Mike's Mets - The Lost Season

 

By Mike Steffanos

Losing sucks. The hope now is decidedly on the future as the current Mets' season completely unravels.

The idea of a "lost season" is nothing new to longtime New York Mets fans. I've lived through so many more than I would care to count. Some years, you knew the team was going nowhere before the season even began. Others began promising, but injuries and a perennial lack of depth derailed them. This year feels even more frustrating because the resources were in place for a successful season. While Billy Eppler's front office made some errors in constructing the roster, there still seemed to be more than enough for the team to at least compete for a playoff spot. Yet key players endured long, unproductive slumps, with the bats time and again falling silent against mediocre opponents, and the pitching staff seemed to save some of their worst efforts for games in which the offense finally did their part.

The 2023 New York Mets will go down in infamy as a team that was unusually adept at finding ways to lose, almost comically so. Of course, none of us diehard fans were laughing. During one markedly poor stretch in June, I joked with a friend and fellow Mets fan that it looked like some players were being paid to throw games. I don't really believe that, even with all the money pouring into gambling these days. Ballplayers have too much to lose financially to risk their careers. The truth of the matter was more boring and, in a way, much sadder. This was a Mets club that, when challenged, almost always was found wanting. Hollywood will never make a feel-good sports movie based on this bunch. The will to overcome just wasn't there.

There are few positives to take away from this season. Francisco Álvarez looks like a potential star for years to come. The trade deadline selloff brought an undeniable infusion of talent into the system. For the first time in my years of rooting for this team, there is positional redundancy among their prospects. The Mets won't be dependent upon one or two guys successfully transitioning into the Major Leagues as they have so often been in the past.

But the immediate reality for the remainder of the 2023 season is grim. The Mets flirted at times with being competitive before the deadline selloff; now, all pretense has been dropped. They're not scoring, they're not pitching, and they're not playing defense. The Mets have devolved from underwhelming and underperforming to legitimately one of the worst teams in baseball. I feel sorry for every fan who bought tickets to see this team with the legitimate hopes of rooting in person for a really good ball club. The reality now is a fourth-place club free-falling to the bottom of the division.

And really, other than Álvarez, there is little to even dream upon with the current roster, particularly with the news today that Brett Baty has been demoted to Syracuse. Brett's season mirrored that of the Mets: starting with great promise but plummeting into oblivion as the summer wore on. Baty will be joining Ronny Mauricio in the Salt City. Mauricio was off to a hot start this season, sparking much interest among fans in when he might arrive in Queens. However, like Baty and, indeed, all things Mets, Mauricio's star has lost luster as the summer wore on.

The words of Billy Eppler and Steve Cohen at the deadline were not reassuring to fans fretting over the chances of potential glory returning in 2024. Both men expressed similar sentiments about the pursuit of a championship being put off to 2025 or 2026. I wasn't particularly devastated by those words. I understood the consequences of the lingering dollar commitments of this year's unsuccessful run. I found the honesty refreshing, actually, after so many years of having smoke blown up my ass during the previous regime.

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