00:00So I woke up this morning, Monday, and I know it happened, and I still kind of don't believe that this is what happened to the Mets.
00:08I thought I was going to, you know, wake up this morning and be rushing to put together a detailed Mets-Dodgers wildcard round scouting report
00:16and make that last-second decision whether to hop on a flight to Los Angeles for a best two out of three against the Mets and Dodgers.
00:23I still feel like it's going to happen almost, but of course it didn't happen.
00:26I mean, I'm still shocked. I spent most of the last month or six weeks saying to friends of mine who were Mets fans,
00:35come on, you know they're going to win 10 out of 12. At some point, blow this away.
00:39They're so much better than the Reds and Diamondbacks and Giants, and they'll have a puncher's chance because of their stars in October.
00:46And it just didn't happen, and it's kind of unforgivable and impardonable.
00:52And for three things, why don't we break down some of the issues?
00:56Look, they were strange. They were the really good offensive team that was bad on offense.
01:02That's where we should start on number one. Like, I can't explain their offense.
01:07They hit the second most homers in Mets history.
01:13Their OPS Plus was the best ever in a 162-game season.
01:18It was the ninth most steals in the team's history. It was the fifth most homers in the team's history.
01:24The 89.1% steal rate was not only 7% better than anyone else this year, it was the best in Major League history for any 154-game season or longer.
01:36Juan Soto almost went 40-40 and set the team record in walks.
01:41Francisco Lindor did go 30-30.
01:45Pete Alonso had a very good year.
01:47Second in the RBIs.
01:49Fifth in extra base hits.
01:50Eighth in homers.
01:51Nimmo set his personal record for homers for both total and against left-handed.
01:56Alvarez came back and was better.
01:58Beatty had a bit of a breakout year.
02:00I get it. They were top-heavy.
02:02They had to get to 84 wins.
02:05And that kind of offense alone should have got them to 84 wins.
02:08And somehow it didn't.
02:11That's one.
02:12Number two.
02:13Look, I think more than anything, this was about pitching.
02:18I felt the same way in 2007 watching the Mets down the stretch.
02:23I kept telling Mets fans, don't worry.
02:25They're not going to blow this lead.
02:27But eventually, in September, they had to use Brian Lawrence and Philip Humber.
02:31And their older pitchers broke down and either physically couldn't pitch or they pitched poorly.
02:38The Mets' ERA this month was nearly five.
02:41Their rotation ERA was nearly six.
02:44They averaged about four and a third innings a start.
02:47They just ran out of starting pitching.
02:50You could have convinced me in spring training that they didn't have enough quality.
02:55But it seemed like they had indexed enough quantity where they had a group they started with.
03:00And then they were going to get back Montas and Minaya.
03:03And then at some point, maybe they'd be able to get to Sprode.
03:06And Tong was a surprise.
03:08But Sprode, McLean, Tidwell, they thought.
03:11Like, they thought they had the depth to handle this.
03:14And they didn't.
03:14The pitching completely fell apart again this year.
03:19There were a lot of injuries.
03:20There was a lot of bad performance, especially Minaya, especially Senga coming back from his hamstring injury.
03:27And not being able to be even active late in the season and help in any way.
03:33It was a failure.
03:34Look, number three on the I Can't Believe It Is.
03:38There was a sense of privilege.
03:40Like, this was the NCAA tournament and they were like Duke under Coach K and were just going to get invited into the tournament.
03:48They didn't win.
03:50There were, you know, them and the Yankees fell apart at about the same time.
03:55Exactly the same time.
03:56Starting on June 13th, they both went into nosedives.
03:59For the Yankees, it lasted 50 games.
04:01But the one thing about the Yankees is they broke out of it.
04:04Since August 11th, the Yankees institutionally figured out how to do this.
04:09Brian Cashman obviously had a much better trade deadline than David Stearns.
04:14David Bednar, in particular, helped straighten out the bullpen.
04:17Ryan McMahon brought real defense to the left side of the infield.
04:20A few other things.
04:20And the Yankees had the best record in baseball since August 11th.
04:25And they had a soft schedule down the stretch.
04:28And they took advantage of it to get to the, you know, tie for the best record in the American League, which wasn't good enough to win the division.
04:33But it did give them the number one wild card, which is home field advantage starting Tuesday.
04:39And they got in.
04:39They got in.
04:40The Mets, they've all got to look in the mirror.
04:43They had soft touches down the stretch.
04:46Washington and Miami, they lost series to Washington and Miami.
04:50There was no energy.
04:53There was no sense of purpose for this.
04:57The top of the lineup just didn't out and out win a series here.
05:01None of the starters, except for maybe Clay Holmes next to last day of the season, stepped up and had a big moment.
05:08And this was all destructive for David Stearns.
05:10He had built, he wanted to build a roster around pitching depth and defense.
05:17And the Mets had no pitching depth and their defense was terrible.
05:20And he had a bad offseason in retrospect.
05:24He had a bad July 31st in retrospect.
05:27And what else was lost here besides the playoffs was a little bit of faith in all of this.
05:32It seemed the Mets had put together a group that they really believed in.
05:38Cone, Stearns, Mendoza.
05:41The fact that we're talking about will Mendoza be fired, he's not probably going to be fired.
05:46Should Stearns be fired, he's not going to be fired.
05:49Should Cone come down with the wrath of God?
05:52Maybe.
05:53We don't know what Cone's reaction ultimately is going to be on this.
05:55That is a loss of faith from where we were a year ago when the Mets and their fans finally felt like ding dong.
06:03The Wilpons are completely in the rearview mirror.
06:05The bad same old Mets history was in the rearview mirror.
06:09This was going to be a new day.
06:11It wasn't a new day.
06:13This team, it has trouble making the playoffs historically.
06:17It does.
06:17I think it's made it 11 times in their history.
06:20They don't ever finish first.
06:22It's hard for them to go back to back.
06:24They've never gone three times in a row.
06:26So now to go three years in a row, they have to start next year.
06:29That's 2026, 2027, 2028 because they couldn't go twice in a row this year.
06:36All it was going to take was 84 wins.
06:38All it was going to take was to be better than the Reds.
06:41I've been saying this since July, that this would be a worse collapse than 07 because in 07, there was only one wild card.
06:52And in 07, the Mets ultimately were competing with the Phillies, who were about to have the best five-year run in their history,
06:59which would include a championship and a World Series appearance.
07:02And they had stars, levels and levels of stars everywhere on the field, in the rotation.
07:08The Mets had to be better than the Cincinnati Reds, the 84-win Cincinnati Reds, and they couldn't do it.
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