Looking Back at the 2025 Mets: A Season of Underperformance
Looking Back at the 2025 Mets: A Season of Underperformance
The 2025 Mets were built for a World Series run. Instead, they unraveled after June 12, finishing with one of the league’s worst records since that date. No magic, no comebacks, and $340 million spent — this season will be remembered as an epic fail.
Looking Back at the 2025 Mets: A Season of Underperformance
The 2025 Mets season began with promise and ended with futility. And along the way it delivered every possible shade of Mets pain.
"Álvarez drives one deep to center… it’s carrying… back to the wall… leaping… and he makes the catch! Jared Young just robbed Francisco Álvarez of a game-tying home run!”
That was September baseball. Down 3–2 to the Nationals, the Mets were one swing away from tying a crucial game. Álvarez had the swing, the sound, the trajectory, everything but the payoff. Instead of a roar, it was silence as Young rose above the wall, stretched his glove over the fence, and pulled the ball back into the park.
One run short. A season summed up in a single play.
By then, the Reds were blanking the playoff-bound Cubs 1–0, pulling even with the Mets for the final wild card spot. And to make it worse, the Reds owned the tiebreaker. Which meant the Mets were no longer in charge of their own destiny. To get in, they needed help.
A Glimmer of Hope in September
And yet, in true Mets fashion, even as their grip on the standings slipped, they found ways to reel us back in. The very night I began writing this, they put together their best comeback of the season. Trailing 6–1 to the Cubs in the fifth, they stormed back with five runs to tie it. Francisco Álvarez crushed a two-run no-doubter in the eighth that made me leap off the couch, giving the Mets a 9–7 lead. Edwin Díaz came in like vintage Díaz, striking out five in a six-out save. Like Al Pacino said, “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
The Turning Point of the 2025 Season
June 12 was the day it all turned. Kodai Senga, the Mets’ ace, went down with a freak foot injury on a play that should have been routine. Pete Alonso fielded a grounder and casually flipped it high. Senga leapt, came down awkwardly on the bag, and just like that the season’s trajectory changed. You can watch the play here.
That morning, the Mets were 45–24, the best record in baseball, with a 2.79 rotation ERA, also tops in the league. Since then, they went 38–55, the fifth-worst record in the majors, ahead of only Washington, Minnesota, Colorado, and the White Sox. Their rotation ERA ballooned to 5.12, ranking 26th.
From Collapse to Prolonged Futility
Some fans still say it was not as bad as 2007, when the Mets blew a seven-game lead with 17 games to go. But collapsing over 17 games is brutal and quick. What the Mets managed this year was different. They were bad for 88 games and counting. Prolonged futility. Struggling for a longer stretch. In its own way, that might be even more impressive.
The Mets played at a 65-win pace for more than half the season. They set a major-league record by using 46 different pitchers, an MLB record no team ever wanted. The rotation was a black hole, rarely pushing past the fourth inning and piling pressure on a bullpen already stretched beyond reason. Two separate seven-game losing streaks, capped by an eight-game skid, turned what started as a promising year into a slow-motion slide.
No Magic, No Comebacks
I talked about the magic of the 1986 Mets team here. The 2025 Mets had none of that magic. In fact, they were 0–69 when trailing after the eighth inning. Not once did they come back late. And when they did have leads, they often gave them away. With 27 blown saves, that is potentially ten or more wins thrown away, the difference between a playoff berth and sitting at home.
For perspective, the 2021 Nationals set the all-time mark with 35 blown saves, and they collapsed that season. Anything above 27 or 28 is already historically awful territory. The Mets hovered right there.
That combination, no late comebacks and constant blown saves, is about as painful as it gets for a fan base. It is not just terrible. It is the kind of stat line that defines a season.
Game 162: The Final Gut Punch
And then there was Game 162. The Mets got the help they needed when the Reds lost. But in their must-win game, they were shut out by the Marlins. In the fifth inning, down 4–0, they loaded the bases and Pete Alonso ripped his hardest-hit ball of the season — a 116 mph rocket into the gap. It looked destined for extra bases, but rookie Javier Sanoja ran it down. Even Alonso’s best swing of the year turned into an out. The Mets never recovered, and fittingly, the game ended on a double play. Absolute futility.
A Payroll Without Payoff
And all of it happened with a payroll north of $340 million, more than three times larger than the Reds, the very team that caught them in the standings. To make matters worse, two of David Stearns’ deadline additions, reliever Ryan Helsley and center fielder Cedric Mullins, were utter busts.
Basically all the Mets’ pitchers were good at the same time, and basically all of them were bad at the same time. Distribute that performance more evenly and you avoid the epic skids. Instead, it all piled up in spectacular fashion. Even Stearns admitted he could not explain it. As The Athletic noted, if you reran this season 99 more times with the same individual stats, the Mets would have finished with more than 83 wins in most of them. Of course, we lived through the one where it all lined up wrong.
Stars Wasted in a Lost Year
And it was not for lack of stars. Juan Soto hit a career-high in home runs and joined the 30–30 club. Francisco Lindor went 30–30 as well. Brandon Nimmo had a career-best year. Pete Alonso mashed 38 home runs and drove in 126 runs.
Still, it was not enough.
John Oliver nailed it:
“Being a Mets fan is like lending someone a lot of money and you just know that you’ll never get paid back.”
Casey Stengel put it another way:
“The Mets have shown me more ways to lose than I even knew existed.”
This was the 2025 Mets. A $340 million roster, built for a World Series run. And since June 12, one of the worst teams in the league. The Mets grossly underperformed. This season will be remembered as an epic fail. The song is over.
For more on the strange loyalty of rooting when your team is hopeless, see my earlier reflection on White Sox fans here
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