Paul Articulates - Our time is coming

In a very thought-provoking post by RVH yesterday, there were several key points about the transformation of the Mets under Steve Cohen and David Stearns that have put the Mets on par with the best-run organizations in baseball.

On paper, there are many reasons why these Mets are not the same as the "old Mets" that always found a way to fail despite every improvement.  Yet the result in 2025 was exactly the same - the team that had such promise in mid-June finished with the downward momentum of an avalanche with a similar disastrous result.

How could this happen?

Of course, we all asked ourselves that question at the end of the season, but for a different reason.  We weren't thinking about the deep transformation of an organization that positioned itself for success, we were using traditional thinking to infer a championship from a successful start.  But despite all the conjecture, all the analysis by so-called experts, all the neat little stories built from cherry-picked data points, no one yet has really explained how the Mets of 2025 could collapse like they did.

The coaching staff was mostly obliterated in a symbolic move to assign some blame, but there have been no players or coaches speaking out to confirm that those eliminated were really to blame. 

So if the organization was doing all the right things and the coaches were pretty good and doing the right things and the players on the field were the product of systematic planning to build the right team then how could this fail?

This is where you have to acknowledge one piece of old-school wisdom that will always be true despite all of the advances in analytics and bio-mechanics that are transforming the game.  Baseball is a game of failure.  The best hitters fail in 7 of every ten at-bats.  The slickest fielders don't play errorless ball for a season.  The most talented pitchers only throw the ball in the strike zone about 65% of the time.

The best bio-mechanical analysis coupled with the most savvy coaching can train a player to perform better, but not perfectly.  A stretch of current state-of-the art training imagines that a mediocre hitter with a career batting average of .240 can be transformed into a .300 hitter with a 25% improvement in performance.  Even if that was feasible, the batter would still fail 70% of the time.  If three batters fail before a few succeed, no runs score in an inning.  Everything has to go right.

So there it is.  The reason the 2025 Mets failed is that everything didn't go right. 28 other teams can say the same thing.  In a parallel universe the same team may have won 95 games and won a pennant.  Next year will not be the same team, but based on the sound organizational strategy and strong talent pipeline the team should have an increased probability of success.  There is no guarantee in baseball.  The 2023 Dodgers won 111 regular season games and didn't make it past the division series.  Things happen in baseball that no one could predict because so many things have to go right to succeed.

My point in all of this is that Mets fans cannot control fate, but they should take heart that their team leadership is making the right moves to position the team to succeed.  This is very different than past leadership teams that did not have sound strategic plans. 

Talent, organization, and leadership are key factors in success.  Luck doesn't make you win, but bad luck can still make you lose.  Sometimes.  In the long run, fans will be pleased with how this plays out.  There are still many short term moves that need to take place to match the talent with the teaching and build the right winning culture.  Be patient, Mets fans, our time is coming.