Behold! The year is 2025.
Jacob deGrom is 37 years old and a Free Agent.
Pete Alonso, now 30, is an unrestricted Free Agent as he heads into his 7th season. Jeff McNeil, now 33 is also an UFA.
The 2025 Mets are looking like they will be a collection of castaways and cheap players. Like 2010 but without David Wright. For the last few years, the Lame Duck Wilpon Regime wasn’t able to take on any big contracts. The Cohen Regime wanted the glory for themselves, not the WIlpons. Winning could wait. The Cohens would be the conquering heroes, they weren’t going to fund a parade for Fred and Jeff.
The Great Lethargy had started the afternoon of the holiday party back in 2019. (Greg Prince would remind us all that was also the day Zack Wheeler left for Phllly.) Fans didn’t realize it at the time, but the Wilpons planning to exit the team in five years was actually worse than the Wilpons planning to stay.
The 2020 Mets were a disaster under their new inexperienced manager Carlos Beltran. The Wilpons didn’t do much to improve the team during the off-season as they were now just running out the clock. Even if they had wanted to, there was a new player in the mix. And so the plan was to bring back a team that had failed in 2019, with one fewer Ace, and an inexperienced manager. The plan did not work.
July 2021 was not one that Mets fans remember fondly. Noah Syndergaard and Michael Conforto were both 31, but they were both in their walk years. The order came down to unload them. Off they went.
Back in 2019, then General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen had traded the farm to bring in long forgotten players like Sugar Diaz, and The Big Zero Marcus Stroman. It was now time to rebuild. But you need young players around which to rebuild, and they were in Toronto and Seattle.
The 2022 season was dreary. You kinda felt bad for deGrom, McNeil and Alonso, surrounded by castaways and never-was players.
2023 at least had the distraction of Robinson Cano’s seemingly endless chase for his 3000th hit which finally came in August. The 40 year old made $24 million that summer.
Unfortunately, Van Wagenen had traded the farm. The Mets were now rebuilding but had nobody to build around. Wags was gone by now too, as was Beltran. Omar Minaya prepared to hold down the fort until the Cohen regime arrived.
2024 was worse. Pete Alonso was set free at the trade deadline. The Mets held on to deGrom, always the good soldier, the One True Ace, and Jake pitched to empty seats at aging Citi Field except for what turned out to be his final start on Sept 28th in front of a decent crowd, led by what was left of The 7 Line Army. McNeil made it to the end too…and then off to free agency.
But 2025 had finally arrived and the Wilpons were gone. Just like everyone always wanted. Oh sure so were Pete and Jake and most of the fans but the Wilpons were gone. Steve Cohen was here to save the day, promised so many years ago back during Trump’s first term, back before the war, back before the climate refugee crisis, and back when the price of food wasn’t something you ever had worried about. Let’s Go Mets! No More Wilpons!
The future everyone always wanted had arrived.
Be careful what you wish for, sometimes God does answer prayers.
