Saturday Seasons, 2025: Good for a stretch, done in by a stretch

               We’ve all heard, maybe to the point of exhaustion, the old baseball adage that the major league baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint.

               The 2025 Mets proved that they were great sprinters and lousy distance runners.

               If the season had ended on June 12, about 40 percent through the schedule, the Mets, with the best record in MLB, would have had home field advantage throughout the playoffs. And that was despite the huge free agent signing –  Juan Soto, stolen from the Yankees with a 15-year, $765 million contract, the largest in professional sports history  -- underperforming. Soto’s 13 home runs and 35 RBI were only the third best on the team, behind both Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor, and his .253 batting average did not seem to justify that large a payday. But it seemed only a matter of time before Soto started playing to the back of his baseball card (which he did, to the tune of 42 home runs, 105 RBI and 38 stolen bases). So the team could only get better, right?

               Wrong.

               Let’s return to June 12, a watershed day in the Mets season, a day when the normally fatalistic Mets fan saw the other shoe begin to drop.

               And, of course, it came in the form of an injury to Kodai Senga, who took the mound June 11 looking every bit like the ace the Mets expected him to be: a 7-3 record, 1.47 ERA,  70 strikeouts in 73 innings. But in the top of the sixth inning of that game, the Washington Nationals’ Luis Garcia Jr. hit a chopper toward first base that Alonso fielded. Senga broke for first; Alonso led him a little too far on the toss to the base. Senga stretched for the throw and made the play for the out, but ended up on the injured list with a pulled hamstring,

  “The throw was good because it was over the base, but obviously too high” Alonso would say after the game, taking blame for the injury.  “He [Senga} made an unbelievable play – an unbelievable catch. But I wish it didn’t happen.”

               Senga would spend almost a month on the IL, and when he returned, it was like a different pitcher was wearing his uniform. He routinely struggled to get through five innings, and the ghost fork was a ghost of its former self: Senga’s ERA was 5.25 in July and 6.128 in August. So off were his mechanics that he accepted a demotion to AAA Syracuse in September to work things out.

               The rest of the rotation? Just as much trouble making it to a game’s halfway point. That is, if they made it to the mound in the first place. Frankie Montas, a curious free agent signing because of his injury history, didn’t make it past the first week of spring training. He suffered a lat strain that kept him out until mid-June and was ineffective in nine starts before tearing his ulnar collateral ligament in September and having Tommy John surgery.

               Also suffering a lat tear was A.J. Minter, signed to shore up the path to Edwin Diaz in the bullpen. Minter, who had an injury history of his own, performed as hoped until early May, when he went down for the season.

               “Here we are facing an injury with a guy we even tried to protect, big-time,” Mendoza said last week. “We tried to give him proper rest, and he still went down.”

               The injury was an even harder blow because the other expected bullpen lefty, Danny Young, went down in April with an elbow injury that also required Tommy John surgery.

               Tylor Megill, another key part of the rotation, hit the IL on June 17, also with an elbow sprain. He would never make it back. After suffering a setback during his minor league rehab, he would be shut down for Tommy John surgery in mid-September.

               Sean Manaea, who had such a successful 2024? An oblique strain early in spring training, followed by loose bodies in his elbow. He didn’t make his first appearance until the day before the all-star break, and after some initial success, was awful in August and September, so much so that he was demoted to the bullpen.

               David Peterson? A tale of two seasons. Good enough in the first half to make the all-star team. Awful down the stretch as the team struggled to make the playoffs as a wild card.

               So bad were the starters that they went through a 60-game stretch in which Peterson was the only starter to last six innings.

               With starters running up pitch counts, manager Carlos Mendoza was forced to call on his bullpen early in games. Relievers would be called in from the bullpen, throw their inning and be on the next bus to Syracuse as another was recalled. No matter, that reliever would return to pitch another inning 10 days later. Soap, rinse, repeat.

               All told, the Mets would use 46 pitchers, breaking a major league record – household named such as Richard Lovelady, Alex Carrillo, Ty Adcock , Tyler Zuba, Zach Pop, Genesis Cabrera. Jose Urena passed through, earning a three-inning save in which he gave up five earned runs. He was immediately DFA’d.

               With the Mets’ struggling to hold on to their division lead, head of baseball operations David Stearns made moves as the July 31 trade deadline approached.

He acquired lefthanded reliever Gregory Soto from the Orioles for minor league prospects. Then he paid a heavy price to pry underarmer Tyler Rogers from the Giants – Drew Gilbert, Blade Tidwell and Jose Butto. And he sent three minor prospects to the Cardinals for closer Ryan Helsley, a move that falls under the heading of It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, as did the trade for center fielder Cedric Mullins, who was expected to provide more offensive punch to the lineup than Tyrone Taylor.

               Both were awful. Helsey, only the year before an all-star closer who was acquired to be the bridge to Edwin Diaz and fill in as a closer when needed, looked like he was pitching batting practice every time he took the mound and fell behind the Syracuse import du jour in the depth chart. His final numbers were: 7.20 ERA, 25 hits and 20 runs in 20 innings, with four home runs and 11 walks. Mullins batted .182 in 42 games, with two home runs in 121 at-bats and 35 strikeouts.

               The Mets entered August with a half game lead on the Phils, but things continued to spiral out of control. In what seemed like desperation moves, Stearns turned to the top three pitching prospects in the minor leagues. With the team in a 2-14 skid (including a game in which they blew a six-run lead as the Braves scored nine runs in the fourth inning, Nolan McLean was called up and handed the ball on August 16. McLean shone in his debut, and again six days later, when he became the first pitcher other than Peterson to complete six innings.

With that experiment seemingly a success, the Mets then rushed Jonah Tong to the big club. Tong had dominated AA while pitching for the Binghamton Rumble Ponies and had recently been promoted to AAA Syracuse. And for one start, it looked like the Mets had found another answer to their prayers: six strikeouts and only one earned run in five innings. Never mind that the bullpen gave up five runs after he was removed in what became a 19 (that’s not a misprint)-9 win. Tong would go six innings in his next start, but then things went south for him. He was knocked out in the first inning in his third major league start, pitched well in the start after that but badly in his final appearance of the year as it became clear he still needed more seasoning.

               The team would also give the ball to their third pitching prospect, Brandon Sprout, who would, like Tong, be spotty in his four appearances.

               While it sounds like all of the Mets’ troubles could be pinned on the pitching staff, the hitters share some of the blame. While Soto had an explosive second half, and Alonso and Lindor both hit more than 30 home runs – with Alonso breaking Darryl Strawberry’s record for more home runs by a Met --overall the offense underwhelmed, especially in late innings. Consider this statistic: they were the only team never to rally for a win when trailing after the eighth inning: 0-70.

So good was their first 69 games that, amazingly, they were still in wild card contention in September, even after an eight-game losing streak in the early part of the month. Heading into the final series of the season, they held a one-game lead over the Reds for the final wild card spot. They proceeded to squander a 2-0 lead and lose to the Marlins, 6-2. They won the second game, sending them into the final game of the season with the same record as the Reds, who held the tiebreaker, and needed a win and a Reds loss to squeak into the playoffs.  The Reds lost, but so did the Mets. Season over.

               The team that started the year 42-24, had ended it 38-55, only the third team in the Wild Card era to start the season so well and miss out on October baseball.

               Time to break up the Mets. Diaz, Alonso, Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil would be gone by the time Spring Training 2026 rolled around. That story is still developing.

               This is the final installment of Saturday Seasons – at least until the 2026 campaign comes to an end. If you missed any of them, click on the Mets-o-verse Blog tab on the Kinerskorner.com website and look for the Saturday Seasons sub tab. We hope you’ve enjoyed the series.