It was fun while it lasted, but the Grimace/OMG/Never Say Die New York Mets are… well… dead.
Their executioner? The Los Angeles Dodgers. Their cause of death? A 4-2 series loss in the National League Championship Series at the hands of a suffocating LA pitching staff and a boom-or-bust New York offense that disappeared when needed the most.
Despite the loss, the 2024 Mets should watch the dirt fall with a smile. This team shouldn’t have been here to begin with. They were a season-worst 24-35 on June 11. This team blew a three-run lead in Game 161 before Francisco Lindor launched a postseason-clinching homer in the ninth. They were two outs away from losing in the Wildcard to the Brewers. Impossibly, they beat a 95-win Philadelphia Phillies team for Pete’s sake. And they did so without too much trouble.
Like Rocky Balboa, the Mets absorbed every punch from Apollo Creed and always answered with a response. They fought back on weak knees that begged to buckle, staggered to the NLCS, and stood tall. There is nobility in their death. There’s also hope on the horizon. Mark Vientos emerged as a star, Lindor reasserted himself as one of the best players in baseball, and the new regime showed a savviness that’s been seemingly absent from the franchise since 1986.
Yet, like Sylvester Stallone circa 1977, another question awaits the Mets: Now that they’ve had their underdog victory, what’s next?
The first and perhaps most glaring question the Mets need to answer is what to do with Pete Alonso. The slugger’s been part and parcel of the team since his debut in 2019. He is beloved and adored by the blue and orange. But he might spend the rest of his career in different colors due to his impending free agency.
At first glance, the solution seems simple. The Mets have World Series aspirations, Alonso’s a four-time All-Star, and the organization is one of the few who will spend to win. Keeping him should be a foregone conclusion. He’s led the Majors in RBI since 2019, ranks second in home runs during that time, 16th in runs scored, 18th in OPS, and 22nd in wRC+ while playing the second-most games. He’s good, sometimes great, and always available.
Alonso will ask for top-of-the-shelf money. For good reason. Any team would be happy to have a hitter of his caliber. So why haven’t the Mets extended their All-Star, and why is there a debate about whether they should?
For all of his strengths, Alonso has numerous weaknesses—many of which were on display in 2024. Shockingly, one of those was the power he’d built his reputation on.
In previous seasons, Alonso mashed 40 home runs easily doing so in 2019, 2022, and 2023. Alonso’s 37-homer season in 2021 is an outlier, yet it’s his only campaign where he played fewer than 154 games. 2024, however, offers no caveats. Alonso played every game this season. Despite that, he hit 34 home runs, a career-worst. That’s not all. His 21 doubles, .459 slugging percentage, .788 OPS, and 279 total bases were also career lows. In many respects, Alonso was a pale imitation of the Polar Bear we’re used to.
A deeper dive into the analytics finds other Arctic waters. A .470 expected slug shows this is no fluke. As does his 8.3 Barrel/PA, a metric nearly a whole digit lower than his career average. Accompanying those rises were a +5.8% increase in his GB%, the 21st-highest year-to-year increase in baseball, and a 30.5 LA Sweet-Spot% that put Alonso in the 14th percentile among all hitters. Conversely, Alonso saw his weak contact shoot up from 3.8% in 2023 to 5.5% in 2024. His strikeouts also rose, finishing with 172, the second-highest total of his career.
The bottom line is Alonso didn’t perform like the prolific power hitter he’s known to be. The other concern is he didn’t hit like a middle-of-the-order bat should.
In 2022, when Alonso finished eighth in NL MVP voting, he had a .950 OPS with men on base and a 1.099 OPS with runners in scoring production. The only players to surpass Alonso’s 1.099 OPS? Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. Regarding run production, Alonso launched 25 homers with 116 RBI with men on in 2022 and 17 home runs with 96 RBI when runners were in scoring position. He wasn’t just good. He was one of the premier cleanup hitters in the game.
Alonso was anything but that in 2024. With runners in scoring position, he hit .232/.344/.417 with a career-worst .762 OPS. When men are on base, his numbers are even more alarming. His .215/.325/.407 slash line is the worst of his six-year career. So isn’t his .732 OPS, 14 home runs, and 68 RBI. That .723 OPS is 111th among all qualified hitters.
These numbers aren’t all disastrous. But they’re admittedly a far cry from his previous performances.
That same adage applies to his performance in late/close games. In 80 late/close instances, the Polar Bear hit .136/.290/.235 with a staggeringly low .525 OPS. Additionally, he had just two home runs and seven RBI during these circumstances. He was a borderline detriment in tight games.
Furthering that point was Alonso’s play in high-leverage moments. According to Fangraphs, Alonso hit .180/.338/.280 with a .618 OPS, 1 homer, and 11 RBI in high-leverage situations. He finished the regular season 94th in RBI, 97th in batting average, and 102nd in BABIP. While his .338 OBP is only 56th and an improvement compared to his .262 mark from a year ago, that’s not what teams will be interested in him for. They’ll see him as a run scorer — A bat that puts the fear of God in other pitchers. Except Alonso hasn’t played that role this season. Not even close.
Flat-out, this isn’t the production you expect from a player like Alonso. Nor is it the production that warrants the payday Alonso and his agent, Scott Boras, will seek in the offseason.
These questions—whether Alonso is the player from the past or the player of the present—plus others about his defensive acumen, year-by-year decrease in slugging, and plate discipline, make this a challenging decision for the Mets. Alonso has shown the ability to be a terrific situational hitter. He’s been the type of bat that can anchor a lineup. Look no further than this postseason, where he hit .273/.431/.568 with a .999 OPS.
Alonso will have a market. Deservedly so. Only New York’s President of Baseball Operations David Stearns, knows whether the Mets will be part of it.
With a less-than-stellar Alonso in 2024, the Mets needed other parts to carry them, namely, their pitching.
New York’s staff rose to the occasion, thankfully. The team finished the regular season 15th in team ERA with the 12th-best starting pitching ERA and 17th-best bullpen ERA. Those numbers don’t properly reflect the truth, however. From June 11 to the end of the season, the Mets, as a team and starting rotation, touted the ninth-best ERA in baseball. They were ahead of the Dodgers, Yankees, and Phillies.
By every right, they were a top-10 starting pitching staff for most of the regular season. Sean Manaea, Luis Severino, and Jose Quintana led the charge for the starters this season and looked great. Manaea had his best season as a full-time starter with a 3.47 ERA. Severino made 30+ starts for the first time since 2018 and looked every bit the pitcher he was then, and Quintana finished with a 2.77 ERA over his last 18 starts.
These players were essential ingredients to the 2024 Mets. Yet none are under contract for 2025’s recipe. Due to their performances and the constant need for pitchers across baseball, each will attract a bevy of suitors. While the Mets will surely be among them, there’s no guarantee a reunion is in the works.
Losing not one but all three of these pitchers would be a cataclysmic blow to the Mets. It’s not a mistake that manager Carlos Mendoza gave them the start in 10 of the team’s 13 playoff games. When it mattered most, these were the arms they turned to.
They’ve been their best, most reliant arms in the staff. Now, the Mets might be without three-fifths of their rotation. The quandary leaves the Mets with two options: Re-sign who you can from the trio or seek their replacement elsewhere.
Option one, while a sensible approach, is not without risk. Manaea is coming off an incredible season. Of that, there’s little doubt. Plenty is surrounding the southpaw’s track record, however. Manaea was similarly solid in 2021, with a 3.91 ERA in 32 starts. He followed it with a 4.96 mark the season after, then a 4.44 ERA with the Giants in 2023. Another concern is the amount of stress on Manaea’s arm. His 200.1 total innings are a career-high and almost 80 more than he pitched a year ago.
Re-signing Manaea is betting on continual development and health for a nine-year-veteran who is 32, soon to be 33. It’s a risky proposition—even if Manaea’s been New York’s best starter.
Different problems plague a possible extension for Severino. Unlike Manaea, Severino has a track record. He’s finished third and ninth in AL Cy Young voting in 2017 and 2018 and carried a 3.18 ERA during those two combined seasons. At his best, Severino is an all-world ace.
Yet Severino’s 2024 is not perfect. His 8.2 H/9, 1.1 HR/9, 3.0 BB/9, and 8.0 SO/9 are all worse or just slightly better than his career averages. Likewise, other teams figured out Severino as the season went along. In the first half, batters had a .232/.308/.352 slash with a .660 OPS. Opposing offenses improved on each of those marks in the second half, hitting .259/.322/.428 with a .751 OPS. Severino’s splits would look even worse without his two scoreless outings against the Miami Marlins. Subtract them from his ledger and he has a 5.18 ERA in the second half.
Nonetheless, Severino’s looked good. Sometimes even great in 2024. But it’s more than fair to question if he’s reliable—both from a consistency and health standpoint. Even in his non-Tommy John seasons, Severino’s battled through things. A groin injury postponed his return from the surgery in 2021, a low-grade lat strain caused him to miss time in 2022, and an oblique strain shorted a disappointing 2023 season.
It’s worth praising Severino’s return to form. It’s also okay to question if his health will hold up throughout his next contract. Especially following a 2024 that saw him pitch roughly 100 more innings than a season before.
As for Quintana, he remains a bull. No underlying metrics disprove him to be anything other than a solid five-and-dive pitcher. He’s made 76 starts over his last three seasons with a 3.39 ERA. That 3.39 doesn’t sound too impressive until given context. It’s 25th in baseball and lower than the ERAs of Dylan Cease, Yu Darvish, Freddy Peralta, Aaron Nola, and Nathan Eovaldi.
The only question for Quintana is if he can prolong this stretch. He’ll turn 36 in January, and 2025 will be his 14th MLB season. Lance Lynn, Charlie Morton, Max Scherzer, and Justin Verlander are the few active pitchers with more innings than Quintana. In other words, the only risk with re-signing him is he might finally lose to Father Time.
There are plenty of external pitchers the Mets might be able to replace their trio with. Blake Snell or Corbin Burnes represent a high-upside, high-cost solution. Yusei Kikuchi, Walker Buehler, or Michael Soroka are cost-effective, second-chance options similar to Manaea or Severino’s signings a year ago. Buehler is an especially intriguing arm given his previous pedigree. Like Manaea and Severino, Buehler might benefit from a year with Mets pitching coach and career-reviver Jeremy Hefner.
Mitigating any potential loss is the return of Kodai Senga. The former All-Star spent most of the year on the shelf. Getting him back will be a boon for the rotation. A full season from a remade David Peterson will provide insurance, too. Since his May 29 season debut, Peterson’s 2.90 ERA is sixth in the NL, his 1.9 fWAR is tied for 12th, and his 3.67 FIP is 13th. Receiving help from prospects might also alleviate things. Brandon Sproat, Blade Tidwell, Jonah Tong, Dominic Hamel, and Mike Vasil could be internal arms capable of jumping to the Show and plugging whatever holes free agency leaves behind.
The number of holes free agency might afflict on the Mets is an issue. And the list extends far past Alonso, Manaea, Quintana, and Severino. Harrison Bader, Jose Iglesias, J.D. Martinez, Jesse Winker, Adam Ottavino, Brooks Raley, Drew Smith, and Ryne Stanek are all projected to hit the market. That’s 392 games played between those four position players as well as 97 combined innings between those four relievers. It is a massive crop that the Mets either need to retain or replace parts of.
Letting players like Martinez and Ottavino, two veterans ticking toward the final seconds of their careers, go is easy. Figuring out what to do with Bader, Iglesias, and Winker is more difficult. Bader’s .657 OPS is his highest in a full season since 2021. He also played an exceptional center field. Something that became a necessity for the Mets once Nimmo transitioned to a corner spot.
Iglesias was particularly essential to 2024’s success. The 34-year-old hit .337/.381/.448 with an .830 OPS. He scored 39 runs, played excellent defense, and his 2.5 fWAR was fifth-best on the team. By fWAR metrics alone, Iglesias had a better season than Severino, Alonso, Peterson, Bader, Jeff McNeil, and Edwin Díaz. Iglesias is so much more than just “OMG.” He’s a tone-setter, a steadying presence, and a giant reason this team made it as far as they did.
So isn’t Winker. Out of 102 qualified hitters this postseason, Winker is third in OBP, eighth in wRC+, ninth in OPS, 15th in slugging percentage, and 18th in batting average. Without an obvious DH candidate in 2025, re-signing Winker makes all the sense in the world.
Yet those already in the Mets system complicate the possible future of these veteran position players. MLB.com projects three of the organization’s top six prospects to debut in 2025. Most of these prospects play the same positions as those veterans. Like Bader, Drew Gilbert is a career center fielder. Jett Williams, another prospect, has limited time in the outfield but has a future there with Lindor blocking him at shortstop. Why can’t Williams play elsewhere in the infield? Because it’s crowded by Vientos, McNeil, Ronny Mauricio, Luisangel Acuña, Brett Baty, and possibly Iglesias. And that’s under the assumption Alonso walks.
The Mets can decide who they want to be this offseason. Do they want to push all their chips in, give Juan Soto $1 billion, offer high-end talent top dollar, trade those they don’t deem essential, and chase the ring? If that’s their desire, they’ll have an owner willing to foot the bill that’ll require. Or do the Mets want waves of young talent rather than a roster dotted with established stars? With an encouraging farm system, a front office that knows what it’s doing, and a breakout season from Vientos, that’s just as attainable. Maybe the Mets will do both. Who knows?
Despite the questions, the Mets are in a safe place. The Mets, a franchise long tortured by inept mismanagement, seem on the verge of something special. The Never Say Die Mets are dead. But the franchise’s pulse might be beating stronger than ever.