The 2026 season left the Mets with a hard stack of lessons, and the biggest one is simple: this team paid for too much risk. New York entered the year after a heavy offseason overhaul, and the bet on sweeping roster and staff turnover, paired with thin fallback options, blew up in a big way.
A lot of the logic behind moving on from the old core made sense. The problem was the scale of it, and the assumptions that came with it.
The Mets leaned on the idea that Jorge Polanco could handle everyday work at first base, and that Sean Manaea, David Peterson, and Kodai Senga would all rebound to form and steady the rotation. That kind of optimism didn’t hold up.
If there’s a clear takeaway for the winter, it’s that the Mets need fewer leaps and more certainty.
There is, though, a brighter side to the year: the next wave of young talent looks real. Carson Benge and A.J.
Ewing helped stabilize the outfield, and Benge still has a shot at National League Rookie of the Year honors. Nolan McLean and Christian Scott have emerged as important pieces in the rotation, while Zac Thornton’s jump from Double-A to the majors and Nate Lavender’s return to being a dynamic lefty in the bullpen added more encouraging signs.
Not every young player develops in a straight line, and that has to be part of the planning. Even so, this group looks sturdier than the one before it, with better tools and the kind of makeup that can survive big-league growing pains.
The bullpen also gave the Mets something to build on. It worked in two different forms: first with a veteran-heavy group that included Brooks Raley, A.J. Minter, Luke Weaver, and Huascar Brazoban, all of whom pitched well enough to be moved at the deadline, and then with a revamped unit made up of younger arms and veteran projects that kept producing.
That kind of consistency matters, especially because it suggests David Stearns can spot relief help. That was a calling card for him in Milwaukee, and it looked a little shaky during his first two seasons in Flushing.
Now, with more young pitchers capable of throwing hard and getting outs in the majors, the Mets should have a chance to spend less on the bullpen this winter. That’s the right move in a market where relief pitching can turn volatile fast.
Managerial timing is another place where the Mets have to look hard in the mirror. They were one of three clubs to change managers during the season, but unlike Philadelphia and Boston, they weren’t in the postseason race for most of the year. Stearns waited until June to move on from Carlos Mendoza, and Andy Green took over as the permanent manager.
Under Green, the Mets played .500 ball for most of the season, even while injuries piled up and the deadline stripped away a lot of talent. That naturally leads to the question of whether the club could have stayed in the mix had the change come sooner.
The same hesitation showed up in how the Mets handled struggling veterans. Senga, Peterson, and Mark Vientos were given too much rope, and while injuries played a role, the team also didn’t trust its replacement options early on. By the time help was ready, those underperforming stretches had already taken a toll.
The year is over, but the message from it is pretty clear: the Mets need to be more selective with their gambles, lean harder into the young players who look ready, and avoid letting bad stretches linger too long.
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Mets Fans Still Remember This 2007 Masterpiece For One Painful Reason
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For Mets fans, though, the game lives on for a reason that has nothing to do with the scoreboard that night. The victory kept the club tied for the final Wild Card spot, setting up a final weekend with real stakes and, ultimately, a letdown the next day that made all that September brilliance sting a little more. [Read more 🡒]