The Global New York Mets Blog: Meet the Mess- A 2025 Mets Post Mortum

Monday, September 29, 2025

Meet the Mess- A 2025 Mets Post Mortum

The 2025 New York Mets season is over, completing a two and a half month slow motion collapse. And among the many negative adjectives that can be used to describe this season, the harshest but most accurate one is: Failure. Failure. After missing the MLB playoffs with the highest payroll in all of MLB, the 2025 New York Mets are a failure. How they arrived at this conclusion is a long and winding journey full of injuries, and underperformances. After signing star outfielder Juan Soto to a mega-deal of 15 years $765M dollars during the offseason, the Mets were considered to be one of the favorites to win the World Series this year, and their first since 1986. For the first two and a half months, that seemed destined to happen.

Heading into the Father’s Day weekend series against the Tampa Bay Rays on June 13th, the Mets had the best record in all of baseball- 20 games above .500 at 44-24. The Mets would then immediately lose seven games in a row (a feat they would accomplish two more times this season) and would have one of the worst records in all of baseball for the rest of the season winning just 39 more games while losing an astounding 55 games. Only the Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox, both of whom lost over 100 games this year, had worse records in that same stretch. Something that seemed unfathomable at the beginning of the year.

So what happened? How did they plummet so horribly? The biggest reason for how this happened was pitching. In 2024 the Mets starting pitching staff arguably overperformed, filled with pitchers on short, prove-it deals. And prove it they did. Helping lead the Mets to Game 6 of the NLCS before losing to the eventual World Series champions Los Angeles Dodgers. This year, the Mets tried to recreate that same magic but to much less successful results.

With the departures of starters Luis Serverino to the Sacramento A’s and Jose Quintana to the Milwaukee Brewers, and young starters like Jonah Tong, Nolan McLean, Brandon Sproat, and Blade Tidwell still some time away, the Mets needed to fill the voids that were left by Severino and Quintana. Mets President of Baseball Operations/General Manager David Stearns brought back lefty Sean Manaea after a successful 2024 season in Flushing on a three year $75M deal. Stearns also got creative and brought in former Yankees closer Clay Holmes from across town on a three year $38M to be a full-time starting pitcher for the first time in his major league career. Before the season could even begin, injuries began to take their toll on the Mets rotation. Sean Manaea suffered a strained oblique right as Spring Training began and wound up missing the first half of the season as a result. Veteran Frankie Montas, another free agent pitcher that was brought in during the offseason, suffered a high-grade lat strain and did not appear in a game for the Mets until late June.

One of the biggest issues for the Mets starting rotation all season was their inability to go deep into games. Throughout the year, Mets starters pitched 6+ innings only 43 times over 162 games. Of those 43 times, 16 of those games were started by David Peterson, and another seven games were started by three rookie pitchers, Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong, and Brandon Sproat, none of whom made their debuts until mid August. Per Buster Olney of ESPN, from June 13th until August 15th when McLean made his Major League debut, the Mets had 14 different starting pitchers who posted an ERA of 5.34 in that two month period. In that same time period, McLean, Tong, and Sproat pitched to a 2.48 ERA in 29 starts combined for AA Binghamton and AAA Syracuse. To further drive home the point, the Mets had 39 quality starts (6 innings pitched, 3 earned runs) all season. That mark is the third worst in all of MLB, just barely ahead of only the Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies.

Another key issue that plagued the team throughout 2025, was their inability to rally late. The Mets did not win a single game when trailing after 8 innings, going 0-70 this year. In the later innings of close games, the Mets had a .233 batting average (7th in the NL, 12th in MLB) and a .684 OPS (9th in the NL, 16th in MLB). For a team that had championship aspirations heading into the year, that is a horrendous mark.

Where do things go from here? On Monday the Mets announced that both David Stearns and manager Carlos Mendoza will be returning for next season. The Mets have been in a two year hiring/firing cycle since the end of the 2017 season, so allowing Mendoza one more season makes sense from that perspective. Constantly hiring/firing managers after two seasons doesn’t allow for much organizational stability. Perhaps some changes are ahead for the coaching staff. Pitching coach Jeremy Hefner has been at the helm since 2020, hitting coach Eric Chavez has been with the Mets since 2022. Maybe some new voices are needed on that front. But both Mendoza and Stearns will certainly be on the hot seat heading into next year as will the entire organization.

While wholesale changes to the roster aren’t needed, it’s certain that another year like this must not happen again.