Miami — This A kind of transition, The Mets gave their fans a gift by not giving up.
You have to respect that.
Remember, this team had championship aspirations last year but all but gave up by late June, leading to a major sell-off near the trade deadline.
Most notably, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander were traded for top prospects, and it began to become clear (largely through Scherzer’s outspoken comments) that team owner Steve Cohen viewed 2024 as a reset year for the salary structure and an audition opportunity for younger players.
But on the way to a second consecutive summer of irrelevance, a funny thing happened to the Mets: They started winning.
Bullpen woes aside, the Mets are generating more excitement than any team in baseball. Over the past six weeks.
The playoff odds, once close to single digits, are becoming more like a coin flip. After the All-Star break on Friday Like other teams, they are looking to secure a wild card spot in the National League.
This comes on the back of a 27-13 winning streak that saw players like Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo and Jose Iglesias take the lead and bring a collective “OMG” to Citi Field.
The starting rotation, with others like Francisco Alvarez, Mark Vientos and Harrison Bader (and perhaps not as much Pete Alonso as one would hope during such a growth spurt), has been respectable, but the bullpen has been, well, problematic.
The Mets will need some big guns to continue this eventful journey, but two others have a lot of responsibility: president of baseball operations David Stearns and his handpicked manager, Carlos Mendoza.
Stearns was hired last offseason to build a team with an eye to the future, but suddenly the Mets are living in the present and have a real chance to win.
Stearns acquired Phil Mutton from the Rays before the All-Star break to bolster the relief corps, but Stearns still has a task ahead of him as the team tries to weather a wave of injuries and underperformance from veterans like Jake Diekman and Adam Ottavino and needs more reinforcements.
Stearns will be running the team with a big financial advantage in Cohen’s hands, and you can trust that Cohen is happy with the turnaround this season and wants to take this lineup to fall glory — unless the Mets take a nosedive over the next 10 days, in which case he won’t be mortgaging much of his future capital for improvement.
But the Matton deal, in which the Mets covered the remaining $2.75 million in signing bonus, should serve as a template for future trades Stearns could orchestrate. There may be a deal out there somewhere that will sustain the Mets beyond the two months remaining in this season.
Mendoza was brought in to help develop young players like Alvarez and Vientos, and his real-time moves will be analyzed more than ever before. Mendoza has had some frustrating moments, especially with his management of a shaky bullpen, but he deserves praise for his work in getting the Mets off to a strong start to the season.
That happened here in South Florida on May 18. Mendoza put Lindor in the leadoff spot and Nimmo at third base. Nimmo has been pretty consistent as the No. 2 hitter ever since, arriving at the All-Star break as the team’s RBI leader.
Mendoza has made a boner about lengthening the Mets’ lineup by giving Iglesias playing time over Jeff McNeil, and if McNeil doesn’t bounce back soon, it makes you wonder when he’ll be forgotten about entirely.
The goal is to get to the playoffs and do our best, it doesn’t matter how we get there.
But over the past six weeks, the Mets have looked like a team playing for something more than slipping into the October/November tournament, and their so-called reset year has a chance to be a lot better than just waiting until 2025.
