Photo: Aliza Chambers/MLB Photos/Getty Images
When a baseball team is “cursed,” who, in fact, is afflicted with that curse?
If we’re asking that question, it must be September, and we must be talking about the New York Mets, who are in serious danger of one of the worst late-season collapses in baseball history. Again.
It wasn’t long ago that this team looked ascendent. Coming off an inspirational playoff run last year and an offseason in which they swiped Juan Soto from the Yankees and brought back postseason hero (and now franchise all-time-home-run leader Pete Alonso) in mid-June, the Mets came roaring out of the gate and had the best record in baseball by-mid June. They could also claim one of the best farm systems in the sport and a highly motivated, mega-rich owner on record as saying not winning a World Series “within the first 3-5 seasons” of his ownership would be a “disappointment.” (It is currently Year Five.) These were not the same old Mets. This was the new era.
They then immediately turned into the same old Mets. Since June 12, the Mets are 18 games under .500, the fourth-worst record in baseball, and have fallen not just out of first place but out of the playoffs entirely. With six games left in the season, all on the road starting Tuesday, they are tied with the Cincinnati Reds for the final NL Wild Card spot (along with the Arizona Diamondbacks, who actively traded away players at the deadline, only one game back). But because they lost the season series to the Reds 4-2, the Reds will get the last spot if the two teams are tied when the season ends, essentially putting the Mets a game back. The Mets have gone from World Series favorite to a coin flip to miss the playoffs entirely.
Suffice it to say, this would be disastrous for the Mets. The Soto signing gave them the highest payroll in baseball and was a clear mission statement: They wanted to be the new Yankees. Falling short of even the postseason—falling short to freaking Cincinnati, a team that hasn’t won a playoff game in 13 years and has roughly a third of their payroll — would be more than a failure, it would be a humiliation: It would be considered an all-timer of a flop, nearly unrivaled in recent baseball memory.
I say “nearly” there because of another, perhaps bigger problem: The only flops that would really rival this (still theoretical!) collapse almost all involve the Mets. Since they last won the World Series in 1986 (something no current Mets player was even alive for), they have earned a reputation for such collapses, from the 1998 team that lost its last five games to miss the playoffs to, most famously, the 2007 and 2008 implosions. In 2007, they were up seven games with 17 games to go and subsequently dropping 12 of those games, yakking away the playoffs entirely, and then somehow followed it up by doing it again in 2008, squandering a 3 ½ game lead and losing on the final day to eliminate themselves right before an extremely awkward postgame ceremony marking the final game at Shea Stadium.
Other than the announcers and perhaps a few clubhouse attendants and ushers, no one currently involved with the Mets had anything to do with what happened in 2008, let alone 1998, 1991 or 1987, two other Mets late-season fades. The player who has been with the Mets organization the longest is Brandon Nimmo, who was drafted in 2011. The team has a different owner, a different manager, a different front office, even a different stadium. Everything has changed. But the fans are still here: They have lived through all the pain of the last few decades in a way that no one else involved—with the possible exception of Cohen, a Mets fan whose roots run so deep he actually owns the ball that went through Bill Buckner’s legs — has. The Mets players themselves may not know or care about the history of collapse; they just see this as a team slumping down the stretch, the sort of thing that will happen when you are relying on rookie pitchers. But Mets fans? To them, this is just what the Mets do.
That’s why the last week has so terrified Mets fans: this version of the franchise was supposed to be different. The late-season implosion Mets — those are supposed to be the Wilpon Mets, the Armando Benitez Mets, the Jose Reyes-hitting-.205-down-the-stretch Mets. Very different from the Cohen/Soto/Francisco Lindor/Pete Alonso Mets — right? The whole point of these new Mets is that all that sad, ugly history was supposed to be behind them, shed like an old jacket. Instead, Mets fans are hurting as much as ever, but now the pain feels cosmic, like a curse.
And yet it’s important to remember that these Mets are different. They do not face the payroll constraints of the late-era Wilpon Mets. They are run by David Stearns, the architect of the Brewers team that has the best record in baseball right now, a prudent, smart executive who is one of the most respected people in any team’s front office. They do have one of the best farm systems in baseball, one that has already started making its presence felt on the big league team and will continue to do so in the years to come. ESPN just ranked them fourth in all of baseball — behind only the Dodgers, Mariners and Phillies, and seven spots ahead of the Yankees — in their annual future talent rankings. There aren’t many teams more well-positioned for the next decade, no matter what happens over the next few days.
But Mets fans, who will remember the 2007 and 2008 travesties on their deathbeds, can be forgiven for not feeling particularly well-positioned right now. If the Mets miss the playoffs and complete one of the worst collapses of all time, it won’t be seen as the result of a tired pitching staff and some unfortunate blown leads. It will be seen as a curse. In the end, what’s the difference? You’re watching everyone else, including the Yankees, play baseball in October either way. The team’s ong-term future is bright, regardless of what’s happening in the short term. But Mets fans have heard all that before.
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