New York Mets: Five failed Mets reunions with former players

These five reunions between players and the New York Mets didn’t work out well for a variety of reasons.

Reunions are either a really good thing or something we all dread. Whether it be a class reunion, family reunion, or the reunion of the New York Mets and a former player of theirs, the results are usually leaning far to one side.

I didn’t come here to talk about who gained weight from high school or which relative of mine I least look forward to seeing. I’m here to take a look at some of the worst reunions made by the Mets over the years.

For the sake of this list, I’m not going to include players that signed offseason deals after immediately playing with the team. So there’s no Yoenis Cespedes on this list.

Also not included will be current Mets since we don’t know exactly how these reruns will go. Those looking for Jeurys Familia or Todd Frazier on the list will be searching long.

Honorable Mentions

Not appearing on the official list but worthy of some recognition are David Cone, Carlos Gomez, and Jason Vargas. These three honorable, or dishonorable mentions, reunited with the Mets with less than impressive results.

Cone was at the tail-end of his career and just trying to stay alive in Major League Baseball. More than a full decade after last pitching for the Mets, Cone gave them 18 innings and a 6.50 ERA in 2003.

Gomez is the most recent of the three to appear with the club. In 2019, he had 99 plate appearances and a .199 batting average. He had played for them briefly in his first big league season back in 2007 before getting traded to the Minnesota Twins as part of the package for Johan Santana.

Then there’s Vargas. Another guy that played briefly for the Mets in his early years, Vargas pitched 10.1 innings for them back in 2007. When he returned, he gave the team one very bad year and a mediocre half-season. Plus he threatened to punch a beat writer.

Failed Mets Reunion with Jason Bay

What I will include on this list is anyone that spent time with the organization even if they never did crack the big league roster. In which case, Jason Bay more than qualifies.

Bay may hold the franchise record for appearing on the most “worst” lists. Everything about his stint in Flushing was dreadful. Something many people didn’t realize is that in early 2002, Bay was actually a Mets prospect with bright eyes and a big league future ahead of him.

Acquired in late March of 2002 from the Montreal Expos, Bay spent the first half of the season on the farm hoping to one day call Shea Stadium home. He didn’t get enough time to develop in their system. The Mets traded him on July 31 to the San Diego Padres.

Bay wouldn’t return to the Mets until December 29, 2009, when he signed his massive contract with the club. In three seasons with the Mets, he turned in a pitiful slash line of .234/.318/.369. Bay smashed just 26 home runs which were ten fewer than he hit the season prior with the Boston Red Sox.

Combine the bad contract with poor play and a lot of missed time due to injuries, Bay’s reunion with the Mets may have been one of the worst—and many people didn’t even realize it was a reunion because he was with the organization for such a brief period of time.

The history of Bay and the Mets never ceases to amaze me. Just when you think you can finally read a worst list without him on it, you discover he’s there.

Failed Mets Reunion with Bobby Bonilla

Bobby Bonilla’s first tour with the Mets came with plenty of hype. He was an All-Star player about to make a fortune with an orange and blue “NY” emblem at the top of his paychecks.

The results were not fantastic. He hit .249 in his first season and the club was clearly heading in the wrong direction. Despite an All-Star season from him in 1993 with a34 home runs, the team had one of its worst years in franchise history.

Bonilla’s time with the Mets from 1992-1995 was disappointing. However, the reunion with his former club in 1999 was far worse.

Following a year and a half with the Baltimore Orioles, a World Series-winning campaign in 1997 with the Florida Marlins, and then a half-season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Bonilla found himself back at Shea Stadium. His 1999 season was painful. In 141 plate appearances, he slashed .160/.277/.303. He was released the following January.

With Bonilla, things get a little more complicated. The deferred money on his contract with the Mets is often the laughing-stock of the Major League Baseball world whether it’s July 1st or not. Even if every organization does this now, Bonilla is somehow the poster boy for paying players millions of dollars well after they’ve retired.

The failed Bonilla reunion left a different kind of sting on the franchise. It showed ineptitude of the ownership and made the franchise a joke.

Even after a bad first stint with the club, the Mets thought that maybe Bonilla’s second might turn out better. It didn’t and we’re still hearing about it two decades later.

Failed Mets Reunion with Jay Bruce

A little more recent of a reunion, the Mets brought Jay Bruce back to Flushing after a short layover with the Cleveland Indians. The club traded him at the 2017 deadline only to re-sign him again in the offseason.

Bruce’s time with the Mets had its ups and downs. When the team landed him at the 2016 trade deadline, it took him a while to get comfortable. He went on to slash .219/.294/.391 in 50 games played.

The 2017 season was much better for the veteran slugger. In 448 trips to the plate, Bruce slashed .256/.321/.520 with 29 home runs and 75 RBI. Given a chance to play out a full season with the club, he may have set a franchise home run record.

The 2018 return wasn’t so wonderful. Bruce was hurt for about half the season and there didn’t seem to be any obvious place for him to play. In his 361 plate appearances for the 2018 Mets, he slugged only 9 home runs and slashed .223/.310/.370. The production was far less than what Sandy Alderson was hoping for from this reunion.

Bruce’s time with the Mets ended sooner than expected. He was part of the infamous Brodie Van Wagenen trade with the Seattle Mariners that brought Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz to New York. Of course, it also cost the Mets some notable prospects.

Round two of Bruce in Flushing worked out poorly for the one season he stuck around. He has since gone on to put up similar numbers with the Mariners and Philadelphia Phillies with the former paying his salary.

Failed Mets Reunion with Jon Niese

Some will argue that Jon Niese’s first stint with the Mets from 2008-2015 was already a bad one. I would disagree with this. Although he was never a top starter in their rotation, he gave them several quality years even when the team wasn’t winning a whole lot of games.

Niese’s time with the Mets came to a close after the 2015 season when he was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for infielder Neil Walker. Niese was coming off a 9-10 season with a 4.13 ERA. In need of a replacement for Daniel Murphy, the Mets were able to move on from a starting pitcher.

Niese didn’t have too much success in Pittsburgh. In 18 starts and five relief appearances, Niese went 8-6 with a 4.91 ERA. He didn’t last all year because in mid-2016 he was traded back to the Mets.

The reunion didn’t work out well, but you already knew that. All of these reunions ended badly.

Niese made a pair of starts and four more relief appearances for New York. In those 11 innings, he went 0-1 with an 11.45 ERA. The acquisition didn’t provide the Mets with much more than someone to eat up a few innings down the stretch.

This also marked the end of Niese’s big league career. He has bounced around with several ball clubs in the years since but has yet to make it back to the show.

Expectations were much lower for the Niese reunion than they were some others on this list. For our final failed reunion, let’s explore the time when one of the greats in Mets history came back and things didn’t go so well.