Dead Team Walking

There will be no second-half surge from the 2023 New York Mets. The real questions now are all some variation of "What's next."

I've been putting off writing this piece for days — going back even before the Mets dropped their series against the Phillies in such a horrendous fashion. It has been clear for quite some time that these Mets aren't going to pull off some scrappy comeback story. It's not entirely impossible, but the turnaround would have to be miraculous and almost instantaneous. It would require a bunch of ballplayers currently underperforming at various rates to reverse course almost to a man. It would make a wonderful story if it happened, but what would make it so remarkable is how infrequently we see something like that.

Still the Right Man for the Job

Amidst a season of poor play and uncertainty, I still feel good about the guy who owns the team.

I'm beyond the point now where I believe the New York Mets are more likely than not to turn things around in 2023. I thought the team deserved the benefit of the doubt for quite a while based on last season's performance. But their inability to sustain a level of quality play for more than a handful of games here and there has made it abundantly clear that this club could legitimately be the crushing disappointment they appear to be 66 games into the season. Things have to change considerably over the last 96 games for 2023 to finish as anything better than an unmitigated disaster. Could they do it? Sure. But it doesn't feel like the likely outcome any longer. The Mets certainly don't look like the type of team we hoped they would be back in March.

Lowered Expectations

Is this as good as it gets for the 2023 New York Mets?

This is my third try to write about the New York Mets this week. I went deep into analysis twice, and both times I got to a point where I had just output hundreds of words that just felt like restatements of things I had already written about the 2023 Mets. So I finally decided to sh*tcan the deep analysis and touch on some of the basics. I'm confident that almost everyone who bothers to read my stuff is a serious Mets fan. Like me, you are also likely to be just a bit worn down from rooting for such a maddeningly inconsistent team that feels a bit too much like too many of the pre-Cohen Mets clubs.