On July 12, the Mets were 40-51, losing games to a skeleton crew called the Miami Marlins, and leaving us to begin their yearly eulogies. Then the Mets rose and ran, heads-up and heads right the rest of the way, winning 21 more games than they lost and finishing with a wholly respectable 86-76 record. They played hard and played well, even giving fans a taste of pennant fever until they fell a few games short of the wild card.
And for that they deserve credit. A normal Mets club melts at the first sign of dysfunction. Yet this gang shed its ancestral urge to tank and gave their fans a few reasons to be thankful. Maybe these Mets aren't years and myriad players away from contention.
Manager Mickey Callaway is toiling in some room waiting for word on his job. Over the winter players will move on and move in. But the Mets didn't leave us with the normal sense of chaos or incompetence. They are not a headless body slamming into closed doors while their peers blow past them.
The Mets will trot into 2020 with the best pitcher on the planet, Jacob deGrom. They also have the likely 2019 Rookie of the Year, Pete Alonso - who broke the rookie record with 53 homers, becoming the first to hit at least 30 doubles and 50 dingers in his maiden MLB season - and a close second, in Jeff McNeil. Both were perfect compliments of the other.
Alonso is a power-hitting goofball who parties shirtless on the diamond after a game-winning hit. McNeil is the line-drive spraying machine who plays the quiet star to Alonso's splashy persona. It's the first time the Mets have had such a sterling pair of young position players since the days of David Wright and Jose Reyes. Adding to the comfort of young talent is the fact that the Mets produced the fifth-most homegrown Wins Above Replacement in 2019 (according to the New York Post), which means the farm isn't typically infertile.
One of the reasons the Mets have the stink of desperation is their dust bowl of a farm system forced them to overreach for players like Robinson Cano, who's deep into the back-nine of his career, haunted by a PED suspension and recent poor performance. And to sign players like Jed Lowrie, who never swung a bat this season.
Still, the Mets finished seventh in the NL in runs, sixth in batting average, fifth in home runs, and fourth in hits. Not bad for a team that's best known for its rotation. McNeil and Alonso will presumably improve. J.D. Davis had a breakout season and won the third base job. Michael Conforto bashed 33 homers. And consider the batting order when Yoenis Cespedes returns next spring.
Their pitching is quite respectable, finishing fourth in the NL in team ERA and second in quality starts. They even finished third in walks allowed, a miracle when you consider how bad their bullpen was this summer, the only group in MLB history to blow eight saves in consecutive months. Which leads us to Edwin Diaz, who was supposed to be the fair price for acquiring Cano. The best closer on earth in 2018 was a disaster in 2019. Diaz was the worst pitcher in a bullpen that ranked 25th in the majors in ERA, 23rd in WHIP, 17th in strikeout-to-walk ratio, and 24th in WAR.
The Mets plowed through an army of relief pitchers - Tyler Bashlor, Wilmer Font, Drew Gagnon, Walker Lockett, and Chris Mazza - without any earning a second glance this winter. Perhaps they can sprinkle some cash on Craig Kimbrel or Kelvin Herrera just to have another reliable arm after the sixth inning.
But if the Mets can somehow fix the 25-year-old Diaz, and either repair or replace Jeurys Familia, they could have a decent relief corps, augmented by Seth Lugo and Justin Wilson. But the theme of the Mets is moderation, not to lunge toward the mercenary. We saw how myopic moves like that worked in San Diego, who emptied the vault for Manny Machado, and for the Philadelphia Phillies, who made it rain on Bryce Harper. Neither club made the playoffs despite spending combined $630 million - about three times the Yankees' payroll this season - on two stars.
And the Mets should keep as much of the "Flushing Five" - as Boomer Esiason brands the rotation - as possible. So if they must choose between Zack Wheeler and Noah Syndergaard, keep the latter. Wheeler is a free agent who will want megabucks for his potential more than his performance. At least Syndergaard is under club control and you have four fine starting pitchers (deGrom, Thor, Steven Matz, Marcus Stroman) entering the offseason.
While most of us called for Mickey Callaway's vocational head halfway through the season, he showed us that the Mets are closer to his optimistic view of them. Back in July, we thought the Mets would implode and delete, as they have so many seasons before. Yet in three short months, they grew into a club in need of remolding, not rebooting, Maybe the manager showed us he's closer to the real thing than we realized, just like the 2019 Mets.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel.
