Tom Brennan - A New Mets Stat: MIOBEOST…..and are the Mets CURSED?

Some teams, and some players like ex-Met Tom Szapucki, miss lots of games

A key new stat that has significant correlation to teams' relative chances of making the playoffs, and one in which the Mets usually rate very high:  

MIOBEOST

“Major Injuries Occurring Before End Of Spring Training”

This year? 

Already injured are David Peterson, Ronny Mauricio, Kodai Senga, with over 4 weeks to go before the end of spring training.

Last Year? 

Edwin Diaz, Jose Quintana, Justin Verlander, Montes de Oca. Of course, more followed during the season.  

But other teams did worse.

The AP last fall noted that in 2023, the Los Angeles Dodgers lost the most days of players on the injured list this season at 2,465, while the San Francisco Giants had the most placements at 46.

The number of days lost on the injured list rose 6.1% to 44,461 from 41,916, but placements dropped 0.7% to 848 to 854. 

There were 983 placements for 43,513 lost days in 2021, the first full season following a schedule curtailed to 60 games because of the pandemic.

Could find the comparable Mets numbers….sorry.

But…it feels to me like, year after year, the Mets are cursed:

Edwin Diaz’s freak and utterly bizarre injury kept the Mets out of the playoffs in 2023, and entirely blew up the fairly high risk Mets 2023 plan of adding aging veterans for a slug-out with the Braves.  A healthy Edwin, Verlander, Scherzer, and Quintana, as it turns out, might have added 20 wins and still resulted in the Mets falling short of the Braves slightly for the division, but could have brought the Mets the crown. Instead, Edwin’s freak ACL tear was the first huge tear in the ultimate tear-down of the season.

CURSED? METHINKS YES.  MAYBE YOU THINK, AHH, COINCIDENCE.

Today, while reading Reese’s 7:00 AM article, was actually the first time I watched the video of Edwin Diaz’s injury. Before today, I never did. I knew it would be too upsetting. Sickening. The announcer kept saying, Oh, no…oh, no…oh, no. My thoughts exactly, about Diaz, who was my beacon of hope for this Mets team. Bizarrely struck down. No one else in the WBC “Classic” was, and of course, it wasn’t a baseball injury, it was a bizarre, freak, celebration injury. It was a “Mets injury”. 

It leads me to conclude:

This franchise is cursed. 

Someone in 1986. struck a deal with the devil then to secure that crown. I wish they’d told us they did that, as I would have dropped the Mets and done something more productive.

Unconvinced? What about the death of Brian Cole, who easily could have been the Mets best offensive player ever, even better than David Wright, as this 2013 SI headline indicates:

THE BEST PLAYER YOU NEVER SAW: 

IN CLUBHOUSES FROM CLASS A TO THE MAJORS, EVEN SUPERSTARS SUCH AS ALBERT PUJOLS STILL SPEAK IN AWE OF THE PROMISE OF BRIAN COLE

Think of those near-miss Mets teams from 2000-2007. The Mets May have won 4 championships in those years with Cole as the every-day star outfielder.

Now, in 2024, we can’t even get to the first spring training game without their ace being injured and opening the season on the IL for who-knows-how-long with a shoulder injury; perhaps their best rookie of 2024, and very possibly a line up regular, missing all of 2024 with yet another freaky ACL injury; and Peterson likely missing 30% to 50% of the season after freak hip surgery.

Hope gets ripped out of my chests, truth be told.

Cursed.

David Wright?  Freak back disability. No? Name me a list of players whose backs shortened their careers in the past 25 years. Then divide by 30 teams. Then screen out the marginal and mediocre players. Who else is on that list but David Wright.

Hey, Mets fans, you love superior pitching? OK, I’ll give you a guy who will win TWO Cy Young’s.  But here’s the catch…he’ll start all his games, but average 10 wins. Then he’ll fall apart physically. He, of course, will be…A MET.

Sometimes, there is Mets mercy. Divine intervention, perhaps. 

Satan doesn’t want to make it too obvious. Case in point?

Mets’ best slugger ever? Pete Alonso. 

So what happens to him? His truck is hit by another driver at high speed and Pete’s truck rolls over 3 times. Pete walks away from a near-death experience. Iron Man that he is, he shrugged off what had to have been whiplash and plays like nothing happened. Thank heavens he was wearing his seat harness. “This horrific incident saw his Ford F250 pickup truck get side swiped at a stoplight, before flipping over several times. Thankfully, Alonso came out unscathed, but the experience alone was extremely chilling for him, and left his truck smashed to pieces.