If hope springs eternal on Opening Day, the day after the end of the baseball season is over is bittersweet. That describes what a good number of Mets fans are feeling today after the 10-5 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the decisive Game 6 of the National League Championship Series on Sunday.
There’s a popular quote that really encapsulates today for Mets fans: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
Perhaps my feelings are overly-colored by working in sports for a decade, and losing that piece of my fandom in which I live and die with the team every day. As a younger fan I would have been heartbroken by the team falling just shy of the World Series – and it still undoubtedly still stings a little. But in thinking of all the unexpected turns that the 2024 Mets season consisted of, I find myself smiling about it all.
Howie Rose has compared this season to the feel of 1984 with a young team and a solid lead executive and manager combination, and said that it made him feel like he was 15 again. And that is the true magic of this season. Not only did this club defy expectations to push the mighty Dodgers to six games in the NLCS, but they were so much fun to follow.
Beyond the breakout campaigns from Mark Vientos and David Peterson, the MVP-level season from Francisco Lindor, Jose Iglesias topping the music charts and posting one of the best single-season batting averages in franchise history, and of course the Grimace experience, this was such a likeable team. There were smiles, good chemistry, and Citi Field was rocking again. A year that was supposed to be a rebuilding year resulted in one of the most magical seasons in franchise history.
But it still stings to wake up today knowing the Mets season is over. The loss to Los Angeles didn’t quite have the same bad aftertaste as falling to St. Louis in 2006 or Atlanta in 1999. In some ways a decisive five-run loss is better than Yadier Molina hitting a late home run off Aaron Heilman or Kenny Rogers walking in the winning run. The Dodgers had a super team, and were the better team in the series and in the season. The NL has been chasing the Dodgers for 10 years now, and no one has sustainably matched them.
This season gives you the hope that maybe the Mets can be the team that does it. Not only is there a young nucleus of homegrown talent, but with some $200 million set to come off the payroll according to Cot’s Contracts, there is a unique opportunity to re-make the roster for a long-term run. Maybe that means re-signing Pete Alonso and/or signing Juan Soto to the second-richest contract in the sport, maybe not. There are many questions to answer this offseason, but one that seems pretty settled is that the club is trending in the right direction.
David Stearns showed a level of competence as an executive that the Mets hadn’t had since the first few years of Sandy Alderson’s first tenure as GM. Despite some rookie manager growing pains, Carlos Mendoza established himself as one of the great young skippers in baseball. Rose’s opinion that this year’s Mets are like the ’84 club with their young nucleus that wasn’t quite ready to make the next big step may turn out to be right. Hopefully it is.
But even if it isn’t, the joy of the 2024 Mets was in the journey, not necessarily the destination which was two wins shy of the World Series. The “win the World Series or the season was a failure” mentality that fans of the team in the Bronx have is bunk. A season that falls short of that can bring joy, just like the ’24 Mets. Those “all or nothing” fans might look down on that attitude, but I feel bad for them in that case. There is immense joy in the journey that was this Mets season, and that deserves to be celebrated.