The New York Mets and the Pursuit of a Storybook Narrative

The year 2020 was awful to pretty much the entire world, but in the baseball world, it was almost extra awful to the New York Mets.

Let’s go over a brief timeline.

• The disaster started off before the season even reached a halt: the Mets had hired former All-Star Carlos Beltran to be their new manager in November, only to have him part ways two months later after he was revealed to be a major part of the Houston Astros cheating scandal; they already had to make a coaching change.
• Next, their ace pitcher, Noah Syndergaard, tore his UCL in the spring and needed Tommy John surgery.
• Then, after an embarrassing start to the season with multiple bullpen meltdowns, their slugger Yoenis Cespedes just went missing. He just took his stuff without a word, and they couldn’t find him in the hotel room, and it was revealed that he just decided to opt-out.
• Then, their number 2 starter, Marcus Stroman, decided to opt out the next week.
• The embarrassment continued when their GM, Brodie Van Wagenen, was caught on a hot mic criticizing Commissioner Rob Manfred for his handling of the schedule, and the Wilpon ownership released a statement pretty much roasting Van Wagenen in order to back the boss-man Manfred and even misspelled their own GM’s name on the release in the process.
• After the Wilpons finally sold the Mets to Steve Cohen, the Mets wrapped up their season tied for dead-last in the division and fired Brodie Van Wagenen, replacing him with Jared Porter; who was then fired in a month when it was revealed that he had sent 60 harassing texts to a female journalist in 2016.
• Finally, when reigning NL Cy Young-winner, Trevor Bauer, was narrowing down his free agency decision, it came down to the Mets and the Dodgers. He even put out Bauer Mets merchandise and a leak came out from Bob Nightengale saying they had reached an agreement, only to have him release a hype video the next day expressing his excitement to be a Dodger.

2020: the year from Hell, on and off the baseball diamond.

However, the 2021 Mets have one of the most unique opportunities in sports that’s the type of stuff that you see in movies. The team’s 2020 dismay paralleled the historically diabolical year the world experienced through the pandemic; if the Mets can overcome what seems almost like a PR curse and usher in a new era in 2021, they can be a symbol of hope. It’s a potential poetic justice arc for what has been a tragic figure in the sports universe.

While the Steve Cohen-era hasn’t been without flaws thus far, with the Jared Porter dilemma and the failure to sign Trevor Bauer, things have been looking up ever since the new owner has stepped to the plate. Now that they have an owner with more money than the other preceding top-3 richest owners combined, they’ll have the most capital available to throw at free agents and build a team by a long shot. On top of that, Cohen has been one of the most vocal, open-minded owners thus far, going to Twitter to ask fans questions about what would make their experience better, and appears willing to spend in order to own a winning team. It’s like being owned by a fan, except the fan is REALLY rich.

Marcus Stroman re-signed, and there’s no telling if he would have stayed had everything remained as dysfunctional as it was. They signed a prize catcher in James McCann. They acquired pitching depth in Trevor May, Taijuan Walker, Joey Lucchesi, Jordan Yamamoto, and Carlos Carrasco. They added platoon hitters with Kevin Pillar, Albert Almora, and Jonathon Villar. Suddenly that last-place team is starting to look very deep on paper.

But the biggest move in which Carlos Carrasco was also included was that they traded for quite possibly the best shortstop in major league baseball, Francisco Lindor, formerly of the Cleveland Indians. The Indians were in essentially the polar opposite of a situation of the Mets: they have a billionaire owner who doesn’t want to pay their good players, so naturally, they pretty much gave Lindor and Carrasco away to the Mets, and Lindor will potentially sign a massive extension and possibly become a lifetime Met superstar on the big stage.

Photo: Mary Holt/USA Today Sports

In the same way that the Mets saved Francisco Lindor from the grips of an ownership group crying poor and refusing to do right by their fans, Lindor has the opportunity to save a franchise in a sports-crazy town where the Mets have been the Fredo Corleone to the dominant New York Yankees across town in the Bronx.

They could never put it together with David Wright, their captain who struggled with injuries throughout his career and came up just short in 2015, losing the World Series to the Kansas City Royals. Mets fandom is peculiar because they really shouldn’t be one of the most “tortured” fan bases given their previous success and Hall of Fame players, but the expectations from the die-hards combined with the manner in which they’ve lost, whether it be a gut-wrenching collapse or an utter humiliation, makes it feel like they’ve suffered for far too long. For what the team means to the people, they deserve success.

In comes, Lindor: literally nicknamed “Mr. Smile” for the charismatic grin he plays with that could light up the entire field. His look is reflected in his play and personality where when he makes a diving stop at shortstop to turn a double play or trots with swagger in his step after mashing a home run to the opposite field you can tell he feels like he’s 12 years old playing the kids’ game that he loves for a living. The man with hair that’s been everything from a blonde-highlighted faux-hawk to wavy blue curls has the magnetism that’s perfect for the bright lights of Citi Field and for the adoring Mets fans to latch on to.

The team won’t be without adversity; on top of getting familiar with a group that’s filled with new personalities and chemistry, they’ll be competing in a division with the Braves, who were a game away from the World Series last year, the Nationals, who WON the World Series in 2019, the Phillies, who have a loaded team and superstar, Bryce Harper, and the Marlins, who made the postseason last year amidst all of the doubters.

For the first time in what feels like a long time, this Mets team feels like a group that can right their wrongs and be a part of something very special. If everything falls into place, they could keep this group of likable players under electric ownership together and be a dominant force in baseball for a long time.

It would be a beautiful full-circle of a hero’s journey seeing a terrible 2020 blossom into 2021 of hope and optimism towards a better future for both the Mets and the state of the world. As their phrase originated in 1973, “Ya gotta believe!”

Featured Image: New York Mets