NY Mets Monday Morning GM: The band needs to break up

Now is the winter of our discontent. Not really. I’ve just never used that phrase before. And it fits, a little bit, with what lies ahead for the New York Mets. Their winter has already begun and surely you feel a little bit of discontent to see it come to a conclusion as scheduled.

October will be the month where Mets coverage all of the world from Flushing to Bora Bora will recap what we just witnessed but also look ahead to what the team needs to do.

Whatever you believe about this organization, there’s a ton of work to be done. Finishing below .500 is inexcusable. This is precisely why it’s important to break up the band.

Every Mets free agent wants to come back but the front office needs to be their Yoko Ono

It has been reported multiple places how many of the upcoming Mets free agents would like to be with the team in 2022. I don’t really blame them. It’s a decent situation to be in. Plus, they don’t have to move or anything. More importantly, it’s just a good thing to say you want to be back.

Core members of the franchise are headed to free agency for the first time this winter. Michael Conforto and Noah Syndergaard are the two mainstays we could see depart. Equally as important if not more so is the free agency status of stars Javier Baez and Marcus Stroman. Add in the rest of the free agent crop plus the ill-fitting trade candidates and we have a club where a whole lot of players could be on the move one way or another.

We saw this current front office regime undergo a major overhaul last winter. They cleaned up the mess started by Brodie Van Wagenen—or at least attempted to. There is only so much bleach you can pour on a bad bullpen before the smell overwhelms you.

Theoretically, if all the Mets did was come back in 2022 with the same roster but healthy, they might look like a capable team. A full year of Jacob deGrom improves their chances drastically. The same goes for Syndergaard and Baez. How can this club possibly not compete with these guys having average years?

That’s where the problem lies. Very few players on the 2021 club met their personal mean. It couldn’t possibly happen again, could it?

A lot went wrong for the 2021 Mets. Much was out of their control. You never can tell who will or won’t get hurt. Still, it’s not a good enough excuse. There is none when you lose your spot atop the division in early August after holding onto it for so long.

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As good as the team might look on paper with everyone returning, it’s not going to work. By no means should the franchise blow it all up and start anew. Instead, they need to once again reassess themselves. The best players aren’t always the right ones.