MIAMI — Inside the cozy space of a visiting clubhouse Sunday, shortly after 6 p.m. in Miami and midnight in their season, the Mets embarked on that other kind of handshake line.
Not the one on the field to celebrate a win, but the quieter one to punctuate a season — sharing hugs, backslaps and whispered words of encouragement for the winter to come, for a winter that has come too soon.
The Mets lost to the Marlins 4-0 Sunday. Their season ended alongside those of 17 other teams Sunday, roughly a month earlier than expected.
“There’s no words to describe what we’re going through,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “It’s pain. It’s frustration.”
Tell me what it’s like to be a Mets fan.
“Pissed. Sad. Frustrated,” Mendoza continued. “You name it.”
The word Mendoza’s players used, more than any other, was “failure.”
“Anytime you don’t make it to the playoffs or win a championship, it’s a failure,” said Juan Soto in assessing his first season in Queens. “That’s how we look at it, and that’s how we’ll go through the offseason.”
“I failed at the job, I failed the mission,” Francisco Lindor said. “It was on us, on me, on the players to get it done. We didn’t execute. We didn’t get it done. It sucks.”
“There’s no other way to sugarcoat it,” said Pete Alonso, after perhaps his final game with the organization. “Super-talented team and we didn’t even get to October.”
Juan Soto put it bluntly: “Anytime you don’t make it to the playoffs or win a championship, it’s a failure.” (Tomas Diniz Santos / Getty Images)
The Mets spent last autumn exorcising demons and this fall conjuring new ones to take their place. Well-versed in the art of the quick collapse, they experimented with a more gradual variety, one that grows in the pit of your stomach over months instead of weeks. It was less like watching a building implode and more like a time-lapse of erosion; you knew where it was going but always hoped it would stop.
They had the best record in baseball through June 12, 21 games clear of .500. They were nine games in the clear for a playoff spot, and they held a playoff position for 174 of the 186 days in the season. They didn’t on the only day that matters.
The game is designed to hurt you; only one team out of 30 finishes the season as a true success. Nevertheless, the Mets lean into that late-season pain more than anyone else. This is the fourth time in the past 28 years that they’ve missed the postseason because of a loss on the final day of the season, joining 1998, 2007 and 2008. That is more than any other team.
As novel as a collapse spread over 108 days — one for each stitch on the ball — was, this year’s final weekend felt freakishly familiar. As in 2007 and 2008, the Mets entered a final series against the Marlins in control of their destiny. As in those two seasons, they lost it with a Friday loss, rebounded with a standout Saturday pitching performance, and blew it on Sunday when a win would have extended their season.
What rankles even more about 2025 is that, in other late-season swoons, the Mets have at least been tracked down by an adversary. The ’07 Phillies and Rockies, the ’08 Brewers, the ’22 Braves — those teams earned postseason berths with sparkling play late. No offense to the Reds, but they caught the Mets with a 14-11 September, a 33-32 second half, a 48-45 record since they were a season-worst 10 games behind New York in June.
They caught the Mets despite losing on Sunday in Milwaukee — the result the Mets needed to sneak into the postseason themselves.
“That one,” Brandon Nimmo said while holding off a grim chuckle, “was a nice little cherry on top for the sting, knowing it was within your grasp and all you had to do was win that last game.”
There is enough blame for this collapse to spread across the organization, to everyone in that handshake line on Sunday. David Stearns’ pitching staff failed in the second half of the season, and his trade-deadline acquisitions thudded. Mendoza and his coaching staff proved incapable of steering the team out of the skid, the way they had last season.
“I take responsibility,” Mendoza said. “It starts with me. I’ve got to take a long look at how I need to get better. That was the messaging to the whole team: This is unacceptable.”
And the players failed, in ways big and small. They made physical and mental mistakes. Twice on Sunday, in the most important game of the season, Mets players forgot the count. Too often, they were at their worst in the biggest moments. Sunday, they finished 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position.
“The coaches can do what they can do, but ultimately, all responsibility comes back on us. Anything that did or did not happen on the field, that comes down to us,” said Nimmo. “We’re the ones that should take the blame for that.”
“We didn’t do a good job of covering each other’s miscues,” Alonso said. “The devil’s in the details.”
“As players, we are responsible and accountable for what goes down on a daily basis,” said Lindor, whose double-play grounder ended the season. “We didn’t get it done.”
And so begins a long winter of reflection, of frustration, of fuel.
“We have everything we need,” Soto said. “That’s the only thing we have to change: Win games.”
(Top photo of Francisco Alvarez: Sam Navarro / Imagn Images)