It will be tempting, years from now, to explain away the Mets’ 2025 season with a familiar shorthand: injuries, bad luck, timing. That explanation will feel satisfying because it is clean, impersonal, and absolving. It will also be incomplete.
2025 wasn’t just a season where things went wrong. It was the season where assumptions the organization had lived with for years finally collapsed under real pressure. And in that collapse, something rare happened. The Mets stopped lying to themselves.
Going into the season, the logic felt sound. Veteran starters provided baseline stability. Trade-deadline capital served as a secondary backstop. Elite prospects waited in reserve as a final layer of insurance. It wasn’t reckless. It was conventional. It was also fragile in a way that only becomes obvious once everything fails at the same time.
That’s what 2025 exposed. Not a lack of effort or ambition, but correlation risk. When veteran arms break together, when “depth” depends on the same aging profiles, when prospects are treated as emergency glass rather than integrated solutions, the safety net isn’t layered at all. It’s stacked. And stacks fall hard.
Injuries didn’t cause the Mets’ problems last year. They revealed them. They showed how quickly a roster built on delayed youth and borrowed certainty can run out of viable options. By midseason, the organization wasn’t choosing between good alternatives. It was reacting to shrinking ones.
This is where many franchises compound the damage. They rationalize. They blame variance. They promise better health next year and quietly return to the same structural habits. What made 2025 different is that the Mets didn’t fully do that.
Instead, there was a pause. An internal reckoning. Not loudly, not performatively, but meaningfully. The organization acknowledged that the model itself had failed under stress. That relying on veteran stability while slow-playing internal options created fragility, not security. That development delayed is not development preserved, it’s development deferred until it’s forced.
You could see it in how younger players were discussed, not as theoretical futures but as necessary present-day contributors. You could hear it in how leadership spoke less about patching holes and more about readiness, integration, and feedback loops. This wasn’t spin. It was an admission that the old insurance logic didn’t hold.
For years, Mets fans have watched cycles repeat: splashy spending, short-term optimism, midseason scrambling, and eventual disappointment when the margin vanished. 2025 hurt precisely because it stripped away the illusion that one more layer, one more signing, one more contingency would fix that cycle.
The real progress of last season didn’t show up in the standings. It showed up in honesty. In recognizing that sustainable winning can’t be built on delayed trust in your own system. In understanding that protecting prospects by never using them is a different kind of risk. In accepting that stability isn’t about age or reputation, it’s about adaptability.
None of this guarantees success in 2026. Structural clarity is not the same as structural execution. But clarity matters. You can’t correct what you refuse to name.
2025 was painful because it forced the Mets to confront truths they could previously work around. That the old model was brittle. That depth wasn’t real depth. That insurance that fails together isn’t insurance at all.
But that pain also mattered. Because once an organization stops lying to itself, it creates the conditions for real change. Not louder promises. Not bigger bets. Smarter ones.
The season will be remembered as a failure on the field. It may ultimately be remembered as something more important. The year the Mets finally chose truth over comfort.
And that, quietly, might be the most important win they’ve had in a long time.
14 comments:
One thing is true about baseball: when it comes to 2026, there are definitely no guarantees. I guess we’ll really know whether or not they stopped lying to themselves when the team is fully reconstructed and heading into 2026. They have been an incredibly fragile franchise when it comes to injuries. Just keep in mind that Pete never got hurt, Brandon rarely got hurt and Jeff was almost always not hurt. Diaz? He missed the one year with jumping up and down at WBC injury, but otherwise was very very durable. So, a fragile team lost four very durable parts.
In the minors, spanning 2024 and 2025, Williams was hurt for a good while, Jacob missed almost all of 2024, Moribito seems to miss a chart of time each year, Clifford, as well, and yelling was quite adorable last year and I don’t recall for 2024. But, collectively, this bunch hasn’t been as durable as the departing players. To think otherwise would be lying.
Isn't it funny that the 3 most durable Mets will be playing elsewhere in 2026.
You're gonna read a lot of disturbing things about the 2025 team.
I choose not to write about it but different core bases developed with no chance of singing "we are the world together.
The David Steans Steve Cohen 2026 team will LOOK quite different this year
I think that’s fair, and a lot of it was visible if you connected the dots. 2025 felt like multiple timelines running at once, veterans trying to compete, kids learning on the job, and the organization quietly figuring out what it actually had. That’s not failure, it’s misalignment. Stearns has been pretty open about lessons learned and creating clearer lanes, which makes this season feel more like a diagnostic than a destination. That’s why 2026 feels less like carryover and more like a structural reset.
@RVH and Tom-- One of the joys of this site is that the posts are extremely well written, thoughtful and illuminating. The quality of the journalism and professionalism is refreshing and distinctive. I look forward to reading first thing in the morning -- well second really; it is more of a reward for the hard work I put in making my espresso drink on a fully manual lever machine! Talk about losing arm strength and declining performance. At least I know my kinematic sequence is intact. However, I am more likely to end up on the ground during this morning ritual than I am to recruit energy from it.
I digress.
RVH writes beautifully and with insight time and again, and his posts feature important distinctions expressed with a great turn of phrase: this time the distinction between layering and stacking.
I would add only one layer to his insightful and well structured argument. Part of executing on even the most well conceived plans depends on whether the world of events and opportunities beyond your control conforms to your plans.
It is easy to complain about Stearns not doing enough this off season to fill the needs the Mets have on the major league roster for next year, gaps that are made worse by decisions he has explicitly made to let players go and to trade others. I get the concern, but the average fan and commentator who expresses the concern needs to put themselves in Stearn's position, with his overall plan in mind.
There state of the opportunity set the world has presented this offseason simply does not match well with the overall plan. No one in their right mind would think that a free agent market featuring Tucker, Bellinger, Bichette and Bregmann as its top tier of position players is either deep or excellent overall. It's more akin to the NBA draft class of 2024. No Wemby or Flagg in that one. Or the quarterback class for 2026's NFL draft! And when a class is not deep, those available have more bargaining strength, which translates into years and dollars. There are only 2 top tier outfielders and infielders in the group and only one player under 30 yrs old.
Turn to pitching: It's fair to say that a SP free agent group that features Cease, Suarez and Valdez as its top tier is thin at best. Throw in that the teams that sign most of the top tier free agents would forfeit draft picks and the cost are prohibitive -- even for the Mets.
But one might respond that, if that's the case, Stearns should not have let Alonso or Diaz go. I disagree. It would be great if both the tear down and the rebuild can be accomplished at the same time, but that is rarely the case. The fact that the rebuild cannot be fully accomplished at a particular time does not mean that the tear down should not proceed, especially when signing both Alonso and Diaz would have meant longer contracts that simply would have created obstacles to implementing the strategic plan.
Instead parts of the plan continue to be implemented and the choices made by Stearns are constrained by two factors: trying to put a highly competitive team on the field for next year, while creating no significant obstacles to implementing the plan.
The world did not conform to either a full tear down or a full rebuild, this year, but it did provide an opportunity to do more at the major league level on the tear down than the rebuild.
This has nothing to do with Stearns having come from a small market and his not knowing how to run a big market organization. It has everything to do with knowing how to run any organization in baseball over a length of time, being appropriately opportunistic -- both to add and to subtract when the opportunities to do so present themselves.
(Gee. I thought I wrote sorta good too. Can't spell shit but me write gude
And I don't think that we will see a Tucker signing. Whether we see a Bellinger signing clearly depends on the years more than the dollars, though both matter. I believe the Bellinger conversations are proceeding under some potential time pressure to see if there can be agreement on guaranteed years/opt out opportunities/yearly salary/ and everything else you can bargain over in a BB contract. The pressure comes from the urgency of not losing our second best alternative (Hays?) and the difference between the second and third best alternatives. The issue in CF with Robert Jr in a trade is what will the White Sox settle for in terms of players from the Mets and what they can get from other suitors. The Mets are not walking into those negotiations with a knockout killer package. They shouldn't. It will take time and they may lose out to a team who wants the White Sox to take on some of Robert's salary in return for a better package in return. We shall see.
I do believe they are genuinely trying to figure out what they want to do about Imai as that has to be resolved by Friday.
One of the things I like about Stearns is that he doesn't seem to be impulsive. This means he favors the possibility of losing a player he would like to get rather than signing one that will create obstacles to the long term plan. But if it is a player that is central to the plan he moves quickly as he can and decisively. (Which is why I still don't understand the Montas signing.)
Our team may end up with Hays and Benge platooning in LF; Roberts starting in center with Taylor as backup 5th OF and Soto in RF; Baty at 3rd, Lindor at SS, Semien at 2B and Polanco and Goldschmidt platooning at !B and Alvarez and Torrens at C.
SP rotation drawn from the possible set of McLean, Holmes, Senga, Manaea, Bassett, Gallen, Sproat/Peterson/ Imai with Scott as long relief/spot starter and whatever the bullpen has beyond a backend of Williams, Weaver and Mintor and a long man in Scott or Peterson, with Bazoban in the middle.
And the need to figure out what to do about Vientos, Acuna and Mauricio (who has a minor league option).
I don't mind any of this really though I would prefer Bellinger over Hays, which would move Benge to splitting time in CF with Taylor and the need for a 5th outfielder (maybe Williams)
Other than Bellinger, no one blocks anyone near the top of our prospect list. Taylor is one year, Goldschmidt would be one year/ Robert is 2 years if we go that route. Polanco is 2 years.
When it comes to SP, Manaea is two years, Bassett would likely be 2, Gallen 2or 3, Imai 3 or 4 if we went that way, Holmes 2, Senga 2.
Question
The Mets plan to go ahead with Jorge Polanco at first
His contract is only 2 years
He's one year older than Pete
He hit 12 home runs LESS than Pete
He hit .007 LESS than Pete
And... HE HAS NEVER PLAYED ONE INNING AT FIRST BASE
So I ask...
If you sign Bellinger where do you play him?
@Mack. No insult intended at all. I wrote my comment immediately upon reading RVH column and Tom's comment only. And I did say that every post is a pleasure to read. All the writing is professional quality journalism. Nowhere near as good as the Onion however.
My comments are a bit rushed as I am often anxious to join conversations that are filled with interesting ideas. I have taken more time with the books I have written, but the goal there has been to put readers to sleep. Indeed all my books, while expensive, come with what I call the 'insomniac guarantee', to wit: if you cannot go to sleep, pick up any of my books, and open randomly to any page. if you are not asleep in fewer than ten pages of reading, I will have Oxford University Press refund your money and reduce my royalties accordingly. BTW, my total royalties are enough for me to purchase one beer and hotdog for the entire staff at Mack's Mets, and peanuts for two.
I'm not taking about last year's royalties; I'm talking about 30 years worth of royalties.. Sorry, but it's the best I can do.
I align with Jules projected roster. - unless the market collapses & they can buy low or pay for a short term opportunity (obvious opt-out like Pete’s last contract). Regarding Polanco - he can always revert to primary DH if needed this year or especially next year, so the “insurance” factor plays into the overall organization approach.
Great stuff all around and as I've said many times before this is the best site on the web hands down and thank you Mr. Mack. Look no matter how we spin it we only won 83 games last year so that's not a very big mountain to climb to at least do the same and if our propects are even half as good as we think they are that's a great start to the rebuild. The key of course is DS not screwing up the trade deadline again and hopefully it will have meaning this year.
@Mack-- I think Bellinger considers himself primarily an outfielder and one who prefers Left field. I expect that is where he would see the majority of his time.
I think they will look to trade Vientos to someone for relief pitching. Depending on whether Williams is promoted to the majors, I don't think they can do better than Acuna as utility infielder.. Mauricio is interesting to me. Two years ago, he would have been voted the best and most likely to succeed of the Baby Mets. He has good speed, a very good arm, excellent exit velocity; he hits rockets when he barrels the ball. I don't think he has great BB IQ. I'd love to see him taking reps at 1B given his height and fielding and power potential, but he won't have the opportunity at the major league level and there are already two top tier prospects at Syracuse who are potential first basemen a year from now in Clifford and Reimer. He may stick as a back-up at 3rd base, or Vientos might stick if they don't go for Goldschmidt or someone like him and split time between Vientos and Polonco while also deploying Vientos as emergency back up 3rd baseman.
I think all of those baby mets are available in the right trade, but none of them alone or in tandem with one another will get you a high level starter, even on a short term contract (like Piveta or Peralta), but all of them should be able to be centerpiece in a trade for relief help. I think their future depends in part on what the cost for Robert Jr ends up being.
Regarding Bellinger - was he even a replacement level batter outside of Yankee stadium? Batted something like .240 with an OBP of .300. Forgot his slugging percentage but the majority of his HR were in Yankee stadium.
Steve, true. Happy new year.
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