In Part 1, we argued that the Mets do not have an ambition problem. They have an execution problem.
In Part 2, we examined how slow starts create a pressure-amplification cycle that makes every season feel harder than it needs to be.
In Part 3, we explored how the Yankees learned to carry pressure through decades of organizational stability and trust.
In Part 4, we examined how the Braves built resilience through development, continuity, and replacement power.
In Part 5, we looked at how the Dodgers use resources to create flexibility and optionality.
In Part 6, we discussed how Citi Field, New York, and organizational history create a unique environment that requires a different approach.
That brings us to perhaps the most uncomfortable question in the entire series.
Have the Mets consistently built teams designed to win championships?
Or have they too often built teams designed to win the offseason?
There Is A Difference
The distinction matters.
Headline teams generate excitement.
Championship teams generate wins.
Sometimes they are the same thing.
Often they are not.
Headline teams are easy to identify.
Big names.
Big contracts.
Big announcements.
Strong offseason grades.
National attention.
Immediate excitement.
Championship teams are harder to identify because they are often built around things that are less exciting:
Depth
Balance
Durability
Athleticism
Versatility
Adaptability
One wins December.
The other wins baseball games.
The Cohen Era's Greatest Temptation
When Steve Cohen purchased the Mets, he immediately changed the organization's possibilities.
For the first time in franchise history, the Mets could realistically pursue almost any player in baseball.
That created a tremendous advantage.
It also created a tremendous temptation.
The temptation was to believe that accumulating talent automatically creates a championship team.
It does not.
A collection of stars is not necessarily a championship team.
In some cases, a collection of stars creates new vulnerabilities:
Aging curves
Injury exposure
Defensive limitations
Roster imbalance
Reduced athleticism
Reduced flexibility
Championship teams require something different.
They require fit.
Baseball Is Not Played On Paper
Many disappointing Mets teams have shared a common characteristic.
They looked better in March than they looked in July.
The projections loved them.
The headlines loved them.
The roster looked impressive.
Then the season started.
Why?
Because baseball does not reward the best collection of names.
Baseball rewards the best collection of complementary skills.
A roster is not a fantasy team.
It is an ecosystem.
Every strength creates demands elsewhere.
Every weakness eventually gets exposed.
The question is not:
"How many stars do we have?"
The question is:
"Can this roster survive 162 games?"
That is a very different conversation.
April And May Count Too
One of the most important lessons from this season, and perhaps from the entire Cohen era, is that too many Mets teams have behaved as though there is always time to figure things out later.
There isn't.
April counts.
May counts.
The standings do not care when wins occur.
An April loss counts exactly the same as a September loss.
For the Mets, early-season struggles often carry an additional cost.
As discussed in Part 2, they create a pressure cycle that affects everything that follows.
Expectations rise.
Frustration grows.
The media amplifies it.
Players press.
The season becomes heavier.
A slow start does not simply hurt the standings.
It changes the emotional trajectory of the season.
Which means roster construction must account for Opening Day, not just peak performance in August.
Championship teams are built to survive six months.
They are also built to start six months.
Citi Field Requires A Different Kind Of Team
This brings us back to Part 6.
If Citi Field rewards:
Athleticism
Defense
Versatility
Outfield range
Run prevention
Pitching depth
Then roster construction should reflect those realities.
Yet many Mets teams have leaned heavily toward:
Aging sluggers
Limited range
Station-to-station offense
Declining athleticism
Talent matters.
Environment matters too.
The best organizations build teams suited to where they actually play.
Not where they wish they played.
Championship Teams Assume Adversity
This may be the simplest distinction between a headline team and a championship team.
Headline teams assume things will go right.
Championship teams assume things will go wrong.
Injuries happen.
Players regress.
Prospects disappoint.
Bullpens fail.
Stars miss time.
Championship organizations build with those realities in mind.
The Yankees do.
The Braves do.
The Dodgers do.
They do not assume perfect outcomes.
They prepare for imperfect ones.
The Mets have too often constructed rosters that become fragile when adversity arrives.
That is not necessarily a talent problem.
It is a roster construction problem.
Athleticism Solves Problems
If there is one roster trait that repeatedly appears in successful organizations, it is athleticism.
Athletic teams create options.
They defend better.
They run better.
They adapt better.
They survive injuries better.
They survive slumps better.
They create multiple paths to victory.
Athleticism is not simply about stolen bases.
It is about flexibility.
It is about problem-solving.
It is about having more answers available when circumstances change.
The Braves understand this.
The Dodgers understand this.
Increasingly, the Yankees understand this.
The Mets appear to be moving in this direction as well, but the transition remains incomplete.
What The Mets Should Learn
The Yankees taught us about stability.
The Braves taught us about resilience.
The Dodgers taught us about flexibility.
Part 6 taught us that environment matters.
The next step is applying those lessons to roster construction.
Build teams that fit the ballpark.
Build teams that can withstand injuries.
Build teams that can compete from Opening Day.
Build teams with enough athleticism, depth, and versatility to absorb adversity.
Most importantly, build teams designed to win baseball games rather than headlines.
Because the organizations the Mets are trying to join rarely impress people for one winter.
They impress people for one decade.
That is the standard.
That is the challenge.
And that is where the next phase of the Cohen era must succeed.
Part 7 Thesis
Headline teams assume things will go right.
Championship teams assume things will go wrong.
The Mets have too often built rosters optimized for excitement rather than resilience.
The next step is building teams capable of winning from Opening Day through October, regardless of adversity.
What We've Learned So Far
Part 1: The Mets do not have an ambition problem. They have an execution problem.
Part 2: The Mets' slow-start problem is not a standings problem. It is a pressure-amplification problem.
Part 3: The Yankees did not eliminate pressure. They learned how to carry it.
Part 4: The Braves win because they reduce randomness better than almost anyone else.
Part 5: The Dodgers do not use money to buy certainty. They use money to create flexibility.
Part 6: Championship organizations understand their environment and build around it.
Part 7: Headline teams assume things will go right. Championship teams assume things will go wrong.
Next: Part 8 – What the Mets Need to Become
The Yankees provide a model for stability.
The Braves provide a model for resilience.
The Dodgers provide a model for flexibility.
The Mets face a unique environment and have learned difficult lessons during the first six years of the Cohen era.
The final question is how all of those lessons come together into a practical roadmap for building the championship organization the Mets set out to become.
7 comments:
Hard to build redundancy when you sign guys who have a career history of injuries, and don’t re-sign one who is another Cal Ripken
I can't sing, but if I could I would say that we are two part harmony- something Tom can do entirely on his own! Two of the least well appreciated elements on team performance in any sport are: 1. Deciding on a style of play (the DNA), and 2. Fit. It's true in every team sport and failure to appreciate its significance can show up in a million ways: often in terrible trades, and generally in horrendous roster construction. Two examples. In basketball, teams look at a player's performance on another team, say, Trae Young. He controls the ball, scores a lot of points. Does that make him a fit for your team? Of course not. Good luck Washington. In football, you build a line that fits together extremely in all running schemes, but then you bring in a QB who lives off schedule and free lances. Good luck Minnesota. Next thing you know they will be bringing in more wide receivers and backs who catch passes rather than running backs who run and can take advantage when they get to the second level. etc.
And a quick note on analytics that I am still hoping to get to in a post down the road. Analytics can help in a lot of ways, especially with big picture issues, and individual player development and assessment. But it is the connective tissue between the two that is most important in success, and among the most important issues there is fit -- optimizing the fit of pieces -- in a defense, in a line-up -- in the possibility of playing complementary ball (complementarity in general). This is the part that takes baseball knowledge.
It's almost an art.
It's where analytics are at their weakest. But it is nearly everything.
I will use one example from an entirely differently field in which I have spent a lot of time, my wife would say too much. High end audio.
An audio system is a system, not a collection of components. Far too many people spend far too much money putting together systems by the numbers (and the reviews) and in a year or so (at most) they are dissatisfied and start tinkering with adding and selling piece by piece. It's a nightmare -- like most teams who don't know how to construct a team.
In contrast, I have a friend who was a musician, jazz drummer, but who has been for a long time an audio dealer. No one I know is able to get better sound out of various components than him. And I've listened to a lot of systems. When there are shows in hotels most of the rooms sound awful -- regardless of the price of the system the person has put together for display. My friend Jeff's room is always among the best sounding, if not the best -- regardless of the gear he has brought to the show. He has an overall musical point of view that guides what he does and an ear and feel that few have.
Analytics, data, don't guide his choices or the way he puts the pieces together.
Ability to fit the pieces together to get the most out of the pieces you have is a baseball skill, a feel, based on deep knowledge not only of what a person can do, but also of what brings the best out in them, whether they play well with others, and which others work best with them. Finding the right fit is more than a slogan. It's mandatory. And no amount of data analytics can substitute for the kind of knowledge and feel it requires
meant to say 'But fit is nearly everything' and analytics has least to contribute to it.
It seemed to me that Stearns brought in a lot of players either with extensive injury history or ones whose best days have past
Developing your own players is the best way to build your team.
Benge and Ewing are great but they could wind up being the only two potential stars in this game for 3-4 years
A colossal failure of development
From the beginning of his tenure, Stearns chased the younger player. He wanted Yamamoto pretty badly and has eschewed giving longer contracts to pitchers and players over 30. He certainly acts like a POBO that wants to remake the team. Semien was a necessary acquisition to rid themselves of Nimmo’s deal. As we look at Nimmo’s production this year, it’s hard to argue. They went after Bichette hard because he 27. Same for Tucker.
Wow! Jules you are very well up to date across the board on teams and sports! As for your friend Jeff, some people have a talent that others cannot even comprehend.
I will say just a couple of things that I will extend in posts. On the positive side, athletes and arms in the drafts; young vets in free agency and trades. You bet on the former and pay for the latter because the latter are the anchors. But you also have to adjust with regard to the latter group because its a market and you are competing, so you can't impose a 3yr commitment strategy. Have to be more flexible especially if you are looking at the four or five anchors you need on a team. Hopefully a day will come when some of your anchors have been developed internally. Makes the fans happy and saves money while increasing loyalty.
I have mentioned my other point before but wonder if it is worth going into in detail in a post or two, and that is the difference between teaching and learning. The models are different, and they are also different with regard to learning content (information, facts, etc) and learning skills -- the difference in effect between 'learning that (such and such is true)' and 'learning how (to do such and such)' We know a LOT more now, but still far from what we will come to know, about how people learn, both content and skills, than we used to, but we cling to legacy models in all fields from education to skill development of teaching focused. If the Mets want to have a first rate development program light years ahead, they have to adopt the learner focus. And this is even more important given the commitment and value of drafting young players from all over the world who are in the early stages of their development.
I'd love to have a talk with the FO folks about what their approach is and direct them to developments in this field. At least, I wish I knew what approach they were taking and why and the metrics they have for assessing its success.
For ease of understanding the issues with Mets hitters like Alvarez and Vientos I have used a familiar conceptual scheme of kinematics and the kinematic sequence because it reflects what a viewer sees -- positions of the body and the bat at various moments in time -- and the relationships between them. However, the deeper level, where the real changes are to be made and the real mistakes in movement occur is in what is called 'kinetics'. the study of the forces and torques that precipitate the movement.
Our educational and teaching system is likewise driven by almost a division of labor between 'teaching' and 'learning' Teachers have responsibility to teach; and students have the responsibility to learn. And what we have adopted in teaching and coaching is the 'teacher' focused model. But it really doesn't work like that. You need to know first how people learn which includes but is not limited to how the brain learns things; you also need to understand the idea of learning environments, etc. And then teaching is no longer a directed activity of me passing on to you some fact or some movement pattern; it is way in which discover it with my (the coach/teacher's) help.
The differences are striking as are the potential results -- and for obvious reasons. Where are the Mets on this. Get ahead of the curve especially when you are starting with so much raw talent.
I will only add one thing that should be decisive for a forward looking organization. It's simple but powerful. How many times do we hear players and coaches let alone observers saying that a player's head is filled with too many thoughts, so many contradictory or conflicting directives, paralyzed by analysis, etc. These are all features of the 'teaching' modality. Success depends on moving on from this. If people are interested I can explain all this in future posts and explain how it works in the areas of skill development.
If the Mets want to know more, and I recommend that they do given the investments they are making in developing talent...
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