MIAMI, FLORIDA – SEPTEMBER 26: Brandon Nimmo #9 of the New York Mets looks on against the Miami Marlins during the fourth inning of the game at loanDepot park on September 26, 2025 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
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Of course the biggest collapse in Mets history — if not baseball history — concluded in the most painful fashion possible, one that seemed unimaginable even to people who should have known better.
Of course the Marlins, the Mets’ vanquishers as the 2007 and 2008, would finish off the 2025 Mets with a 4-0 win Sunday, fewer than 24 hours after the Mets provided one last bit of false hope with a dominant shutout victory, just as they did in 2007 and 2008.
But the Mets didn’t just lose Sunday, when Francisco Lindor hit into the season-ending double play about 11 minutes after the Reds handed the Mets the gift they needed by squandering an early lead and falling to the Brewers, 4-2.
“If you win and they win, it still stings, don’t get me wrong,” Brandon Nimmo said. “But it does sting even more knowing that it was within your grasp. All you had to do was win that last game.
“So that one was a nice little cherry on top.”
So this wasn’t 2007 or 2008, when the Mets at least lost and missed out on a play-in game when the Phillies and Brewers won their finales to clinch the NL East and the wild card, respectively. It was somehow worse — especially since baseball’s ever-expanding playoffs should have made such a collapse impossible.
The Mets built off last year’s stirring NLCS run by going 45-24 through June 12. Prior to this season, the only teams in the wild card era to win at least 45 of their first 69 games and not make the playoffs were the 2002 Boston Red Sox and 2003 Seattle Mariners, each of whom won 93 games but didn’t earn the lone AL wild card.
The Mets had two extra playoff berths into which they could fall. But they went 38-55 after June 13, the fifth-worst record in the game ahead of only the Twins and the last-place Rockies, Nationals and White Sox, to become just the second team in baseball history to win at least 45 of their first 69 games and finish no better than tied for sixth in their league. The 1977 Cubs opened 47-22 and finished 81-81, tied for sixth in the NL with the Astros.
“We came in with a lot of expectations and here we are, going home,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Not only did we fall short, we didn’t even get to October.”
The body of work suggests this team was a lot more than one win away from championship contention — an inexcusable outcome for a $340 million team. Still, one more win would have had the Mets working out late this afternoon at Dodger Stadium. And long before yesterday, there were innumerable candidates for the what-if game of the year.
Clear points of delineation were established June 12, when Kodai Senga suffered a hamstring injury reaching for an errant Pete Alonso throw while covering first, and June 13, when Clay Holmes was pulled after five innings with a four-run lead and the Mets suffered a 7-5 loss to the Rays. The Mets overcame a five-run deficit against the Guardians on Aug. 4 and had the bases loaded with one out in the ninth inning but didn’t score in what ended up a 7-6, 10-inning loss. (This also stands as a point of delineation for the how-did-they-win-the-division Guardians)
Oh and on July 19, David Wright had his number retired before the Mets suffered a 5-2 loss to the Reds, which now seems particularly cruel and fitting given that another generation of Mets will be defined by a collapse.
“It just shows the value of what one game means over the course of 162 games,” Alonso said.
David Stearns’ failure to build a pitching staff capable of handling the 162-game grind will get plenty of attention and blame. Let’s not forget the Mets set a team record for runs scored in a calendar month in August, when they went 11-17.
But despite the presence of Nimmo, Alonso, Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto — who combined for a whopping 137 homers, 409 RBIs and 83 stolen bases while playing 637 out of a possible 648 games — the Mets were largely unreliable on offense as well.
The Mets scored two runs or fewer 44 times, tied for the fifth-fewest such games in the majors with the Blue Jays and Mariners, who earned the two byes in the AL. But the Mets scored two runs or fewer 27 times after June 13. And most damning of all, they never won a game in which they trailed after eight innings.
Last year’s playoff push ended with the Mets clinching the last wild card by mounting eighth- and ninth-inning comebacks against the Braves in game no. 161 — yet another reminder that historically speaking, any bursts of optimism for the Mets are almost always followed by a discouraging reality check.
The defeated Nimmo who spoke in the visiting locker room in Miami Sunday stood in marked contrast to the borderline defiance with which he spoke in the home clubhouse at Citi Field last Sept. 22, when the surging Mets entered the final week of the regular season in a tie for the final two wild card spots.
“I’m sorry for the old Mets fans that love wallowing in it, but that’s not what we’re trying to do here anymore,” Nimmo said following a win over the Phillies in the regular season home finale. “We’re trying to be a winning organization from top to bottom. We’re trying to do that on a yearly basis.”
Fifty-three weeks later, any progress towards that goal has been erased. The opening half-decade of the Steve Cohen era didn’t have to yield the championship Cohen declared he wanted to win within his first three to five years at the helm, but more had to be accomplished than adding yearly chapters to the franchise’s history of abject disappointments.
Collapses like this are particularly difficult to recover from for those involved. The core members of and executives who put together the 1964 Phillies, 1978 Red Sox and 1995 Angels never came close to a championship again after their historic swoons — nor did anyone associated with the 2007-08 Mets except Wright.
“Until we win, it’s going to be attached to all of us,” Mendoza said.
At least at the major league level, Stearns has done little so far to justify the faith and patience Cohen displayed waiting for him to shake free from the Brewers (who, by the way, finished the season with the best record in baseball). But he’s almost surely not going anywhere anytime soon, so he’ll be the one tasked with figuring out how to tinker with a core that is both one of the best in Mets history and increasingly unlikely to play in World Series games.
And frankly, change is needed for a team that’s eight games over .500 in regular season play since 2023, and has been a subpar team for well more than half that time. Subtract the 110-62 regular season mark from June 3, 2024 through June 12, 2025 and the Mets are 137-177 in their other 314 games. That’s a .436 winning percentage, a 71-win pace over a full season. Maybe this is who these Mets are.
There was also a sense of inevitability about this result that requires some sort of housecleaning. During last year’s final regular season homestand, Mendoza declared the Mets were going to play more games at Citi Field. This year, he prefaced any answers to questions about the playoffs by noting they had to get there first.
Alonso is a free agent, Edwin Diaz may opt out and Jeff McNeil is entering the final year of his contract. This will be the last winter before Nimmo earns 10/5 rights. Lindor already has 10/5 rights and is not yet halfway through his contract.
All five players are likely Mets Hall of Famers, if not candidates to get their numbers retired. But like the team they represent, they are prone to valleys that are as frustrating as the peaks are euphoric. It is hard to see all of them on this team next year.
“No matter what, our team is going to look different,” Lindor said. “There’s a lot of good guys here, a lot of good people that want it and (are) still going to be on the quest of winning. It’s not going to look the same.”
Nor should it, following a collapse that will define these players and their franchise forever.