More than an hour after the Mets’ once-promising 2022 season came to an abrupt end, the team’s longtime outfielder Brandon Nimmo was still standing in the clubhouse in full uniform. He had been on the field with his family taking photos after the Mets lost 6-0 to the San Diego Padres in a crucial Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Round at Citi Field on Sunday night.
For the first time in his career, Nimmo, 29, is a free agent and he had no idea if this would be his last time representing the Mets, the only organization he’s ever known that drafted him at 18 .
“I have to enjoy it now and kind of soak it up because you never know, especially in baseball, where the future will take you,” he said. He later added: “Nobody cares that we won 101 games, just that we lost those two. So it’s a gloomy mood in the clubhouse now.”
Late into the night, players in the Mets locker room hugged, signed memorabilia for each other, stuffed their belongings into bags or boxes, shared drinks, and said goodbye. This Mets team, the way it’s built, will never be the same again. With so many free agents, the Mets and their major league-leading $288 million payroll are likely to look very different next season.
“It really hurts,” said first baseman Pete Alonso. “It’s not just losing; It’s the breakup of the group because every single guy in this clubhouse is really great. It just sucks knowing it won’t be the same group next year.”
Change is inevitable in professional sports. Executives, managers and coaches have durability. Players age or reach the end of their contract. performance varies. The 2022 Mets will be acutely concerned with sales this winter after a 101-win regular season that seemed to renew hope for a franchise that has often been the subject of jokes.
The list of key players who are eligible to become free agents — or could join them if the options aren’t factored into their contracts — is long. The entire starting rotation could be gone except for Max Scherzer: Jacob deGrom, Chris Bassitt, Carlos Carrasco and Taijuan Walker. Also a big part of the bullpen: Edwin Díaz, Seth Lugo, Adam Ottavino and Trevor May. Nimmo can also leave.
And at the helm of the organization, the Mets are looking for a new team president to replace Sandy Alderson, who is moving into a special advisor role after overseeing the franchise since billionaire Steven A. Cohen bought the club two years ago.
“I’ve been part of organizations where you can have a bad year and then reset the next year and be really good,” Scherzer said. “So it’s too early to comment on what’s going to happen next year because you’ve got the whole off-season ahead of you. But I’ve been in this situation before and I’ve seen organizations recover and there’s no reason this organization can’t recover.”
“I love the base we have here,” said outfielder Mark Canha, adding that he believes in general managers Billy Eppler and Cohen. (Cohen, the players said, addressed the team after the loss and told them how proud he was of them.)
As Cohen, Eppler, the Mets front office, manager Buck Showalter, the coaching staff and perhaps the new team president sit down to analyze this season and why it ended sooner than expected, there’s a lot that can improve even though they’re the accumulate most regularly. Season wins its final World Series winning season in 1986.
“We achieved a lot, but how it ended really stinks,” said Alonso. Added shortstop Francisco Lindor: “We didn’t go through. We didn’t finish what we wanted.”
Was the Mets offense, more dependent on average and base percentage and less on performance, the best way to build a lineup in this era of high speed and movement? With a small lead over then-World Series champion Atlanta Braves at the close on Aug. 2, should the Mets have done more to strengthen the lineup and bullpen? Can the team re-sign deGrom, 34, who has announced he will invoke the buyout clause on his contract extension? And given that they missed much of 2022 with injuries, how much can deGrom and Scherzer, 38 – with their five Cy Young Awards combined – offer as they continue to age? What about the rest of the rotation, the bullpen, and the lineup? Will Cohen keep spending at record levels?
Although the Mets’ season ended Sunday, it had disbanded on the track. The Mets led their division, the NL East, for all but six days of the season, most of which ended.
Had the Mets simply won one more game during the regular season — being swept by the modest Chicago Cubs in mid-September and Atlanta last weekend, for example — they would have been in a better position to enter the postseason. Though Atlanta and the Mets each finished with 101 wins, Atlanta owned the season tiebreaker to earn a bye in the first round of the best-of-five divisional series that began Tuesday while the Mets were in the wild-card had to play a round.
“Sometimes we had to win, and we didn’t win some big baseball games like the Braves and tonight,” said deGrom, who secured the Mets’ only win in the wild card round against the Padres, but was beaten by Atlanta’s Bassitt and Scherzer in her central series a week ago. “Everyone in this room is disappointed and we would have liked to have played another month.”
Nimmo added: “We have relied on our starting pitch all year. This offense was designed to consistently score runs but maybe not score 10 points and all that stuff. We were built around that initial pitching. So, yeah, when the Braves did what they did to Jake and Bass and Joke and then also got runs like they did this weekend, it’s surprising.
Incidentally, DeGrom said he enjoyed his nine years in New York but declined to speak about his contract future Sunday night. Nimmo, Díaz and Lugo, teary-eyed since he has been with the Mets organization for 12 years, all said they would like to return, but that has yet to be decided. After the game, Díaz said Lindor had spoken and the players expected to stay next season wished the players who may be leaving the best of luck.
“They obviously hoped that we could all return, but unfortunately it’s not,” said Díaz, 28, in Spanish. “None of us will come back. And honestly I’m going to make the best decision for me and my family and I hope to god I can come back because it feels like family here.”
But keeping Díaz, deGrom and others and chasing top free agents or making big trades this winter would come with an extraordinary price tag. Some holes can be filled from the inside, such as third-year pitcher David Peterson sliding into the rotation. As of Sunday, the Mets have committed $195 million in 2023 payrolls, according to Baseball Reference.
However, so much could change by spring training. Between their final playoff appearances in 2016 and this season, the Mets already have so much going for them: a new owner, more spending, improved infrastructure, a new manager, improved stability as a franchise.
Lindor said the team’s culture “is going to be one of the best in the game.” When asked what had changed since last year, he said there was “less outside noise” in the clubhouse and “there was an expectation of winning day in and day out and this wasn’t like a test match and that’s being done by You are expected to be accountable.”
Arguing that the Mets were in good shape going forward, Nimmo cited an organization after which Cohen had said he wanted to emulate the Mets, the Los Angeles Dodgers. To build a perennial favorite, the Dodgers splurged on major league payroll and developing minor league prospects, winning the 2020 World Series in their eighth straight postseason appearance.
“Sometimes that experience and the experience of your young guys can help in the long run,” Nimmo said of the Mets. “But I think it will be seen as a stepping stone in the right direction for this organization. I think they are in a great position to move forward. You have an owner who really wants to win and will do anything to win. And that’s more than half the battle. This organization is going in the right direction.”