Signs of Life

After a really rough start, the New York Mets are looking like the competitive team we hoped to see.

Coming into the season, I thought the 2024 Mets bore similarities to the 2005 club. When I resurrected my long-dormant blog in 2020, I wrote a series of posts about those 2005 Mets. They were the first Mets team I wrote about when I started the original version of Mike's Mets in August of that season. I live in a place with few Mets fans. All of my friends were Yankees and Red Sox fans. To this day, I have no close friends or family who root for the Mets. Taking the unusual step of becoming a blogger when I was already in my mid-40s was me looking for a place to talk about that Mets club.

What I'm Looking for in '24

Spring training is almost upon us. Here's what I hope to see from the New York Mets this season.

Here in New England, winter has announced itself rather loudly these past couple of weeks. It hasn't affected me as much as in a typical year. I'm stuck in the house the majority of the time, anyway, after hip replacement surgery. I can't drive yet, so I don't have to deal with the adverse conditions on the road. I can't go out and shovel after the relatively minor storms that have hit my area. Still, as someone who holds no love for the winter, I wouldn't be sorry to see Old Man Winter dial it back a bit.

(Really) Getting Better

Although it hasn't always been easy to believe, I have to admit it's getting better for the New York Mets.

When I was very young, The Beatles were still together making music. I remember when the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in May 1967 when I was 8 years old, just in time to dominate the airwaves in the ensuing summer, which would become famous as the Summer of Love. It was the first rock music I was ever aware of, living in a house where the music of my Mom's generation and my Grandmother's Italian music dominated our stereo. There were many classic songs on Sgt. Pepper's, including the title song, "With a Little Help from My Friends," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," and "A Day in the Life." When I got a little older and started acquiring my own music, the album remained in rotation of the stuff I listened to throughout my teen years.

The One That Didn't Get Away

Let the celebrations begin. David Stearns signing on as the new President of Baseball Operations signals the start of a new — hopefully much better — era for the New York Mets.

When last we met in this space, I wrote about my concerns that the hype surrounding David Stearns and the Mets was starting to feel like last winter's Carlos Correa debacle. Even though Correa is having a poor season in Minnesota, I never really got over the disappointment of how things turned out after the initial euphoria when the deal was announced. In my mind, there is a clear line of Mets misfortune running from Correa signing with the Twins through Edwin Díaz injuring his knee in the WBC, culminating in the front office finally bowing to reality at the trade deadline and acknowledging a failed season. Looking back, it feels like the baseball gods were sending a message: this ain't your year, Mets fans.

Building a Better Future for the Mets

This week, there is more great info on the Mets pitching lab and the young pitching prospects who will benefit from it.

In last week's post, I wrote about the Mets' new pitching lab in Port St. Lucie, based on Mike Puma's reporting in the New York Post. An excellent piece in The Athletic (subscription required) by Tim Britton and Will Sammon came out a couple of days later, which went into more depth on the subject. The Mets hope that taking advantage of the latest technology can help them catch up to more progressive organizations that have been using it for years.

Advanced Biomechanics, Meet the Mets

The Mets pitching lab is open for business in Port St. Lucie. Now the challenge for the club is to properly implement the expensive gizmos they invested in.

One of my biggest frustrations when the Wilpons owned the Mets was how far the team had fallen behind other, more progressive organizations in taking advantage of analytics and technology. Teams in much smaller markets operating under relatively small budgets were miles ahead of a team playing in the greatest city in the world. It's been reported that the Mets' front office was frequently frustrated by their inability to convince ownership that investing in technology would ultimately make the organization more efficient in developing ballplayers. This reluctance pre-dated the nosedive the club's finance took with the collapse of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. The Wilpons were notoriously unwilling to spend on anything they couldn't understand.

Creating the Next Generation of Mets' Pitchers

The free agent pitching market is expensive and unpredictable. The solution is for the Mets to get back to producing more of their own pitching talent. What will that take?

I've been rooting for the New York Mets for over 50 years. Although the Mets have developed some excellent position players over the years, this is an organization that, by far, is known for developing some great starting pitchers. However, the current edition of the Mets had to stock up their rotation on the free agent market. It was quite expensive and, at least up to now, a huge fail. As the dreadful 2023 season has shifted our focus to the future, we ponder how the Mets can develop some of their in-house arms into effective Major League hurlers and reduce dependence on the pricey free agent marketplace.

Building Better Pitching

Tim Britton had an outstanding piece in The Athletic today about the Mets organization's efforts to create a state-of-the-art pitching development program. Under the Wilpons, the team had been notoriously reluctant to buy into the latest trends in player development. This likely reflected some skepticism towards new technologies on their part and a certain cheapness towards investing in something that didn't pay obvious and immediate benefits. That's probably a good reason why the Mets have historically lagged behind the top organizations in developing talent. Fortunately, new Mets owner Steve Cohen sees the benefits of investing in the future. That should pay dividends for the club and its fans going forward.