A $340 million roster, the best record in baseball on June 12, and then 88 games of collapse. Mets fandom in 2025 is equal parts frustration and absurd comedy — we should not be losing, yet we are.
"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 the ninth inning. Down 3–2, the Mets were one swing away from tying a crucial game against the Nationals. 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.
Meanwhile, the Reds were busy 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 own the tiebreaker. Which means the Mets are no longer in charge of their own destiny. To get in, they need help.
It is the first time all year the Mets have slipped out of a playoff spot. Not since the opening week had they been on the outside looking in. One swing short, one run short, and the season suddenly shifted out of their hands.
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 have gone 35–53, tied with the White Sox for the fourth-worst record in the majors. Their rotation ERA has ballooned to 5.12, ranking 26th.
Some Mets fans still say this year is not as bad as 2007, when the team blew a seven-game lead with 17 games to go. I guess it depends on your perspective. Collapsing over 17 games is brutal, but at least it is quick. What the Mets have managed this year is different. They have been 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 have played at a 65-win pace for more than half the season. They have set a major-league record by using 46 different pitchers, an MLB record no team ever wanted. The rotation has been 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.
And all of it is happening with a payroll north of $340 million, more than three times larger than the Reds, the very team that blanked the Cubs 1–0 to catch them in the standings. To make matters worse, two of David Stearns’ deadline additions, reliever Ryan Helsley and center fielder Cedric Mullins, have been 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 more than 80 wins in most of them. Of course, we are living in the one where it all lined up wrong.
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 season is just another entry. A $340 million roster that opened with the best record in baseball. And since June 12, one of the worst teams in the league. The Mets have grossly underperformed. That is who we are in 2025.
P.S. In true Mets fashion, the very night I wrote this piece they cobbled together their best comeback of the season to go up one game on the Reds for the final wild card spot with five to go. Trailing 6–1 in the 5th, the Mets put up five runs to tie it. Francisco Álvarez blasted a two-run no-doubter in the 8th that made me jump for joy, giving the Mets a 9–7 lead. Edwin Díaz came in looking like vintage Díaz for a decisive six-out save, striking out five. Like Al Pacino said, “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
And if you want a flashback to when the Mets were on top of the world instead of fighting just to get in, I wrote about the rolling hands ritual
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