The 2023 New York Mets: The Worst Team Money Could Buy
The New York Mets haven’t won the World Series in what seems like forever. The last time the Mets were baseball champions, Ronald Reagan was President of the United States and the Cold War was in full swing. The Berlin Wall was still several years away from falling. DVDs hadn’t yet been invented. A gallon of gas cost $0.93 and you could get a dozen eggs for under a dollar. I was negative 2 years old. Joe Biden was only in his mid-40s. Like I said, it was basically forever ago.
But, Mets fans waited. They were a patient bunch and they waited for the day when a new banner proclaiming themselves World Series Champions would hang from the rafters in their team’s ballpark. And for decades, it seemed like such a day would never come.
But then, one day, there came a man – a very, very rich man who had a seemingly endless supply of money. He would buy the cursed franchise. The man’s name was Steve Cohen.
Had Cohen plead guilty to insider trading just a few years earlier? Sure. Did he spend hundreds of millions of dollars on arguably awful pieces of art? Of course. But to Mets fans, he was a potential savior – he was their savvy, rich businessman. He didn’t need to follow silly things like laws that were created for normal people or have good taste in artwork. Plus, he had glasses and a harmless look about him. He was Uncle Steve and he would help Mets fans finally return to the baseball promised land of World Series winners.
But, at least for one more year, this story doesn’t seem like it’ll have a happy ending. Because money, despite what Mets fans across the globe had hoped, doesn’t buy happiness (or wins), and the Mets seem to have another unfulfilling season on the menu. Despite having by far the highest payroll in baseball ($346 million), the team’s below .500. This season is a dumpster fire.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about New York’s start to the 2023 season, and briefly broke down the Mets next few opponents. I wrote, “The Mets might not have looked great this year, but their record is such that they’re on a pace to better their 101-win 2022 season. They actually have a fantastic opportunity to further boost their win percentage over the next several weeks... Of the Mets next 23 games, 19 games (all except for a four-game home series versus the Braves) will be against teams that are worse than .500.”
Well, the baseball gods do not take kindly to assuming, because the Mets, I now must admit, basically stink. And what’s worse is that there’s no easy solution for how to fix what’s wrong with the team.
The Mets have just finished losing their fifth series in a row, and to call the Mets starting pitching abysmal would be an insult to other abysmal things. The hitting hasn’t been much better – the team ranks 13th (out of the 15 teams) in the National League in team batting average.
The Mets are an overpaid group of underperforming older players, many of whom just don’t have “it” anymore. In 2022, the Mets averaged the oldest roster in all of baseball, with 30.68 years old being their average player age. This season, the average age of the team’s starters on opening day was 31.8. Bringing up players like Brett Baty and Francisco Alvarez will help that number head in the right direction, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is an older team that’s supposed to have been built to win a World Series now.
The Mets general manager, Billy Eppler, hired in November 2021, is the culprit largely responsible for this current disaster of a team. I have to imagine he’ll be looking for a new job shortly. Before being hired by New York, Eppler was fired after five seasons as GM of the Angels. The Angels had the best baseball player on the planet, Mike Trout, while Eppler was GM there, yet he was unable to build a decent team around him, and never managed to have a single winning season. Why the Mets higherups thought Eppler was the right person to manage Cohen’s massive wallet is a mystery.
Over the next coming weeks, I actually think the Mets offense may improve. Replacing some of the older players in the lineup who’ve struggled with the likes of Ronny Mauricio and/or Mark Vientos, both of whom have excelled this year in the minors, could help boost the team. The starting pitching though, will remain a huge issue, one too large to resolve with trades.
The Mets starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.38. While the return of Justin Verlander will likely help some, a team can’t expect to find much success with just one serviceable pitcher. Max Scherzer, the supposed Ace No. 2 on the team, appears to be basically done at this point in his career. You can pretty much expect that his season will now go back and forth between him pitching horribly and getting shellacked, followed by periods of him not playing due to whatever injury he can use for an excuse at that given time.
It's a long season, but the writing is already on the wall, and soon heads will roll. Steve Cohen gave Billy Eppler basically unlimited money to field the best team money could buy. He wound up with a team of geriatrics that’ll likely hover around .500 for the year. What a treat.