No NY Mets player may better represent more missed opportunities than David Robertson

David Robertson announced his retirement. Hey, good for you! At 40, it’s time to hang up the cleats. Briefly a member of the New York Mets, his place in the team’s history will be a blip.

He does seem to represent something for those who lived through the last few seasons of Mets baseball. He’s a multitude of missed opportunities.

David Robertson is the great Mets reliever that never happened

Robertson was signed prior to the 2023 season and pitched excellently in his 40 games spanning 44 innings. An ERA of 2.05 with 14 saves, the missed chance in that year is two-fold.

Robertson was meant to be a setup man, not closer. The Edwin Diaz injury in the WBC pushed the Mets into a situation where Robertson and Adam Ottavino briefly shared the closer duties. Robertson won it running away. What could the team have looked like with that three-headed monster potential?

Much of the 2023 Mets season was a wasted opportunity. The team should’ve been much better. Their decision to sell at the trade deadline, beginning with Robertson, executed the plan of winning a championship with a roster full of mercenaries. The trade involving Robertson yielded them two low-level prospects. Briefly, Ronald Hernandez and Marco Vargas were looking like steals from the Miami Marlins. In 2025, they did steal a lot of bases, but did very little hitting.

Could the Mets have gotten a better deal, for a less controllable player albeit lower ceiling, for Robertson?

Those are just the missed opportunities with Robertson. What about all of those times they didn’t get him?

A more vague match at the 2022 trade deadline when he went to the Philadelphia Phillies, the Mets would have benefited from starting their three-headed monster plan a year early. Robertson helped the Phillies immensely in their unorthodox run to a World Series. Certainly a candidate to reunite with after the year, the change in the front office had David Stearns buying less expensive relievers.

Robertson would never have his reunion tour with the Mets. It was in mid-2025 when he was unsigned that the talks of a reunion returned. He waited out the offseason and decided he’d prefer to sign with a contender around the trade deadline. Would it be the Mets? No. The Phillies won the sweepstakes again. It’s complete hindsight to say the Mets would have been better off with him than Ryan Helsley so I won’t. Instead, they would have been better off with Helsley and Robertson.

There’s a first thought with everyone years after suiting up for the Mets. With Robertson, it’s going to be “oh yeah, he had a good few months then the team tanked.” Along with it are all of those times they could have gotten him and maybe actually won something.