If the Mets miss the playoffs, at this point in the season when playing bad baseball seems to be the only thing they’re good at, this will go down with the worst collapses they’ve ever had, right there with blowing that 7-game lead over the Phillies in 2007 with 17 games to play. This wreck will just have taken longer to play out, over more than half-a-season this time instead of just a few weeks. And maybe, just maybe, if they do end up out of the tournament, it will feel like the worst collapse of them all.
There is still time for them to gather themselves, of course, despite the way they have looked for the past three months. There is still time for them to start looking like the team that came within two victories of going to the ’24 World Series against the team — Dodgers — who eventually won that Series. Still 13 games left beginning with Sunday’s game at Citi Field against the Rangers.
But if they don’t make it across the line, if this freefall continues all the way through Sept. 28, this Mets team and its $340 million payroll will go down as the single greatest financial flop in the history of their sport. Boom. That means the greatest disappointment since the last one like it for the owner, Steve Cohen. That was in 2023, a Mets team for which Cohen paid $319 in payroll finishing 75-87. By the way? $319 million before (baseball taxes).
You want to know how bad things have been since June 12, when the Mets were still 45-24 and still 5 ½ games ahead of the Phillies in the National League East? By Friday night, the record since then 31-48. Over that time the Phillies merely picked up a fast 17 ½ games over our rich kids in the standings. The ’25 Mets have now lost seven games in a row three different times.
Again: The schedule and the calendar still give the Mets time to somehow make things right, for themselves and for fans who came into this season expecting the sky, especially after Cohen shelled out $765 million for Juan Soto. There was a season once, with Joe Torre’s Yankees, when they lost 15 of their last 18 games and not only made the playoffs, but ended up winning the World Series against, wait for it, the Mets. We found out that year just how much of a punch those Yankees could take. But can these Mets? Or over the next two weeks are we going to watch them go down and stay down for good?
At which point Cohen’s handpicked choice to run his baseball operation, David Stearns, is going to have some explaining to do about the choices he’s made since the end of last. And please keep in mind that Stearns had nothing to do with Soto, who is once again hitting like a dream, or with Pete Alonso, who came into this weekend’s series with the Rangers with 113 RBI. That was all Steve Cohen.
It was Stearns who couldn’t find a reliable starting pitcher at the trade deadline when this Mets team was crying out for somebody like that. It was Stearns who thought the answer to his starting pitching problems between last season and this was taking a Yankee reliever and turning him into Clay (Five Innings) Holmes. It was Stearns who somehow still saw something in a bust-out case like Frankie Montas, another Yankee reject. Kodai Senga, now trying to find himself in the minors? He had one big year for the Mets and then made one start a year ago and who, really, thought his best days were ahead of him here?
When you look at the big picture with starting pitchers, the bottom line on Stearns is this: You buy cheap, you get cheap. Was there bad luck with Sean Manaea, who was a big guy for the ’24 Mets? There was. Guess what. Pitchers get hurt all over the place. Ask the Dodgers about pitching injuries and see if you get any sympathy from them.
Now here are Stearns’ Mets coming down the stretch, trying to hold off the hard-charging Giants with three starting pitchers — Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong, Brandon Sproat — who were in Triple-A at the All-Star Break. Can Stearns actually try to convince us these kids were part of some master plan for the second half of this season now that the Mets are getting rolled this way by just about everyone?
You know who looks to be getting rolled here if the Mets don’t turn things around and fast? Stearns by his counterpart Dave Dombrowski in Philadelphia, who somehow remains underrated despite being one of the great front office figures over more than the last quarter-century of big league baseball. Dombrowski went out and got Jhoan Duran, one of the biggest arms in the game, at the deadline while Stearns’ big arm turned out to be Ryan Helsley. And he made a deal for an ex-Met — and ex-Yankee — named Harrison Bader. All Bader had done for the Phillies through Thursday night’s game against the Mets was hit .339 in 35 games, with four home runs and 14 RBI.
Hey, put me down as somebody who thought Cedric Mullins still had something left when Stearns brought him here from Baltimore to play center field. But Steve Cohen doesn’t let me spend his money. That’s Stearns’ job now. At a time when his old team, the Brewers, is playing the way it is, Stearns’ new team is going the wrong way.
We all know that the Yankees had their own long streak of dreary, losing baseball in the middle of this season. They have had some losses their fans still can’t unsee, including a couple this past week against the Tigers just for good measure. But the Yankees never fell all the way out of things. The Yankees still have a chance to win their division, and get themselves a bye in the first round. You know what might happen to the Mets even if they do hold on to the third wild card for dear life? They might have to go play a wild card series against the Dodgers. Three games at Dodger Stadium, if the Dodgers even need three to send them home this time around.
Last October, the Mets showed some fight, did they ever, when they were down three games to one in the National League Championship Series. They gave the Dodgers some beatdown in Game 5 at Citi, and at least forced the Dodgers to go home to clinch the thing. Where has that kind of fight been, at least on a consistent basis, over the last three months? How it is even possible that a Mets team that showed us everything they showed us last season are now 0-63 when trailing after eight innings this season.
Oh. For. 63.
Still time for them to remember who they were a year ago. Still time for the Mets to flip the narrative one more time, before it’s too late. By the time Patrick Bailey of the Giants walked his team off against the Dodgers with a grand slam, the Mets’ wild card lead over the Giants was ½ game.
The Mets: Nearly 18 games worse than the Phillies since the middle of June. Four games better than the Rockies.
DON’T LET CHAOS RUIN THE RYDER CUP, JUDGE CONTINUES TO CARRY THE YANKS & NOTHING NEW AT QB FOR BIG BLUE …
The Ryder Cup comes to New York next weekend, comes to a famous American golf course like Bethpage Black, and so this has a chance to be a truly great New York sports event, out there off the Long Island Expressway.
Unless it turns stupid.
It’s up to what will be a predominantly New York crowd, 50,000 or so on the grounds every day, to make sure it doesn’t.
Because that would ruin it, much the way rain tried to ruin the U.S. Open back in 2009 at Bethpage Black, back when a New York crowd was counting down on how many times Sergio Garcia regripped his club before every shot.
We know how loud it’s going to be, from fans of both teams, at Bethpage Black.
We know how the whole idea of the Ryder Cup has just gotten bigger and louder in this century.
But the story is supposed to be inside the ropes, not outside.
With the golf world watching.
I saw some announcer, a tourist, calling for “chaos” at the Ryder Cup the other day.
Yeah.
That’s exactly what we need.
One more time Friday night, in what felt like the biggest game of the season for the Yankees, you wondered what this season would be like without No. 99 doing No. 99 stuff.
If Anthony Volpe has had a bad shoulder for months, why did the Yankees keep running him out there?
Gary Myers’ new book, “Brady vs. Belichick: The Dynasty Debate,” is out this Tuesday, and is the last one you’ll ever need on those two guys.
Incidentally? At this point Belichick is probably wondering if Brady has any eligibility left.
Xavier Gipson, we hardly new ye.
As far as anybody could tell against the Commanders last Sunday, the only thing that appeared to have changed for the Giants at quarterback since Drew Lock and Tommy DeVito were mopping up last season was that the new quarterback was wearing No. 3.
Carlos Rodon is clearly a better starting pitcher for the Yankees than Clay Holmes is for the Mets.
But the Yankees are sure paying him an awful lot of money to be Six Inning Rodon, right?
Carlos Alcaraz’s best game is better than Jannik Sinner’s best game, as little as there has been to separate them over the past couple of years, and especially this year.
Finally this today:
In the shadow of Sept. 11, 2001, we all vowed to be a better country.
How’s that working out for us right now?
