Last year should have been the Mets’ year. Their stars — team leader Francisco Lindor, former batting champion Jeff McNeil, franchise outfielder Brandon Nimmo, slugger Pete Alonso — were all peak age, in their late 20s or just over 30. The 2024 Yankees were probably the worst American League champion in decades — bad baserunning, bad fielding, bad managing. If the Mets had beaten the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, they would have had the easiest World Series any team could ask for. 

Yet 2025 came in with even higher expectations, because in the offseason, the Mets signed the biggest star in baseball, Juan Soto, to the biggest contract in baseball. Our payroll hit $323 million.

Yet they didn’t even make the playoffs. Why not? Because they didn’t just lose games they could have won. They lost games they should have won. They didn’t beat the bad teams.

The Mets were tied on the last day of the season with the Cincinnati Reds, the third-place team in the NL Central division, who had a payroll about one-third of the Mets’. The Reds in July were “sellers” — they were trading away their current talent for future prospects, because they had basically given up on the season. Had the Mets won on that last day of the season, they would have made the playoffs, where anything can happen.

On that very last day of the season, when a win would have secured the Mets the final playoff spot, Lindor, the beloved team leader who repeatedly had played the hero,........

© Washington Examiner