Paul Articulates – The five year plan just became eight

In 2020 when Steve Cohen acquired this team, he said that it would take some time to make the Mets a winner.  Specifically, he said that if the team had not won a championship in 3-5 years it would be a disappointment.  With last night’s embarrassing loss to the Phillies, the Mets are holding on to a precarious third wild card position and demonstrating that they are not even playoff-ready let alone championship ready.

Since May ended, the Mets are 40-48.  That encompasses plenty of series against both good and bad teams, through slumps and surges, good weather and bad.  They have had injuries, but no more than other teams, so there is really no excuse for a team to play below .500 ball with a roster this talented.  This team may make the playoffs, but does not deserve to be in the playoffs because they have not been able to sustain any level of excellence since the first month of the season.  That is not the mark of a champion.

Unfortunately, this underperforming team was built to win championships.  Statistically they have solid players up and down the roster, with potential that some of the young players could still improve.  Yet improvement only seems to appear in spurts that reverse themselves just as quickly as they began.  Fans everywhere would love to identify the reason for this and immediately fix it so we can get on with this championship plan.

Sorry fans, it is not going to be that easy.  Several of them are under contract through 2027.  Others were brought here to become part of the winning culture to then be extended.  If you blow this team up and start over, it will take years to reach success.  Look at what happened in 2023 when the Mets tried to accelerate the championship quest by signing big-time free agent pitcher Justin Verlander to pair with Max Scherzer.  

The five year plan was supposed to be a gradual build of a winning MLB roster with a parallel build of the minor league pipeline to feed future MLB winners.  The pipeline seems to be working, with three promising pitchers making strong MLB debuts in the last month.  The problem is with the primary roster, which has inexplicably tanked.  I don’t think you can fix that by throwing out a few pieces and replacing them with free agents.

The initial championship envisioned in the five-year plan relied upon the build-up of a team just like this year’s.  Juan Soto, Pete Alonso, and Francisco Lindor are surrounded by high quality veterans like Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil, and Starling Marte.  That core is supplemented with young, talented “baby Mets” like Vientos, Baty, Alvarez, and Acuna.  The vision was realized, and there were very few injuries of consequence that disrupted the plan.  They just didn’t play well together as a team.  Sure, they liked each other.  There was no visible discontent on the field or in the clubhouse.  They just didn’t mesh – all the pieces behaved independently.  Nothing demonstrates that more than the season-long struggles hitting with runners in scoring position.  Another example is the common occurrence where a pitcher dominates but gets no run support the day after the team puts up a huge score but the pen blows it in the end game.  Teams that mesh build on each other’s momentum.

So lacking the cohesiveness of a championship caliber team, this very expensive roster goes into the off-season desperate to make the moves that will get there.  That is the baseball equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat.  Illusions may work in a magic show, but not on a ballfield during a 162-game season.

We must face the fact that the next championship for this team will not be won with the current roster.  It will be won by the next wave at best.  The next wave is the set of players in the development system that were supposed to inherit a championship culture.  Now they have to create it.  I guess it is good news that the Mets are in the minor league playoffs in three of four levels this year.  The winning pedigree is being taught real time.

So as the 2025 season fades into the 2026 season, expectations will necessarily have to be lowered.  The older pieces of the core will be shed, replaced by up-and-coming youth and their inexperience will hold back greatness for a few more seasons.  The five-year plan has become the eight-year plan due to the disappointing collapse in the 2025 season.  In 2028, the New York Mets franchise will have gone 42 years since the 1986 world championship.  It will be high time for a ticker tape parade.