The Mets have spent a lot and have done just okay in the process, and it remains to be seen whether 2025 will be different.
While the Dodgers’ unabashed spending spree this offseason has drawn ire and thinkpieces in equal measure, it behooves us to remember that they’re not alone in their Scrooge McDuck-ness — the Mets are also right there. Steve Cohen’s clubs have ranked no lower than third in terms of Opening Day payroll since he became the majority owner of the Mets; their luxury tax payrolls have been no lower than fifth. 2025 will be no different — Cohen hasn’t quite matched the Dodgers’ spending, but the Mets still have well north of $300 million in annual payroll committed both now and in the future. The question is: are the Mets actually going to dominate commensurate with their spending, the way the Dodgers have? Or, is it going to be another wobbly contention year despite the funds invested in the club?
How did they do in 2024?
The 2024 Mets finished with the same 89-73 record as the Atlanta Braves, gaining their second playoff appearance in four tries in the Cohen era (they’ve yet to win the division under Cohen and haven’t done so since 2015). While I guess some Mets fans might be disappointed in that, the reality was that not only was their performance a vast improvement over their 75-87 finish the year prior, but it was also a huge win over preseason projections that tabbed them as essentially a .500 club.
The Mets actually started out looking fairly rough: on June 2, they were 11 games under .500, 16.5 games out of first place, thanks in large part to some truly abominable pitching. From that point on, they went on pretty much a tear, losing just one more series up until the All-Star Break, and carrying up through the end of the year. Interestingly, their pitching only improved from horrible to fine in the process, but it was enough to get them where they needed to go, thanks to some pretty good hitting and defense.
The 2024 Mets’ season was very stars-and-scrubs-y. Francisco Lindor had an amazing, MVP-type year that was overshadowed by now-and-forever actual MVP Shohei Ohtani… but no other position player cleared 3 fWAR for them, and only four more cleared 2 fWAR. Sean Manaea was pretty good, Edwin Diaz was Edwin Diaz, and they got some unexpectedly good relief work from non-household names, but this roster never exactly screamed, “Steve Cohen had to forgo two Mediterranean islands to finance this!” or anything close to it.
In the end, the Mets gave us a chuckle by first stunning the Brewers to somehow advance in the playoffs despite trailing 2-0 in the top of the ninth in their elimination game, and then licking the Phillies in four games to make it to the NLCS, where they were roundly smushed by the Dodgers, getting outscored 46-26 while still somehow managing to win two of six games — the Dodgers scored three runs once, and six or more runs in every other game.
What did they do in the offseason?
Many teams had a pretty quiet offseason, but the Mets weren’t one of them. Their moves included:
- Trading for Jose Siri to patrol center field;
- Signing guys like Jesse Winker, Griffin Canning, and Ryne Stanek to one-year deals;
- Signing guys like Frankie Montas, A.J. Minter and Clay Holmes to longer deals; and
- Reuniting with Sean Manaea on a three-year deal, and then, after much finger-wagging in the media and all sorts of back-and-forth, finally also reuniting with Pete Alonso on a two-year deal.
Oh, and they also landed Juan Soto on a 15-year contract totaling $765 million. Let’s not forget about that.
What’s expected of them in 2025?
The result of all those moves is an even more expensive team that kind of looks like the Mets of yesteryear, but with a lot more beef added in the Juan Soto department.
In another division, the Mets could have maybe had a relatively easy path to something like 96 wins, especially if they loaded up for the playoffs at the Trade Deadline. However, they play in the NL East, where they’ll have to jockey for position with the Braves and Phillies, which can also affect how they choose to deploy their resources. Once you account for schedule, a mid-to-high 80s win total probably makes more sense. But, with that said, there’s a lot of chatter right now about how the Mets are clearly behind the Phillies, and, well, to me it doesn’t seem like the gap is all that large. In any case, they’re a surefire contender in what seems like a good bet to be baseball’s toughest division.
When you break it down, the Mets will leverage an elite (or at worst, near-elite) position player group in 2025, and hope that said group keeps their mediocre pitching unit in each game. In terms of FanGraphs’ current Depth Charts projections, the Mets project to enjoy top-ten production everywhere around the diamond but second base and center field, with only the latter looking at all suspect. However, their rotation forecast is very middle-of-the-pack-y, which even a good-looking bullpen can’t ameliorate that much.
That said, though, to the extent that payroll sets expectations, Mets fans may once again be disappointed in “we spent all this for another NL East scrap?” but that’s the world we live in.
We also live in the world where baseball players are injured a lot, and Mets players are definitely injured a lot. The season hasn’t even started yet, and:
- Francisco Alvarez has fractured the hamate bone in his hand and will miss at least the first month of the season.
- Jeff McNeil has an oblique injury and will miss at least part of April. Plus, you know how obliques are.
- Sean Manaea also has an oblique ailment with an indeterminate timeline to return.
- Frankie Montas looks like he might miss at least half the season with a lat problem.
- Starling Marte and Jesse Winker are dealing with minor league injuries in camp.
The Opening Day rotation for the Mets might be Kodai Senga, David Peterson, Clay Holmes, Griffin Canning, and Paul Blackburn, which definitely makes one wonder where all the money has gone.
Braves 2024 Head-To-Head
The Braves narrowly edged the Mets in last year’s season series, 7-6, although that final decisive win came after the Mets had already clinched in a hurricane-rescheduled doubleheader nightcap that was really just kind of off-putting to watch. The Mets won the two teams’ first 2024 series in Atlanta, but the Braves returned the favor in May in New York, and they split a four-game set over the summer (which featured that awful Jarred Kelenic-Ramon Laureano disaster game). That set the stage for the decisive late-season series between the two teams, where the Braves took game 1, and then had to play a doubleheader on the Monday after the regular season was supposed to end, and the less said about that series of events, the better.
In a bizarre quirk of scheduling, the Braves and Mets won’t tango at all until mid-June, where they’ll play each other seven times in the span of ten days. (For the Mets, it’s actually a bit wilder; they have the Phillies on the road in between these two series). Then, there’ll be another six games in the span of 12 days, and that’s it, close the book on the season series. It’s kind of anticlimactic, but at least those couple of two-week stretches should be fun.