Indulge me a Cathartic post, please
My great uncle -- not my best uncle, just my great uncle -- was the comedian, Henny Youngman, known best (unfortunately) for his famous one liner, "Take my wife...., please".
He actually had much better material than that, but at least he's remembered for some of his work, even if it is not his best. I wonder what this iteration of the Mets will be remembered for.
And so I implore you, "Take my Mets...., please."
This is not going to be one of my philosophical or analytical or theoretical pieces that bores some of you to death. This is a stream of semi-consciousness catharsis.
I need it, and I'm going to indulge myself. 'Do you (dear reader) feel like I do?' (Speaking of which, whatever happened to Peter Frampton's hair?"
It's worse than you think and worse than I had ever imagined
It's really hard to imagine a team more out of favor with its fan base than the Mets. Even Jets fans are more engaged with their woeful team than are Mets fans. Somehow the genuinely dysfunctional Jets managed to make two excellent trades at the deadline and had a truly excellent draft this past week. The typical Jets fan was able to ignore the fact that there is no evidence that their HC can coach at this level and put aside decades of incompetent ownership, and find themselves, if not quite optimistic, at least hopeful.
Hope may spring eternal, but for the average Mets' fan, this Spring has killed all hope. Video may have killed the radio star, but really, who cares? The Mets play has sent me back to therapy, and at these prices, it might be cheaper to pay off an opponent to throw a game every once in a while!
I think it's fair to say that the Mets fans have lost all faith in the team's prospects, not just for this year, which is bad enough, but going forward. The extent of the disengagement is both striking and easy to understand.
What I don't understand is the apparent failure of the organization -- from the owner to the manager -- to grasp its source as well as its significance.
They are misreading the signals the fans are sending, underestimating, not the extent or quantity of disaffection, but its quality and character. This is not a fan base responding to a losing streak or to a stretch of disappointing play.
This is a fan base screaming that there is rot at heart of the team. Being a fan of the Mets is tantamount these days is like watching a loved one devolve into a depression from which they seem unable to extricate themselves, one that defines them and with which they seem incomprehensibly to have become comfortable with.
Some might think that watching the Mets is like watching a train wreck, but I demur. A train wreck, while likely to cause untold personal harm and property damage, is, at the end of the day, a ballistic event. It doesn't build or boil over, it is above all else, a sudden impact.
What the Mets fan has experienced has been a slow, exhausting, recalcitrant, dissolution. It is personal and offers no relief or hope of respite, let alone a rebound.
This is like the sucking of all life out of an organism or the death of a long relationship. At no time does it seem inevitable, but all of the time it seems intractable, incomprehensible.
Speaking as a fan, I find myself asking questions I never expected I would. Am I crazy in thinking that the FO and the manager aren't seeing what I am seeing? Are they delusional in some way. Is it possible that they just don't care in the way I, and most other Mets fans for life, obviously do.
Sometimes you have to understand that the fans are invested in ways that may be unhealthy, but which, given how little there is to cheer about or find solace in the circumstances of modern life, may well be all that keeps us going day to day. Ok, that may be a bit hyperbolic: not all of what keeps us going, but nevertheless essential to one's well-being.
Sometimes, simple decency requires putting a stop to the pain. If the FO isn't going to do that, the fans surely will of their own accord.
But most of all, we don't want to hear a manager's post game press conference punctuated by banalities, like, 'we are playing hard, taking good at bats, putting in the work, but obviously what we are doing is not enough'. Some banalities are informative; some are obvious. This one clearly is not.
Or my favorite, 'No one is going to feel sorry for us.' No shite. The goal is to make them loathe to play against us. Do I need to hear the POBO say with a straight face that he believes that the manager is doing a good job?
Really? The team is listless, frustrated and plays the game without joy or energy. They make mistakes and commit mental errors befitting little leaguers. They are making every opponent seem invincible.
Do I really need a POBO, who I largely admire and have a great deal of faith in, looking to sign players off the scrap heap hoping to find a diamond in the rough. No, no, a thousand times no.
I'll tell you what I need, and I'm betting others need as well
I need to see the owner, the POBO and the manager responding to this moment appropriately, which for me is captured best by Peter Finch's portrayal of the fictional character, Howard Beale, in the film classic, Network, going to the window, opening it and shouting at the top of his lungs, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.'
If FO continues to take it, rest assured the Mets fans will not.
There may well be little, if anything, the FO can do now that will turn the team around, but we won't even be able to stop the bleeding if we are unable to see how sick the patient is.
This is a team that is 57-84 since June 12, 2025. This isn't a team that has to play better. After all, it is almost impossible for it to play any worse.
This is not a team that needs a good series or two. This is a team that every fan can see desperately needs a reboot, a severing of ties with its long slow dissolution.
This isn't a team that can settle for a reboot. This is a team that needs a rebirth.
We are so close to becoming a team that isn't even capable of talking a good game, let alone playing one. This is the team the fan base sees day in and day out.
Can it really be possible that the FO office sees something different.
So at the top of my lungs, hear me, 'I'm mad as hell and I am not going to take it'
Nor am I going to spend the summer in a bad mood. Until there are bright spots to report on on the major league team, I'm going to devote my time to the only source of hope right now: prospects toiling in the minors and honing their craft.
Because, though prospects rarely pan out as expected, they have not yet shown us their ceilings and thus they free us to dream of better days to come.
And just to show that I can find humor in even the most horrific events, I will end with a joke that I have rewritten slightly so as not to risk offending anyone.
Comedian to the Audience: Do you know the difference between a Mets pessimistic fan and a Mets optimistic fan?
Answer: The pessimistic fan is always reminding you that the pitchers can't pitch, the hitters can't hit, the manager can't manage, and the GM can't make a decent trade or free agent signing. It's so bad, it's impossible for things to get worse
To which the optimistic Mets fan responds, 'Don't be ridiculous. Of course they can.'
Until next time.
23 comments:
I have gradually escalated in my calling out the Mets over the last dozen years of my writing. I personally have seen enough of Mets failure.
Pretty thorough description of where the Mets franchise is at the moment. Steve Cohen has a successful investment business, will build a casino that hopefully attracts Manhattanites and others with “disposable income”, and a baseball team that is embarrassing him. Can you imagine going to lunch everyday or even worse, avoiding going? Stearns won’t fire Mendoza because he won’t have a buffer after that. People talk about Alex Cora, but I don’t think Stearns wants a manager with an opinion, or he would have embraced Showalter from the beginning.
Seems Stearns doesn’t know how to run a big league club and just wants to make them the Brewers with money to spend, but it goes beyond that. There is too much media focus in NYC to drag your feet or to keep signing players like Austin Slater, Tommy Pham and Eric Wageman. I’d rather see the kids I have get a chance, and so would most fans.
Let Vientos play everyday for a month; bring up Pache who is already in your system; Mauricio is the SS until Lindor returns, case closed; let’s see what we have, and sometimes releasing the pressure that your players feel with all these VERY STUPID transactions makes them relax and excel.
Phillies fired their manager today
Two comments: Two managers, both of whom have been successful have been fired. Mendoza, not successful. What are they seeing that I am missing. Second, I said I was an optimist, so (to be ironic) there is an advantage to being as bad as the Mets are: you get an early crack at players DFA'd from teams nearly as bad as you are. Looking for value at the top of the scrap heap. Someone help me understand
While I am getting it all out of my system: I have actually been restrained in my criticism of Alvarez's mechanics. Why is any pitcher in baseball with a modicum of control not pitching him up and in followed by breaking stuff on the outside half of the plate; with an out pitch being the one off the plate? Have you seen him even come close to making solid contact on any pitch with that sequence or a similar one. In addition to his poor mechanics, he is an impatient hitter. He can get himself out 90% of the time.
The problem is that there is not much structurally that can be done this early in the season. This is truly. Worst-case scenario.
The current situation requires something different. Make trades with Boston, Houston. Seattle, & even Philly if necessary to shake things up. Also cut some of the clearly dead weight & take the tax write off. Cohen must take some action. Soon.
And a little more honesty while I am at it. Baty; long and languid swing. It won't play in the majors against heat. Period. It's a beautiful looking swing that is inefficient and has to start early leaving him vulnerable to down and in pitches, while still making it difficult to catch up with heat, especially in the upper half of the strike zone.
And more: Vientos has shown he isn't bad at 1st base, but his bat to ball skills are questionable. He is the only power bat in the line-up, but both he and Alvarez only do damage on pitcher mistakes.
I said early on that it would be a mistake to take Baty off his comfort zone by having him play all over; and that it would adversely impact his hitting. I'm sure that's right, but I think the truth is he hits better in the second half of the season as the pitchers wear down a bit. So he hits very well in ST while they are either pitchers who aren't going to make the major league team or in the second half of the season when they have lost a little something.
And just a word about Semien. Ask anyone who knows the biomechanics of ballistic movement and how the spine is designed to work and you will know all you need to know about how his stance, with the exaggerated flexion of the lumbar spine has contributed to his declining offensive performance. This is not an issue that cures itself.
you can have a great lab for hitting and pitching, but that is just data. You have to understand the body and how it is designed to work efficiently to both interpret the data and to create drills that can help create new movement patterns.
I have said that so many times. I am glad you agree because you are much more perceptive of swing mechanics.
Pete wasn't bad at first base. They wanted better. We don't have better, but we certainly don't have power anymore either.
Thank you for a very entertaining piece today. I smiled as I read it, which gave me some relief from the deep sorrow over the Mets' decline.
Jules C,
I am going to give you a name to consider if the Mets make a change and want to consider someone who has managed for them in the minors as a possible manager.
Reid Bragnac was the 2025 Baseball America's minor league manager of the year when serving as Binghamton's manager saw his team go 90-46. He served as manager with the majority of the teams' top prospects and has done well in helping them achieve success in the minors. Brignac is now working with the Rays AAA team in Durham.
Just a name to consider in the future.
Brignac, who was in the Mets system as a manager for several years,
OK, I'm done. I've said my piece. It's damn hard to be a good hitter in baseball these days, and the margins between success and failure are very small indeed. I am no expert on baseball instruction or coaching by any means, but I am not without some knowledge. I would say that there are certain fundamentals that are globally applicable: 1. sound mechanics regarding how to get energy into the system and out into the ball. There is no time for uncertainty when hitting a pitch. You need to have a maximally efficient movement pattern designed around your body's natural movements. 2. The pattern has to be healthy for your body. 3. You need an approach that you can internalize that is built on recognizing your strengths and your limitations. 4. After that, you need a good BB IQ so your approach is responsive to circumstances. 5. What trumps at some level everything else is ball to bat skills/hand eye coordination. It is the only key that if sufficiently good that can overcome other flaws -- at least to some extent.
All this has to be developed as best as possible if the margins are to work in a hitters favor.
And most of all, they will help to create confidence; and confidence is essential because almost everyone will fail to get a hit more than 70% of the time, and even more so against really good pitching. If you lose confidence or have doubts, you cannot hope to have the margins in your favor.
And the key to developing these skills to the extent they can be developed in different players is NOT repetition, it is what learning theorists call 'deliberative practice.'
From now on I focus only on positives.
I hadn't thought of Reid Brigniac. Good suggestion.
Thanks Paul. I am happy to be even mildly entertaining. Laughing in the face of misery is a sine qua non of survival
Knew Henny
Frequent guest on my morning show at WNEW with Willie B. Williams
Great guy.
I couldn't agree more about thes useless signings. It just feels like a distraction. At the very least it is close to what Angel Investors do with startups: put 25K into 20 start-ups in the hopes that one will succeed and you win at 100x. That's the kind analogy. At worst it might be viewed as 'stop looking where you are looking; see over here instead.' The problem is that if you get anyone to look it is probably your own prospects who already feel pressure from competition and now you are throwing more competition and roadblocks in their way -- without genuine purpose. I find this the least acceptable part of Stearns' approach.
To be fair, there is some virtue in it when it comes to relief pitching since there is so much variance in performance from year to year even for the same pitchers, and they are more like commodities that are fungible and easy to release at low cost. But as is often the case, if you don't understand why the strategy works reasonably well in some circumstances and project that it is a sound strategy elsewhere, you will be prone to expand its use inappropriately. There are several reasons why the grounds for applying it to relief pitchers do not apply to position players.
Lots of dead weight and indecision. I think the lack of decisiveness is also asymmetrical. Their lack of decisiveness about what they think about Mauricio for example has led to behavior that will not provide them with any information that could increase their decisiveness. Their decisiveness on Vientos was puzzling and their indecisiveness toward Mendoza is beyond puzzling. In decision theory, I would describe their approach to Mendoza as following a principle of minimizing potential regret rather than a principle of trying to maximizing potential success. This is not a rational strategy for confident decision makers.
He was actually a pretty good guy and indirectly responsible for my ability to marry my wife. Her family was deeply opposed to her marrying me for a number of reasons: wrong class, wrong city, wrong religion; and as a budding academic, unlikely to earn a decent living. I couldn't blame them, at least as to the latter. Found out her fraternal grandmother was a huge Henny Youngman fan. Asked him to provide all the Henny Youngman swag he could think of, which wasn't much, but several jokes specifically for her, a promise to refer to her in coming sets, and autographed pictures, etc. won her over; and given the matriarchal role she played in my wife's family, led as they say, to a reversal of fortune. Nothing but love for Henny from me. I often entertain no one with Henny Youngman jokes, especially when my jokes about the Mets flag
Loved HennyYoungman. One of a great group of Jewish comedians including Myron Cohen who knew how to work an audience.
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