By Dominic Capone
Calling the New York Mets’ season a disappointment would be too lenient. Preseason predictions labeled them World Series contenders, but they grossly underachieved. Finishing the 2017 campaign 20 games under .500 is an indicator that many things have gone wrong within the organization. Obviously, when most of the team is obliterated by injuries it’s easy to see why they are in this position.
The Mets, as a whole, haven’t helped their cause with some of the questionable moves they made this season. It all started in the offseason when Noah Syndergaard decided to go against team orders and added nearly 20 pounds of muscle. He already threw 100 miles per hour with a mid-90s slider, but he wanted to throw faster. This was a recipe for disaster and early on in the season he went down with bicep tendinitis and a torn lat muscle in his right arm.
This could have been avoided if the Mets organization actually managed their players. Later on, it was reported that the Mets wanted to give Syndergaard an MRI as a precaution, but he declined it. As an employee of the New York Mets, he technically has to have an MRI if the team wants him to. The Mets decided to listen to their player and it came back to shoot them in the foot, as they essentially lost their star pitcher for the year.
There were other embarrassing moments for the Mets as well. They posted a picture on their official social media account of catcher T.J. Rivera and in the background was a sex toy in Kevin Plawecki’s locker. Another disappointing moment was when Mr. Met, their mascot, was caught flipping off a fan. Their once star pitcher, Matt Harvey, was suspended as he failed to show up to a game without properly notifying the team. This led to many public announcements by the team in which they failed to notify the media with what exactly Harvey was suspended for.
The lowest moment for the Mets came this past week. Everybody in the baseball world has expected the Mets’ manager, Terry Collins, to be fired after the season. It was even reported that Sandy Alderson, the Mets’ general manager wanted to fire Terry Collins multiple times over his seven-year tenure but was overruled by owner Fred Wilpon.
Recently, an anonymous source within the organization came out and bashed Terry Collins. Collins came out and said that he had no intentions of retiring and wanted to remain the manager of the Mets. Executives in the organization wanted this process to be as smoothly as possible, but Collins put the pressure on the Mets by saying he has no intentions of leaving.
This led to someone in the organization criticizing Collins publicly, making the whole organization look weak. They want the bad perception of him out there so it looks like they had to fire him because of that. It is total disrespect to a man that’s been there for seven years and led them to a World Series appearance. This is just a classless move by the Mets. Everybody already knew they were going to fire him at the end of the season. They didn’t want the pressure on them, and in the end, it backfired as everyone saw right through their games and now are criticizing the Mets organization. Leave it to the Mets to make an easy firing look dysfunctional and classless.
