an avalanche. But that prolonged pace did little to ease the pain for those watching every single night, hoping for a change that would never come.
Instead it just stretched that pain out for a period so long it may have just numbed you from the shock, before pulling you back in for more. The Mets fall was gradual enough that it tricked many into believing something different than their eyes were showing them. Just slow enough that it nearly forced you to keep holding onto that belief.
It was a hope we’d been held hostage by. And if anything, that may have been the cruelest part of it all.
Ultimately the only thing the Mets had working for them was the math they’d built up because of that impressive start. As days, then weeks, then months passed by and the struggles continued, the one and only thing that Mets fans had to hold onto tight was that precious math.
But as the season marched deeper and deeper, that math – like everything else – too turned on the Mets. It started with the National League East, which went from a season-high five-and-a-half game lead over the Phillies to a double-digit deficit before you could realize what had even happened. But it didn’t stop there. Soon the Mets would lose their grip on the first Wild Card spot. And then the second, as well.
For a long time – nearly up until the very end, in fact – despite it all, the math was still on New York’s side to hold onto that final postseason spot. But that, too, got away from the Mets as their struggles stretched beyond the furthest extents of our imaginations. They blew opportunity after opportunity, day after day. So many moments come to mind, you could probably pick 15-20 off the top of your head alone, though my mind will always stick with that final home series of the season vs. Washington.
If there was a chance for prosperity and joy, odds are that the Mets came up just short in new and agonizing ways every single time down the stretch.
From there, the math turned on the Mets once and for all. What our eyes and ears had told us for months finally became a reality we could no longer ignore – they were not a playoff team.
And while their miserable season of baseball may have come to a halt, that pain has only just begun to felt.
The thing about a collapse is that it doesn’t just end when that final brick has tumbled it’s way onto the ground. It has staying power.
Just days after the final out has been recorded, the Mets have yet to even be faced with their own reckoning. Steve Cohen and David Stearns did their duties – they ate the crow they had no other choice but to feast on after such an abject disappointment – but only now does their journey begin if they want to dig themselves out of this pit made out of their own design.
A collapse such as this leaves a black mark on every individual that touches an organization, and that is something that every single person associated with this disaster will now have to either climb their way back from, or ultimately be defined by.
By the time the light shines on the 2026 season, this coaching staff will not look the same. This roster will not look the same. And perhaps just as importantly, the way that Mets fans look at this regime will no longer be the same.
The ripple effects of this collapse will echo throughout this organization and this fan base for years to come. The memories and feelings of this failure will live inside of the minds and souls of every fan who watches this team for years, one way or another. It will burrow it’s way deep into the psyche of Mets fans, who will now cringe or look over their shoulders any time this team gets off to a strong start or enters a season with major expectations.
And if you’re nodding your head somberly as you read this, that’s because we are speaking from experience.
It has been 18 years since the collapse of the 2007 New York Mets – what is still widely considered to be the worst collapse in the history of Major League Baseball – and it’s ripples can still be felt to this very day.
Every single year the Mets are in a playoff position come September, you either hear about 2007 or you’re already thinking about it yourself. It has become a foundational piece of the sports PTSD that comes with being a fan of this franchise, and it will now be joined by another equally painful pillar.
The 2025 collapse of the New York Mets is not just another lost season. It is a scar, permanent and unhealed, and one that will shape how this franchise is seen and how its fans feel for years to come.
Much like 2007, it will not be spoken of so much as it is felt, a shadow that slips over us late in each and every season, a whisper that every win might only be setting up another crueler fall.
This is how collapses endure: not as memories, but as ghosts.
And as we’ve already learned, the ghosts of 2025 will not fade so easily. They rarely ever do.
Roster Moves 📰
CF Jose Siri elected free agency
LHP Richard Lovelady elected free agency
RHP Kevin Herget elected free agency
Rich, just spot on. I thought when Stearns was hired, he would last three years. While injuries decimated the starters, did we REALLY think Megill (Mr. April) was ready to be an ace? Montas has a poor track record the last four years. The "lightning in a bottle" smacks of the Wilpons' regime. Peterson is at best a #three starter. Senga has to have everything just right. Life ain't like that, Senga. Manaea was rushed, but I thought he would find himself. Not so much. The bullpen was a mess, save for Diaz, but tell me what bullpen could have saved this team? Porous defense, 3 inning starters, and an offense that looks unbeatable one game, then disappears into ethernet.
This one hurts.
Brilliant writing.