Mike's Mets - Signs of Life

 

By Mike Steffanos

After a really rough start, the New York Mets are looking like the competitive team we hoped to see.

Coming into the season, I thought the 2024 Mets bore similarities to the 2005 club. When I resurrected my long-dormant blog in 2020, I wrote a series of posts about those 2005 Mets. They were the first Mets team I wrote about when I started the original version of Mike's Mets in August of that season. I live in a place with few Mets fans. All of my friends were Yankees and Red Sox fans. To this day, I have no close friends or family who root for the Mets. Taking the unusual step of becoming a blogger when I was already in my mid-40s was me looking for a place to talk about that Mets club.

It turns out this year's Mets team had a little too much in common with the 2005 crew. Those Mets lost their first five games of the season before righting the ship and winning six in a row. This year's club also lost their first five. While they didn't emulate 2005's immediate winning streak to get back over .500, the 2024 Mets have gone 10-3 since, boosting their record to 10-8 and achieving a tick above blessed mediocrity. More importantly, they have taken four consecutive series against decent or better teams that had been playing well: Cincinnati, Atlanta, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh. The first three of those series wins were achieved by taking the rubber game, something the Mets were terrible at last season. Then they took it up another notch in sweeping the Pirates. The Reds, Royals, and Pirates were hot coming into their respective series, and winning 2 of 3 in Atlanta was an impressive achievement.

This isn't to say we're watching the gelling of a powerhouse team here in Queens. But we see a club that can hang around in the Wild Card race all year and possibly grab a playoff spot. While certainly not perfect, the bullpen looks like a huge upgrade over last year's. This is crucial for a squad that doesn't feature starting pitchers who go deep into games — not even the 6 or 7-inning outings that pass for exemplary starts in today's game.

José Buttó is one pitcher who has delivered a couple of 6-inning starts after repeating his excellence against the Royals. More importantly, he is providing the Mets crucial starting pitching depth. The Mets are finding it impossible to keep sending Buttó back to Syracuse. José has grabbed that fifth starter slot, at least until Tylor Megill returns. Even if Megill does come back fairly quickly, I could see Buttó locking down the spot starter/long relief role that Trevor Williams excelled at in 2022.

Many people, including some who get paid for their opinions on baseball, wrote the Mets off after they went 1-5 on their opening homestand. That was, of course, silly. It would be equally foolish to foresee the Mets going neck-and-neck with the Braves this season based on the past 13 games. This is not a great team playing in Queens this season. There will be more periods of disappointing play like that first homestand this summer, mixed with more hopeful stretches like the current one. Again, this is reminiscent of the 2005 crew.

But I believe the 2024 Mets have more potential than their counterparts from 19 years ago. While no Pedro Martínez is leading the current rotation, there is more quality top-to-bottom. Kaz Ishii was the fifth starter for half the season for those old Mets and was awful. There were no prospects on the farm ready to debut for that club. Omar Minaya had to scramble to piece together a rotation back in 2005. In contrast, the current farm system has several interesting arms with a real chance to be Major League contributors.

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Mike's Mets - Why We're Not Writing a Season Prediction Piece

 

By Mike Steffanos

We're not in the prediction game at Mike's Mets, but we are looking forward to a fascinating — and likely pivotal — 2024 season.

I'm not into writing preview posts full of predictions for an upcoming season. I did them for a while on the previous version of this blog, which ran from 2005-2009. I didn't like making predictions even then, but I felt I had to. The local papers and many other blogs covering the Mets all did them. I guess I thought it was part of the "job" of covering a team. Eventually, it finally dawned on me that there was nothing that I had to do as long as I wasn't receiving a paycheck. These days, I only write about things that matter to me, and I find that I do a much better job sticking to that philosophy for myself and my readers.

My feelings aside, it won't be long before bold predictions for the fate of the 2024 Mets start appearing. We're only two weeks away from baseball that counts. With all due respect to the efforts of the many excellent writers producing them for their respective publications, in addition to avoiding composing my own forecast piece, I won't be reading your predictions, either. They're all formulaic and usually completely erroneous. It's essentially the baseball equivalent of handing money to a fortune teller and expecting anything of value in return. If you were to save a bunch of these to read after the season, it would be shocking how wrong they all turn out. That's not the writer's fault. Nobody can foresee a fraction of the twists and turns a long MLB season will take.

Don't get me wrong. In some past seasons, it was easy to successfully prognosticate where the Mets would end up in the fall, at least as far as their win-loss totals. The teams were so bad that there was no way they would avoid losing around 90 games, skulking around the bottom of the NL East standings all season. It got more challenging when the team looked pretty good — a couple of injuries or underperformance could cost that club in the standings, particularly when the Mets broke camp with little depth to overcome those challenges.

Even some of the best Mets teams could be undermined by an avalanche of misfortune. The 1987 Mets were clearly still the class of MLB, but Dwight Gooden tested positive for cocaine before the season even started, and then injuries to key players piled up. The Mets watched the playoffs at home in those pre-Wild Card days. Then they made it back to the playoffs the following season, only to lose to an inferior Dodgers team in the NLDS. Such is baseball.

Although I avoid predictions, I can confidently state that the 2024 Mets are unlikely to end up either God-awful or the class of the NL. They could conceivably have a great year if a celestial being sprinkled the same stardust upon them that landed on the 2021 San Francisco Giants, who won 107 games after enduring four consecutive losing seasons. Quite unlikely, of course, and I wouldn't want the Mets to emulate those Giants, anyway. They fell back to earth in 2022 and 2023, with 81- and 79-win campaigns, respectively.

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Mike's Mets - Lowered Expectations, Part Deux

 

By Mike Steffanos

A November parade is quite unlikely, but I'm oddly excited about the upcoming New York Mets season.

I was pretty confident in the Mets' chances heading into last season. While nothing is certain in baseball, I thought they were as close as it gets to a sure thing for making the playoffs. And that would have been a big deal. As I pointed out in a post that I wrote a year ago, the Mets have only made the playoffs in consecutive years twice in their entire history: 1999 and 2000 under Bobby Valentine, and 2015 and 2016 with Terry Collins running the show. And that 2016 appearance was a one-and-done Wild Card game ouster.

The last time the Mets came up short on repeating playoff appearances was in 2007. It took a rather epic September collapse to put that failure in the books. They went 5-12 over their last 17 games, which felt even worse than that, as it included a 3-game winning streak in Florida early on. I still vividly remember watching Tom Glavine's atrocious performance in his last game as a Met on the season's final day. While Glavine somewhat infamously characterized himself as "not devastated" after that game, I honestly don't think I've ever had a lower point in more than a half century of Mets fandom.

If the relative suddenness of the collapse characterized the 2007 season, 2023 was more of a slow, season-long descent to Palookaville. That Mets club managed to parlay a record payroll into a 75-87 record. While the trade deadline figured into that disappointing number, the Mets were 50-55 when Justin Verlander won his final game as a Met just before being traded back to Houston. The Mets slipped below .500 for the last time in early June in Atlanta. After that, it was confounding how poorly they managed to play against mediocre or even just plain bad opposition.

I wrote about the way the season was going last June, in a piece titled "Lowered Expectations." The title came from a recurring sketch that ran on the MAD TV show that ran on FOX from 1995 to 2009. The premise was a series of commercials for a dating service for "chronically rejected singles" who were "desirably impaired." Basically, the singles in these ads had given up on dreams of Mr. or Ms. Right and were just searching for someone with a pulse. I always thought that the concept was a perfect metaphor for Mets fans, who often found themselves vaguely hoping for a decent season rather than dreaming of a triumphal campaign. "Just don't embarrass me" is not the rally cry for fans of a top-notch franchise.

What happened to the Mets in 2023 wasn't nearly as traumatic as the 2007 collapse, but it will still go down as one of my least favorite New York Mets seasons. Steve Cohen invested $340 million into that club in an effort to keep the good times going from 2022. Instead, we spent a season watching a team that wasn't bad in some sort of perversely fascinating way, like the 1992 Mets were three decades previously. My memories of last season was watching a club that was frequently quite boring to watch as they meekly went down to defeat — as uncompelling as watching paint dry.

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Mike's Mets - On Prospects and Analytics

 

By Mike Steffanos

David Stearns has taken heat for moves he hasn't made this winter, but he is laying the groundwork for a transformational season.

The Mets organization has no history of being a player development juggernaut. There have been some good homegrown players over the years, even a few great ones. But there has never been a significant era in the Mets' existence fueled by a farm system continually delivering talent to the major league club. Over many decades, this has been a primary reason why the club has been unable to sustain winning.

Even so, it's not hard to look back in Mets history to see the value in a productive farm system. The Mets' last World Series winner in 1986 featured a ton of homegrown players. By far, the best farm production in Mets' history came in the first half of the 1980s. Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Mookie Wilson, Lenny Dykstra, Wally Backman, Kevin Mitchell, Roger McDowell, Rick Aguilera, and Doug Sisk were all drafted and developed by the Mets. Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, and Jesse Orosco were acquired as minor leaguers and debuted with the Mets. Randy Myers, Kevin Elster, and Dave Magadan also played a few games for the Championship club, although their breakthrough as regulars came later.

Large-scale success in player development fueled the longest successful era for the Mets. From 1984 through 1990, the club averaged 95 wins per season. It seemed as if there was a foundation in place for sustained winning. However, the talent pipeline only produced for a scant few years, drying up considerably in the second half of the decade. It's no accident that the winning dried up shortly thereafter. In the 38 years that have passed since they last hoisted a trophy, we've never seen anything close to the infusion of young talent we witnessed in the early 1980s.

Why were the Mets unable to sustain the success of that early '80s farm system? A significant contributing factor is Fred Wilpon gaining control of the team. In 1980, Fred owned 1% of the Mets. When Doubleday Publishing sold the club after the 1986 season, Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday became 50-50 partners. Finally, in August 2002, Fred bought out Doubleday and became the sole owner of the club.

As Fred Wilpon's control grew, the club's fortunes declined. The Mets' success in the late '80s through 2002 was significantly less than their heyday, accumulating a mediocre .514 winning percentage. But things got worse in the period when Fred had sole control. From 2003 to 2020, their winning percentage was .491. In those 18 seasons, they only finished above .500 seven times. Despite witnessing the success fueled by the farm system in Frank Cashen's first seasons as GM, Wilpon never placed a priority on maximizing his club's talent pipeline. Investment there just didn't bring the instant gratification and praise for his ownership Fred craved.

The Mets developed some good ballplayers during the Wilpon era, even a handful of great ones, headed by David Wright, José Reyes, Jacob deGrom, and, for a brief, shining moment, Matt Harvey. But the Mets were never able to replicate the infusion of talent we saw in the early 80s. The consequences of this failure were a recurring theme over the ensuing decades of Wilpon's management.

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Mike's Mets - The Defense Doesn't Rest

 

By Mike Steffanos

A renewed emphasis on defense would be a good thing for the New York Mets.

Mike Vaccaro had an interesting column in the New York Post about the rather dull first winter of David Stearns's tenure, compared with the splashier debuts of some other recent Mets GMs. Back in the offseason of 2004-05, Omar Minaya famously hit the ground running, signing Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran in his first offseason in charge. In his inaugural hot stove as GM, Brodie Van Wagenen swung a deal for Edwin Díaz that, unfortunately, also saddled the club with the Albatross of Robinson Canó's contract.

Contrast this with Stearns, whose biggest deals this winter was the signing of pitchers Sean Manaea and Luis Severino. While I certainly understood the logic behind inking these guys, neither of the announcements made a chill run down my spine as I felt when I first learned of Beltran's agreement. The 40-man on Mets.com is loaded with the names of guys David Stearns brought in to deepen the roster. Some of these new guys could play an important part in what happens to the Mets in 2024. A few of them even fascinate me a tiny bit.

I'm intrigued by the defensive skills Harrison Bader can contribute in the outfield, even as I acknowledge that he is likely to miss time due to injury and hasn't posted an OPS+ over league average since 2021. Bader is with the Mets on a 1-year contract. Those short-term deals are hard to find fault with, as the player won't be around long enough to cause any lasting pain, even if he doesn't really work out. What makes Harrison Bader interesting, and has kept him employed in MLB despite a lackluster batting line of .243/.310/.396 over 7 seasons, is the elite defense he brings to the table.

The Mets have a history of prioritizing offense over defense going back decades. Davey Johnson, still arguably the most successful manager in Mets history, would often sacrifice some defense to get a bit more pop in his lineup. For instance, he often started Howard Johnson or Kevin Mitchell at SS when Sid Fernandez was pitching. There was logic to this choice, as El Sid was an extreme fly ball pitcher. But it was notable in the pre-steroid era when defense was still prized over offense in baseball.

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Mike's Mets - What I'm Looking for in '24

 

By Mike Steffanos

Spring training is almost upon us. Here's what I hope to see from the New York Mets this season.

Here in New England, winter has announced itself rather loudly these past couple of weeks. It hasn't affected me as much as in a typical year. I'm stuck in the house the majority of the time, anyway, after hip replacement surgery. I can't drive yet, so I don't have to deal with the adverse conditions on the road. I can't go out and shovel after the relatively minor storms that have hit my area. Still, as someone who holds no love for the winter, I wouldn't be sorry to see Old Man Winter dial it back a bit.

I've been trying to find productive things to do during all of the downtime that my rehab has "gifted" me. I hoped to write more about the Mets during this stretch, but it's been a rather dull winter for the club, particularly in comparison to the non-stop excitement of last offseason. And a lot of what has been going on in David Stearns's first winter at the helm has been happening in the background, out of sight of fans like myself.

I've written about my patience for what Stearns is trying to accomplish in digging out of the hole created by the extraordinary failure of the 2023 Mets. I genuinely believe remarkable progress is being made to better position the New York Mets to finally exit the (occasional) Boom and (mostly) Bust cycle they've been stuck in for decades. I understand that 2024 will be a transition year. However, as I wrote in my last post, I don't give David Stearns and Steve Cohen a pass on making this a competitive season. Last year was such an ongoing bummer. This one has to be more fun for the fans and more helpful in building the brand that Stearns and Cohen hope to transform the Mets into.

With the lack of big-impact signings to think about lately, my mind has turned to what would constitute a successful season for the 2023 Mets. In a season that will begin with much lower expectations than last year, there still has to be something that builds momentum back in the right direction. While I'm sure that every Mets fan carries their own expectations for 2024, here are some of mine:

A winning season.

This might sound basic, but my absolute baseline criteria for this upcoming season is that the Mets finish above .500. Stearns and Cohen have both spoken of seriously competing for a playoff spot. Last year, the Diamondbacks and the Marlins parlayed 84-win seasons into Wild Card appearances. It was tougher in the AL, where the Blue Jays were the lowest-winning Wild Card club with 89 wins. Still, being better than .500 at least ensures a team is in the Wild Card hunt. And the Mets really have to be in the hunt, or we're talking consecutive failed seasons, and that's a massive step in the wrong direction.

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Mike's Mets - Why 2024 Matters

 

By Mike Steffanos

Despite having to dig out of the mess created by the 2023 Mets, David Stearns and the Mets cannot afford to kick the can down the road to 2025.

I had hip replacement surgery last week. Just reading those words on the page makes me feel old. I turned 65 last October. I'm not at death's door, but I understand that the clock is ticking and I won't be around forever. I know this is somewhat of a cliché, but time really does go by remarkably quickly. I woke up one day, looked in the mirror, and was surprised at the old face staring back at me. It doesn't seem so long ago that I was still a relatively young man.

I have a simple wish for my Mets fandom as I officially enter senior citizenhood: I want them to win at least one more title while I am both breathing and still holding onto my marbles mentally so I can truly appreciate the accomplishment. If I have to hear about a title from the person emptying my drool cup at an assisted care facility, that really won't do it for me.

As disappointing as the 2022 season ended, the dream of a championship seemed much closer in October 2022 than it does now. I knew there were major issues facing the club that offseason, such as the Jacob deGrom opt-out and the impending free agency of Brandon Nimmo and Edwin Díaz. Steve Cohen's Mets were in a position where they would have to spend prolifically and still could find themselves taking a step backward. When Cohen authored a historic spending spree last winter, it seemed that the Mets could at least tread water and make a second consecutive playoff appearance. Even despite the age of the club, it would take a cascade of injuries, underperformance, and just plain bad luck for the Mets to have a bad season.

As you know, the Mets stumbled into that worst-case scenario. There indeed were some miscalculations by the front office that gave the club less margin for error. Enduring a losing season while setting a payroll record makes second-guessing Billy Eppler's choices easy. While it still seems probable that Steve Cohen would have hired the finally available David Stearns even if Billy Eppler's club had enjoyed a much more successful campaign last season, Eppler's case certainly wasn't bolstered by the faceplant of the 2022 New York Mets.

But I harbor no residual ill will towards the former GM. Thanks to some of the work done under Billy Eppler, David Stearns is stepping into a much better situation than he would have if Brewers owner Mark Attanasio had set him free back in 2020 when the Mets first approached Stearns about the job. There is still a lot of work to be done, but the Mets have already come a long way as an organization these last three years, and even last season's disaster doesn't change that. And I'm heartened that David Stearns really seems to be the right guy to take the New York Mets to a more perenially competitive level.

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Mike's Mets - (Really) Getting Better

 

By Mike Steffanos

Although it hasn't always been easy to believe, I have to admit it's getting better for the New York Mets.

When I was very young, The Beatles were still together making music. I remember when the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in May 1967 when I was 8 years old, just in time to dominate the airwaves in the ensuing summer, which would become famous as the Summer of Love. It was the first rock music I was ever aware of, living in a house where the music of my Mom's generation and my Grandmother's Italian music dominated our stereo. There were many classic songs on Sgt. Pepper's, including the title song, "With a Little Help from My Friends," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," and "A Day in the Life." When I got a little older and started acquiring my own music, the album remained in rotation of the stuff I listened to throughout my teen years.

One song from Sgt. Pepper's that has stayed with me was "Getting Better." It was a straightforward rock song on an album that tended more to the psychedelic stuff that continued a transition from the early Beatles sound that began with Revolver, the band's previous album. "Getting Better" was primarily written by Paul McCartney, with a disturbing verse added by John Lennon where he confessed to being "cruel to [his] woman" both physically and mentally. This darkened the song considerably and forever complicated my feelings about Lennon's genius, although John did conclude this somber admission on a more hopeful note:

Man I was mean but I'm changing my scene

And I'm doing the best that I can

The main part of the song was brighter and more optimistic. Paul's lightness contrasting with John's darkness was part of the tension of The Beatles, and this song showcased that edginess. It was the optimism of the early verses that stayed with me the most throughout the ensuing decades of my life:

I've got to admit it's getting better (Better)

A little better all the time (It can't get no worse)

Those words have played in my head during many tough times. Sometimes, it was just whistling in the dark, trying to convince myself that things would get better when I really didn't believe that to be true. Other times, I felt optimistic that things were about to turn around.

In my Mets fandom, I have resorted to trying to believe things were getting better many times over the years. From time to time, things actually did improve. Still, those good times tended to end all too quickly. The last years of the Wilpon era stand out as truly dark times when the owners had little money to conceal their inability to grow a real organization. It was great fun when the club made it to the 2015 World Series. Still, it was hard to see it as anything more than just a brief, fabulous stretch of baseball where everything went right. When the penurious owners allowed Daniel Murphy to sign with their chief Division rivals in Washington, I just knew things wouldn't end well, and they didn't.

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Mike's Mets - Eating Your Vegetables Is Never Fun

 

By Mike Steffanos

Last winter was a blast for Mets fans, at least until the Correa deal fell through. This year is less about immediate gratification, with a significantly reduced level of fun.

What a difference a year makes. The Mets were quite active at the 2022 Winter Meetings, signing top free agents at a feverish pace. This year, the Mets departed Nashville with little to show for their time in Music City besides minor league deals to reliever Andre Scrubb and infielder José Iglesias, along with a split deal to reliever Michael Tonkin. Since then, most of the news has featured David Stearns doing organizational depth signings, primarily to minor league contracts with an invite to spring training. I certainly can't fault David Stearns for building as much depth as possible, but these aren't the sort of deals that will make Mets fans stand up and take notice.

There was a consensus around baseball that the free agent market wouldn't heat up until the big dominoes began to fall. The biggest finally did tumble, with Shohei Ohtani signing a record $700 million deal with the LA Dodgers — despite skipper Dave Roberts committing the reportedly unforgivable transgression of actually talking about meeting with Shohei and his club's desire to sign him. Meanwhile, rumors of Ohtani flying to Toronto proved to be unfounded. Apparently, it was actually a jolly old fat man in a red suit and some hoofed friends doing a test run for later this month.

The Dodgers always seemed to be the team that made the most sense as a landing spot for Ohtani. He preferred the West Coast, wanted to play for a winner, and never seemed a good match for the New York media market. Even if Ohtani decided he was okay with New York, the Mets simply have yet to establish themselves as a winner. Steve Cohen has invested a lot of money in the club in the three seasons since he took over from the Wilpons, but there is still only 2022's Wild Card round playoff appearance to show for it.

There has been some reporting that the Mets were unwilling to make the investment that the Dodgers were making with Ohtani, to the consternation of some fans. But it's unclear whether this was simply a money decision or if Shohei never really showing any interest in the Mets factored in. Either way, I'm just not going to lose sleep over it. I'm also not going to jump on the bandwagon with those criticizing LA for making the deal. It's a lot of money, but I'm sure the Dodgers took into account Ohtani's unique marketing value as well as his extraordinary talent.

It wasn't that long ago that the Dodgers franchise was a complete mess — not all that different from where the Mets found themselves at the end of the Wilpon era. After Parking Lot magnate Frank McCourt was finally forced to sell the team in 2012, the Dodgers turned things around fairly quickly, partially aided by being in a rather uncompetitive division, at least then. After a nice run, the Giants were on a downturn, and the rest of the clubs played in relatively small markets.

That's not to disparage what LA has accomplished. They've undeniably built an absolute juggernaut over the past decade. The Dodgers' ability to develop a ton of homegrown talent despite finishing at the top of the league year after year gives them a great deal of flexibility when they choose to go out and acquire talent, such as trading for Mookie Betts or signing Ohtani and Freddie Freeman.

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Mike's Mets - The Ground-Level Work

 

By Mike Steffanos

Can David Stearns build the deep, competitive 40-man roster that has eluded the Mets for so long?

Since the World Series ended, things have begun to heat up for the Mets. It kicked off with the news that Carlos Mendoza had been hired as the new manager, which became official at the news conference on November 14. On Friday of that week, we learned that the Mets had elected not to tender contracts to several of their eligible players: DH Daniel Vogelbach, Utitly Infielder Luis Guillorme, and relievers Trevor Gott, Jeff Brigham, and Sam Coonrod. Along with some of the moves made earlier in the month, the Mets 40-man roster is sitting at 28 players. We knew there would be massive changes to the team in David Stearns's first offseason calling the shots, and there certainly is plenty of roster room for those changes.

The only mild surprise in the non-tendered group was Luis Guillorme. Luis was a useful player over his six seasons with the Mets. He had a bad offensive season last year, although injuries limited Guillorme to only 120 PA. Luis has hit a combined .270/.359/.331 in just under 500 PA in the previous two seasons, with a 98 OPS+. That's just under league-average offensive production from a guy who could fill in quite well at all the infield positions, including shortstop. Gulliorme played most of this season at age 28 and was paid $1.6 million in his second year of arbitration eligibility.

My guess is that Stearns felt that Luis could be replaced for less money, which is certainly possible. What seems odd to me was picking up infielder Zack Short off of waivers earlier in the month and keeping him on the roster over Guillorme. I understand the math. Zack Short will cost less than Luis Guillorme. He made $700,000 last season and won't even be eligible for arbitration until 2026. Still, Short's offensive production with the Tigers was awful. Leo Morgenstern at MLB Trade Rumors had this to say about the young infielder when the Mets picked him up:

While his offense may never be a strength, Short draws walks well, and he can put his plus speed to work when he reaches base. Moreover, his defense might not stand out at any one position, but he is capable of covering second, third, and short, and even the outfield in a pinch. As long as he doesn't regress at the plate, his flexibility could earn him another shot at MLB playing time next season, especially since he is out of minor league options.

It doesn't exactly make you salivate over the potential, does it? In his "best" offensive season last year, Short had an OPS+ of 73, only 3 points higher than Luis Guillorme's acknowledged bad year. Neither Luis nor Short have minor league options remaining. If they had to keep one player, I'd have preferred Guillorme for a bit more offense and his defensive abilities. Then again, Short may be long gone, too, by the time Opening Day rolls around next season.

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Mike's Mets - Some Thoughts on Our New Manager

 

By Mike Steffanos

The new Mets manager had an impressive introduction to the fan base. Now the hard stuff begins.

I wasn't planning to watch Carlos Mendoza's introductory press conference but was home at noon, so I decided to tune in. He came across as knowledgeable and enthusiastic and has received good reviews in most things I've read. He clearly knows what he's getting into by taking a manager's job in New York. According to SNY, he'll make about $1.5 million per year for three years, with a club option for a fourth. So, even if Carlos lasts out his entire contract, he'll make less total money than Craig Counsell will make next year alone. Carlos Mendoza will need to enjoy some success as a manager if he hopes to get closer to Counsell's income level.

There was a bit of mild controversy when Mendoza spoke about his friendship with former Mets manager Willie Randolph and didn't rule out considering Willie for the bench coach job. There are Mets fans of a certain vintage who still blame Randolph for the 2007 collapse. My opinion is that Randolph was sufficient as a manager. While he certainly wasn't a revelation running a club, that team crashed for much the same reason as the 2023 Mets did: the lack of a deep roster and an inadequate bullpen.

Randolph's biggest problem was that he had rabbit ears when it came to media criticism. For a guy who spent years in the glare of the New York spotlight, Willie just didn't seem to handle it very well. Willie is older and presumably wiser at this point. He also would be in a lesser spotlight as a subordinate if he's chosen to be the bench coach. I'm not sweating this one, however it goes.

I do find it a bit strange that Randolph never received another chance to manage an MLB club. Inferior managers than Willie had multiple chances, including his replacement Jerry Manuel, who managed for nine seasons in Chicago and New York. I followed the Mets very closely back then and found Willie Randolph to be a much better manager than Manuel. Don't get me wrong, Willie wasn't a perfect manager, but he had some strengths and deserved another shot.

Jerry Manuel suffered through his own collapse in 2008. In fairness, although I felt that Manuel would overuse hot pitchers in his bullpen to the point of physical abuse, like Randolph, he was a victim of a roster that lacked real depth, especially pitching.

GM Omar Minaya got the Mets back in contention in 2005-2006 by getting some stars to come to New York, but the team was a house of cards that was always destined to fail. They got by in 2006 with a bullpen that was so exceptional it papered over some of the other roster ills — including a glaring depth in starting pitching that forced the club to hand out starts to a revolving cast of bad pitchers, including Alay Soler, David Williams, José Lima, and Geremi González.

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Mike's Mets - I Asked for Craig Consell, But All I Got Was Carlos Mendoza

 

By Mike Steffanos

A few quick thoughts on our new manager.

I read this weekend how impressed David Stearns and his front office mates were with Carlos Mendoza, and I was pretty sure that Mendoza would be the next Mets manager. It's not that I'm clairvoyant or particularly smart. It's just that everything I read about Craig Counsell made me skeptical of his taking the Mets job. He seemed most interested in the Mets' interest as a device to push his value up, which is certainly his right. I didn't foresee the Cubs jumping into the fray while jettisoning their manager, but it made a lot of sense once the dust settled.

If Craig Counsell really wanted to stay in Milwaukee, he could have done so and made plenty of money doing it. But Counsell was quoted in the Milwaukee media that he was in a been-there, done-that mode when it came to the Brewers:

"I think as I was going through this process, it became clear that I needed and wanted a new professional challenge."

After spending eight years running the Brew Crew, Counsell probably felt that he achieved as much as he was going to there. His chances of actually winning a title were limited by running a club in baseball's smallest market. Although seemingly coming from out of the blue, the Cubs' job allows Counsell to have his cake and eat it, too. He makes a whole buttload of money yet stays pretty close to home. Of course, they aren't exactly erecting statues of Craig Counsell in Milwaukee, where he is no longer nearly as beloved as he was last week. But the $8 million yearly salary will easily absorb any extra security required.

Getting back to Carlos Mendoza, I figured he would be the new Mets manager because he was clearly the second choice behind Counsell. My initial thoughts on the man are that he seems to be as well prepared for the job as any first-time manager could be. Other than that, I really don't know enough about the guy to predict his chances of success.

Much has been made about the Mets' recent history with rookie managers. It certainly hasn't been good. But I feel more optimistic about this choice, knowing that David Stearns has made it. Nothing I have read about Stearns leads me to believe that he would be swayed merely by a really good interview, as the Mets reportedly were by Mickey Callaway back in the day.

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Mike's Mets - The Next Mets Era Begins

 

By Mike Steffanos

With a managerial choice forthcoming and a roster badly in need of upgrades, David Stearns's first Mets offseason is ready to kick off.

The World Series is now over. The 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks managed to get to the Fall Classic by beating three teams that were much better than they were: the Brewers, Dodgers, and Phillies. Then, Arizona was lucky enough to draw the Texas Rangers in the World Series. While Texas had done well in the Playoffs — sweeping the Rays and the Orioles before eking out an ALCS win in 7 over the Astros — they were a flawed team with some injury issues. But the Snakes went down with barely a whimper, still claiming that they had "shocked the world" by getting to the Series.

While I can't answer for the rest of the world, I know I wasn't particularly shocked. The nature of a tournament is that inferior teams can easily triumph over much better teams in a short series. Even a 7-game series is hardly a true test of superiority, but the best-of-3 and best-of-5 in the first two rounds are even less so. MLB would be better served by shortening the season and going to all best-of-7 series. Longer series in those first two rounds would give the best teams a more substantial chance of coming out on top. It certainly wouldn't eliminate upsets, however. There is no way it would happen, anyway. Teams wouldn't be willing to sacrifice the revenue from a few more home games to make this possible, and MLB certainly wouldn't want to play deeper into November.

This doesn't take anything away from what the Rangers and Diamondbacks accomplished. They both made it to the Playoffs, then played well and defeated their opponents. Their fans are rightfully proud of their club's achievements, especially Rangers supporters. But it is something to keep in mind for the future.

We all hope the Mets can finally become sustainable winners under David Stearns. But even if the club can make the Playoffs almost every year, they will come up short of a World Series win in most of those efforts. History teaches us that many in the media and a good number of Mets fans will look at every time they don't win it all as some sort of a moral failure. The truth is that it's just really hard to make it to and then win a World Series. True dynasties with multiple wins in a short period of time are incredibly rare.

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Mike's Mets - Waiting for the Hot Stove to Ignite

 

By Mike Steffanos

As the World Series plays out, I find myself eagerly looking forward to what I hope will be a transformative Hot Stove season for the New York Mets.

I haven't written much for the blog this month. I lost interest years ago in any MLB playoffs that don't include the Mets. Unfortunately, that is an all too common occurrence in my lifetime. Since the Mets fell to the Dodgers in the 1988 NLCS, they've completed 35 seasons, including this one, and made the playoffs only six times. There was a time when I would have some interest in the playoffs, rooting against teams like the Braves and Phillies, but I no longer feel strongly enough about any other team to waste the energy it takes to hate-watch their playoff series.

I've reached a significant age milestone this month. As a result, I've become more contemplative than I used to be. I chuckled a bit at the overreaction in the normally sycophantic Braves media over another early dismissal in the playoffs. Still, it didn't make me feel better about how the Mets season went.

After beating Atlanta for the second consecutive time in the playoffs, the Phillies were anointed a team of destiny — until they weren't any longer. Twenty years ago, I would have watched them get bounced out of the playoffs with relish. But I didn't turn on game 7 of their NLDS series against the Diamondbacks or even check the score. However the Phillies or Braves feel about their seasons, they did better than the Mets did just by giving their fans a chance to watch their team play October baseball, even if they were ultimately left disappointed. I'll spend my energy hoping the Mets are part of the playoffs next fall.

Every year, as the cream of MLB's crop gets eliminated by clubs like the 84-win Diamondbacks or the Wild Card Rangers, there are a significant number of baseball scribes who either wring their hands over the upsets or give the upstart clubs like Arizona way too much credit. The Diamondbacks supplanted the Phillies as the team of destiny, but the Rangers have their own case to make in that regard. No matter how the World Series turns out, some team will be given a post-dated air of inevitability, as if the playoffs really couldn't have gone any other way. Meanwhile, other pundits will still bellyache about the MLB playoffs' "failure" in producing a matchup of great teams in its Fall Classic.

I wrote about this subject last October, and my feelings certainly haven't changed in the past year. When I was very young, I recall watching World Series games with my uncle. In those years, the best team in the American League played the best team in the National League. The World Series were the only playoffs that existed in Major League Baseball. The absolute best competing against the absolute best gave the Series a cachet that will never be matched by today's tournament-style competition. Hell, I remember the adults complaining when they split both Leagues into two Divisions to create an intermediate round of playoffs. This was blasphemy to the old-timers. But frankly, starting with four playoff teams still ensured that all of the included teams would be very good.

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Mike's Mets - Seasons

 

By Mike Steffanos

I've been aware of the time going by. They say in the end it's the wink of an eye. - Jackson Browne, "The Pretender"

I turned 65 a few days ago. It's hard to believe that I'm officially a senior citizen, but I only have to look in a mirror to confirm the information on my birth certificate. I didn't do much to "celebrate" hitting my latest yearly milestone. Tacking another year onto my age lost its allure many, many decades ago when I became old enough to legally drink. Even that wasn't a huge deal, as things were much more lax in those days. The drinking age back then was 18. I was a tall, muscular kid who could easily pass as a few years older. I also knew all the local watering holes that weren't diligent about requesting ID and had been frequenting those places from about age 15.

Other than partying and girls, I didn't care about much else in those days. I was a Mets fan, but by the time I turned 18 in October 1976, the club was about to enter the most miserable stretch of its existence. They didn't command my maximum attention as they had in my earlier teen years. Even those Mets clubs were generally mediocre at best, but they still had Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and Jon Matlack. It was quite a jolt when Seaver was traded in June 1976, Matlack the following winter, and finally Koosman in the winter of 1978. Besides generally sucking, it felt as if the Mets had completely broken faith with the childhood version of me who had worshiped these men as Gods just a few years earlier.

The 1969 Mets, featuring the 1-2 combination of Seaver and Koosman, were the team that enticed the 10-year-old version of me into being a baseball fan. Those next few years, highlighted by the 1973 club that returned to the World Series, formed the backdrop of transition from childhood into adolescence. If you're much younger than I am — and I hope you are — it must feel like events from almost 50 years in the past were forever ago. But man, when I think about those teams, that time feels practically close enough to touch. When I read or hear some of the names of players from those days — Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson, Cleon Jones, Rusty Staub — I can still distinctly smell the stench of the Clearsil that did so little to relieve the ravages of my acne-plagued complexion, mingled with the everpresent feeling of disappointment as the Mets mostly wasted the prime of those great pitchers. And all of this happened while I was enduring the awkward transition of puberty.

By the time the Mets were once again good enough to care about in the 1980s, my complexion had finally cleared, and my life was in a completely different spot. I was in my mid-20s, working a full-time job and living on my own. I married a young woman I cared about, but neither was mature enough to handle the responsibility. The greatest era of Mets baseball played out during the years of my pitifully short marriage and ensuing divorce. Those Mets clubs still form most of the highlights of my Mets fandom, but, like the competitive clubs from the first half of the 70s, that golden era of Mets baseball passed by almost as quickly as my marriage.

The 90s Mets clubs were largely forgettable. On a happier note, during that decade, I met Lisa — our relationship has endured — and began a small business with my brother. The 1994 strike/lockout drove me away from the game for a while. As I transitioned into middle age at the turn of the century, the Mets became briefly interesting again. Sadly, that coincided with the Wilpons gaining complete control of the team, essentially dooming the first two decades of the new century. At least from my Mets fan perspective, most of those years of my middle age were wasted as the former Mets owners were unable to spend and unwilling to embrace the cutting-edge stuff that more successful teams were utilizing to find the winning advantage.

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Mike's Mets - Another One Bites the Dust

 

By Mike Steffanos

Billy Eppler, we hardly knew ye.

I wrote a piece last month titled "The Mets Are Still Searching for Stability." The Mets had just decided to hand pink slips to some director-level employees. At the time, it was speculated that the firings could be a sign that a new President of Baseball Operations was coming in, which proved accurate when David Stearns's hiring was announced a couple of weeks later. While the thought of Stearns coming on was exciting, one of the big hopes was that the constant comings and goings of key personnel would slow down a bit as the Mets transitioned to a more mature, steady operation. This made the news of GM Billy Eppler seemingly out-of-the-blue resigning an unpleasant reminder that we just aren't there yet.

It wasn't that Eppler seemed irreplaceable. While I wasn't rooting for him to get canned, the idea of Stearns being gifted the opportunity to hire an up-and-comer of his choice to fill the GM role is actually intriguing. And it certainly was disappointing to learn that Eppler pressured manager Buck Showalter to keep Daniel Vogelbach in the lineup long after it became clear that Vogie didn't offer enough value to offset his limitations. Eppler did some really good things in his time as Mets GM, but his trades for Vogelbach and Darin Ruf were clearly fails. And that's not a crime.

A consequence of having a job where you need to make big decisions is that you will face-plant on some of them. Mistakes are going to happen. But missteps become magnified when a leader can't acknowledge them, learn from them, and move on as quickly as possible. It's human to stubbornly cling to the hope that an important move will eventually pan out, but that's not an approach strong leaders utilize.

Let's be clear: Eppler's stubbornness in trying to validate the Vogelbach acquisition didn't cost the Mets their 2023 season. There were more significant reasons why they spent so much money only to finish under .500. It didn't impact the decision to hire David Stearns and place him above Eppler in the baseball ops hierarchy. That was clearly going to happen as soon as Steve Cohen got the person he wanted to agree to take the job — even if the club had played better and made the playoffs. But Eppler's failure to acknowledge the obvious sooner caused the manager unnecessary angst, made the fanbase quite unhappy, and made Vogelbach a target of fan outrage. It was a lose-lose-lose for everyone.

While I continue to give Billy Eppler credit for some good things that he accomplished here, the slowness of some of his decision-making and his failure to find value in filling out the roster doomed him as the ultimate decision-maker. On the other hand, reporting indicated that Eppler was a good administrator for whom people enjoyed working. And David Stearns seemed happy to have a capable man working underneath him in such a demanding job. This made Billy Eppler's sudden resignation incredibly puzzling when first announced but much less so when the news leaked that he was the target of an MLB investigation.

If MLB's investigation turns out to really be about the infamous "Phantom IL," it's a mystery to me why Eppler felt that he had to resign. Sorry, but it's one of the worst-kept secrets in the game: IL shenanigans are common across baseball. I'm sure there will be penalties for the Mets if this can be proven, but this is hardly compatible with the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal or more recent ones involving international prospects. The idea that Billy Eppler needed to resign over improper use of the IL doesn't compute.

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Mike's Mets - Welcome to the David Stearns Era

 

By Mike Steffanos

The new President of Baseball Operations is officially on the job. Here are some quick thoughts on Day 1 of the David Stearns era.

We've been talking about David Stearns for a while in this space, particularly since the Mets announced on September 12 that Stearns would, indeed, be taking the PBO job. What was especially gratifying was that, after almost three years of constantly reading why potential targets were afraid of taking on the job, Stearns confirmed today that he was eager to accept the position. This is even though Stearns — a native New Yorker who grew up a Mets fan — understands all too well the pressures of the top job in this market.

If you're new to this site, you can look at my last half-dozen posts to see my hopes for what David Stearns might bring to the table running the New York Mets, in particular, my most recent. Regular readers don't need me to rehash those thoughts here again. Now that Stearns is officially in charge, I very much look forward to checking out the moves Stearns makes to try to fulfill the goals he articulated at his press conference: being immediately competitive while not sacrificing the long-term goal of sustaining winning. That mandate has been around since Steve Cohen purchased the ballclub. Having a talented leader like Stearns in charge makes that ultimate goal feel closer to attaining.

Of course, we won't see much in the way of moves until the playoffs end. If the World Series goes all the way to Game 7, that won't be until November 4 — and that date is contingent on not having rainouts push things a bit later. So David Stearns has a month to dive in as deep as possible on the Mets organization and prepare for free agency and potential trades.

For now, here are a few quick thoughts after watching the introductory presser:

• Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I thought this piece by Joel Sherman in the Post was unfair, particularly accusing Stearns of ordering a "hit job" on Buck Showalter while being "not present at its execution." As Stearns noted at the press conference, he was officially a Brewers employee until today and could not talk to Showalter. Stearns did reach out with a phone call today to Buck, although he has yet to speak to him. Decisions to let a manager go are part of baseball. I feel bad for Showalter, who seems like a fine man, but Stearns didn't act improperly here, and Joel Sherman has been doing this job long enough to know better.

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