The Mets of 2025 won 83 games, following a 2024 season where they won 89. Before that was the very difficult 2023 season where they won only 75 games with two future hall of famers on the pitching staff. Almost all of those teams has now been disassembled, and the rebuilding of the team is still in process.
The leadership of the Mets organization from Steve Cohen down through the lowest staff member remain committed to building this team into a sustainable winner. Original projections of a five year path to success have not materialized and as we enter year six, the rebuilt team has a very hollow sound to it. Gone are the core players like Alonso, Nimmo, and McNeil. Gone are the pitchers like deGrom, Scherzer, and Verlander. What remains in place is shortstop Francisco Lindor, the generational talent of Juan Soto, and a cast of other players who have not distinguished themselves as MLB star caliber.
The roster is yet to be completed for the 2026 team, but if one takes what is currently available and compares last year’s starting position players to this year’s projected starting position players, there is a net loss of 2.8 WAR and 132 RBI. In other words, the replacements are not as good as the originals. So if your gut feeling so far this winter is that we are moving backwards, you are correct.
In all fairness to the Mets leadership team, sometimes you have to take a step backwards to have a clear path towards the goal. This appears to be the case with the current situation, as it was deemed necessary to blow up the core of the 2025 team instead of supplementing it with upgrades to the peripheral players.
Where from here? The assumption all along was that there would be a few major acquisitions to supplement the statistical losses of RBI and WAR. The impact players that would make a difference in those calculations are continuing to hold out for a better offer since they have multiple teams vying for their services. This would include players like Cody Bellinger, Kyle Tucker, and Bo Bichette who are each looking for multi-year deals with AAVs in the $27M-$35M range.
There has been no indication from the actions of the front office that they have any appetite for taking on long term contracts with inflated AAVs. In fact, all actions taken to date were very much to the contrary. The Mets are looking for value plays, and this is not the year for that type of deal. This leads to the conclusion that at the end of hot stove season, the team will be promoting young prospects to fill voids and challenging them to grow into their roles.
The implication of what you have just read is a lost 2026 season. It will be a year for younger players to work through the growing pains of adjusting to MLB competition. It will be a year of transition for existing players into potentially new roles like Polanco or Soto at first base. It will not be a return to a world championship in the 40th season since the last ticker tape parade. My projection is somewhere between 70-75 wins in 2026 and no significant awards for the coaching staff or the individual players. There will be regression not only at the team level, but also at individual levels, as the burden of carrying the team on their shoulders without adequate lineup protection eventually wears down Lindor and Soto. Be prepared, Mets fans. There is a price to pay for future success.
Oh, and by the way, happy new year!
15 comments:
Morning Paul. Happy New Year to you and yours.
No baseball executive is ever going to stand in front of either a reporter or a camera and admit that their team is entering a rebuilding year. Oh, you will read that some hack printed that, but it simply is never confirmed.
What kind of message does that tell your existing roster players?
So... being the hack that I am... I'm simply saying here that...
2026 IS A REBUILDING YEAR FOR THE METS
(there, I've said it...)
Oh, there will be more veterans on this roster, but only under two or three year max contracts. David Stearns has already written in ink what prospects will NOT be traded and they are penciled in on future projected rosters.
The future Mets pitching staff will be dominated by Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong, Brandon Sproat, Christian Scott, Dylan Ross, and Ryan Lambert.
Take it to the bank
One of the more difficult things I've ever attempted was a neutral article about the off season actions and inactions without placing blame squarely on the former Brewers top executive. I'm trying to be patient. I'm trying to wait for the rest of the roster construction to take place. I'm trying not to overdo the ingestion of copious amounts of adult beverages. Maybe it will be better than we expect. Surely it can't be worse.
The Mets rebuild should be easier and quicker than the Ukraine and Gaza rebuilds. Should be…but these are the Mets. After 64 years, and going into year 65, I am skeptical until proven otherwise.
One World Series championship in the last 56 years.
Skeptical.
But we old timers are victors. We’ve made it to 2026. Hooray.
Happy New Year to all my Mets friends and Family. I am still having a hard time getting a clear read on what this year will bring the Mets. If it is in fact a rebuild or just a year where the F.O. gets an Idea of what it has going forward or Stearns ends up supplying the Mets with the players that they will need to compete from outside the organization. This year is important . I look forward to seeing how they will handle the task ahead. Hang on Mets Fans we are in for a exciting ride. LGM.
Happy new year! Im okay with letting the kids play for the most part even if that means we’re not putting ourselves in the best position to win this season. Gotta see what we have to really work with.
That said i really hope the mets sign 1 or 2 pieces that can be part of the 3-5 year run with the maturing young players. It’s hard to source all you’re external upgrades from one offseason. At this point I’d see if i can lock Kyle Tucker down. Either go in with an extra high AAV for 5 years or go long terms as ling as you think the bat will age well with the understanding he’ll move to first at some point.
Id also sign Imai. Should deepen the rotation and has upside. Sprinkle in a few other short terms pitching options and this team can be really good.
I think we need to respect the braves. They're not going to be bad like last year but we can beat them. The phillies… they’ll be good but they are getting old. Their window to compete at the top of the division is short but still very real this season and probably next season.
Paul, the WAR/RBI loss is real on paper, no argument there. Where I differ is in treating 2026 as a foregone mid-70s outcome. The pitching has meaningful upside simply from youth, health, and more stable innings, and better team defense can recover wins that don’t show up in lineup swaps. Add a couple of solid, controllable bats in CF and the corners and I think this profiles more like an 80-85 win team with real variance, not a lost season. If the young arms take a step, the ceiling is higher than the math suggests.
Some talk like the loss of Pete won’t hurt in 2026. We will get past it somehow. But Pete weathered the pressure and drove in tons of runs and played 162 annually, under constant pressure.
Beltran helped Soto weather severe early 2025 pressure. Per the Post, “ “(Beltran) shared (with Soto) that the same thing happened to him once when he was really struggling in New York,” Soto said in an interview on “Siendo Honestos” with Katherine Hernandez, as translated by The Post.
“Everyone was piling on and the pressure was intense. To get through it, he started carrying a card with all his stats written on it.
“Every time he looked at it, he reminded himself: this is who I am as a player, not the version everyone else is trying to paint. That simple mental reset helped him break out of the slump.”
Soto did the same.
We’ve all seen guys like Cedric the Unentertainer and hellish Helsley who could not weather the Queens pressure. Paul Sewald, anyone? The loss of Pete, who will probably go 55/140 for Baltimore this year, may well come back to bite.
Definitely sucks to lose Pete - especially for the next two years. Just cost too much over life of contract. A bit too old for a five year deal & maybe just too much bad blood from last year’s contract negotiation? (I hope Pete crushes it in Baltimore). If that get one solid OF, & Benge can play at MLB level with improvements from Alvarez & Baty plus Polanco, they may still score less but make it up with replacements & improved pitching & defense. Still too many questions marks next year to pay someone like Pete for one of his mister likely good years on a developing team. Timing just off. It does suck as a fan.
I strongly believe the current Mets roster with a few upgrades will win at least mid 80s. It's not as though our main competition have made major improvements.
Sounds like we should have a writers' poll. Can compare it at the end of the season. We have a pretty good spread from optimism to pessimism, so it might be a fun comparison.
The Marlins were strong in the second half, as they matured, and added Pete Fairbanks to close. They will be tough in 2026.
I think that is a cool idea, but I would wait a few weeks to see what Stearns does/does not do.
Hey, he can always re-sign JD Martinez.
Happy New Year everyone! The new CBA will have some kind of spending policy that is stricter than the present. Maybe a salary cap and a floor. So, your pipeline will be so much more important.
I surmise the new CBA to be such because they already outlawed certain high tech equipment in minor league parks because it’s an unfair advantage against the “poorer teams”. So, wouldn’t it make sense to level the playing field throughout? Winning like the Rays will be the preferred method, all grandfathered deferrals will not count (I hate the Dodgers), and players will become free agents younger.
LOL, you really think a new closer will make them sufficiently better?
@Paul-- Very thoughtful and well written piece. We are no doubt a less potent offense today than we were last year. I don't think the goal is to be as potent this year as last, in part because while we were more potent overall last year, our lineup was front loaded and very unbalanced; and our team had far too many unproductive outs.
I think we are looking to attack differently, not necessarily by playing small ball, but by being able to turn traffic into runs throughout the line-up.
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