NY Mets: Social media is the friend and foe of the 2021 season

How do you feel about social media? I have a tough time finding anyone who actually respects the medium in any format. People have gotten comfortable feeling anonymous on the internet to the point where their barbaric roots are often unleashed—many times yelling about the New York Mets or whichever team it is they follow most.

The Mets sure seem to be one of the more active teams on social media and other similar platforms you might not actually consider the same as Facebook or Twitter. Mets players are some of the most interactive in the sport, not always with the best results.

The same can be said about the literal seven nation army of Mets beat writers. New York City has more sports beat writers than anywhere else in the country and each newspaper has a Mets beat writer or two. Add in an active owner on Twitter, millions of passionate fans, and national reporters with some thoughts on the club and we get a mix in all of personalities and opinions from people of all walks of life. Things eventually go boom.

Social media has the potential to be an infamous Mets villain

Pete Rose. Mike Scott. Chipper Jones. Freddie Freeman. Chase Utley. Yadier Molina. There are so many Mets villains. I enjoy looking at baseball from this perspective of good guys and bad guys. It makes any story that much more entertaining. In the end, that’s all the sport is—entertainment. Are you not entertained?

There is a new generation of ballplayers in the major leagues. These are the kids who grew up on social media. They can’t live without it.

Taking a page out of Cher’s book, Pete Alonso retired from social media only to come back after a few months for another tour. He’s not quite as active as he used to be, but continues to stay vocal and put out videos in some format for promotional purposes.

Noah Syndergaard has always been the king of MLB social media, often firing off tweets or Instagram images that get people laughing, talking, or cringing. He has had more time than ever to build his following. He hasn’t pitched a major league game since September 2019.

Then there’s Marcus Stroman. Easily the most active social media user the Mets have, he got into a little tiff with Mets beat writer Tim Healey (where have we heard this before) on Twitter this past week. Healey sent off an interesting yet unnecessary tweet about Stroman’s active Twitter account shortly after the Mets lost another game.

I support my fellow Tim B’s who write about the Mets (he is Tim B Healey after all, and let’s not forget about Tim Britton) and I’m equally as annoyed about how people behave on social media. But I also understand there’s a time to pick a fight and a time to just report the story.

Stroman’s response came in reply to yet another Tim:

The timing of all of this couldn’t have been better (or worse) as it all occurred around Steve Cohen’s decision to call out his club for failing to hit. It was an active day for Mets news on Twitter. Resulting in positive results that day, it had the potential to be a self-destructive message to the clubhouse.

Noah Syndergaard had a newsworthy week on social media. First, he was critical of the Mets having to play a night game on Sunday before traveling to the West Coast. A few days later, as they were departing from San Francisco, he got a little profane and shared an image of a homeless man with his rear end hanging out. Syndergaard read the room late and deleted the image after some backlash.

I think both were a case of Thor having some cabin fever from not being able to play.

We live in some strange days. News is 24/7 and we can get it straight from the source in 240 characters or less.

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I’m not quite ready to fully demonize the Mets’ use of social media because it has become engrained in our culture. However, after the last week alone, I miss the days where players and owners were a little more mysterious.