A NY Mets Opening Day roster blunder they won’t relive in 2025

Every New York Mets Opening Day roster seems to have at least one frustrating element to it. In 2024, the redundancy on the bench with the presence of Joey Wendle and Zack Short was it.

Wendle wasn’t a terrible addition—at least looking at it on paper or digital NFT. Remember those? I hope you didn’t fall into buying one.

Wendle underperformed and Short barely had an impact in any format. He was a waiver addition the team never improved upon. Bill Murray won’t be waking up on Opening Day 2025 and experience the same thing all over again. The Mets have already assured us the bench won’t be that bad.

The Mets already have a better plan on the bench than they did last year

Whether it’s Luisangel Acuna, Brett Baty, Nick Madrigal, or some combination of two of those players on the bench to begin the year, they’re all more acceptable than last year’s twosome of Wendle and Short. Youth on their side plus some terrific Triple-A numbers from the latter two to go along with the potential of what Acuna can offer, we can feel confident the Mets won’t be carrying dead weight on the roster in those roles to begin the year.

Best of all, there’s no commitment to any of them. All three have minor league options remaining. The Mets can quickly pull the cord on any of those three without concern over losing the guy on the waiver wire. Madrigal is a much different player and not necessarily one they’d need to feel any sort of commitment to. Acuna and Baty, on the other hand, remain big-time young players we’re hoping prove themselves at the big league level.

As if that wasn’t enough, the Mets have Ronny Mauricio coming back. It’s a whole lot of unknown but with upside. They didn’t have that with Wendle and Short. Each was very “blah.” They performed down to those expectations. Guaranteed major league contracts for each, in particular with Wendle, allowed him to stick around longer to further outstay his welcome.

The team hasn’t completely avoided adding players of this ilk. To make room for Madrigal, the team designated Luis De Los Santos for assignment. Never someone we should have taken seriously to actually make the ball club or even occupy a 40-man roster spot in the regular season, consider the direction they’ve gone this year as a small lesson learned from the failures of last year.