2 Mets tricks and 2 treats handed out to the fans this year

Why open yourself up to the only options of offering a treat and receiving a trick if you don’t provide one? Halloween is a holiday set up for mischief. It’s a rarity for the day to include any talk of New York Mets baseball aside from a look ahead to the offseason.

Before October ends and the guy from Green Day has been awake for a full month, let’s knock on a door together and take a look at two of the biggest tricks and two of treats the fans received this year.

The fans had their houses toilet papered thinking the Mets starting rotation would carry them

Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander should have been enough to give the Mets all of the strength they needed in the rotation. Backed by Kodai Senga, Jose Quintana, Carlos Carrasco, and a cast of characters behind them to provide the club with depth, there was little doubt the Mets pitching would be a strength. This was the ultimate trick of the season. Mets starting pitching was not very good at all.

Scherzer was by far the biggest underachiever. Carrasco had the worst year of anyone. Verlander, while he started slowly, found his rhythm. It was too late. The Mets had fallen far enough out of the playoff race for the front office to consider them buyers.

It was a dangerous game for the Mets for much of the year with the starting rotation. Anticipated injuries weren’t easy to overcome because of how lousy David Peterson and Tylor Megill were early on. They were without Quintana for much of the season. By the time he did return, the Mets were already planning to sell.

The starting rotation should have given us a fat Reese’s pumpkin. Instead, it toilet papered our houses. Be hopeful there isn’t rain in the forecast before you take it down.

The fans had their pumpkins smashed by the Baby Mets

Francisco Alvarez was going to compete with Brett Baty for Rookie of the Year. Mark Vientos was going to put on a power display. Ronny Mauricio would play all over the field and win our hearts. None of it happened. It feels like our pumpkins have been smashed.

Alvarez did the least amount of tricking as he did establish himself as a power-hitting backstop whose ability to play the position is no longer in question. Just his ability to recognize the pitch clock is noteworthy for a young kid with so much else going on around him.

Vientos and Mauricio didn’t get enough of a look to call their parents about the pumpkin smashing trick they played on us. We saw much more of Vientos and the same exact questions about him remain. Mauricio, on the other hand, started off strongly only to taper off as the season came to a close.

The biggest trickster of all was Baty. Because the Mets did hand more starts at third base to Vientos and Mauricio in the final weeks, one has to wonder how they truly feel about him. David Stearns wasn’t in charge at the time and Buck Showalter has been removed from the managerial seat. It’s going to be tough for Baty to convince anyone he shouldn’t be in a competition to start next season. That’s if he doesn’t get traded first.

The fans found a “take as many as you want” bowl of candy provided by the front office change

Who are the neighbors fooling? The idea of leaving out a bowl with the “please take one” is a farce. Even the good kids who dress up as doctors or Ghostbusters will sneak a second. 

Mets fans got an even better treat from the front office. The turnover and hiring of David Stearns is like seeing a bowl on a neighbor’s porch with a sign reading “take as many as you want.” It’s permission to be bad.

An issue with the Mets since Steve Cohen took over has been the inconsistency in terms of who is in charge. Luis Rojas carried over from the Wilpon regime. The 2021 season alone set the team back with Jared Porter and Zack Scott both losing their general manager positions for non-baseball related reasons. The organization stabilized itself for 2022 but after 2023 both the newly hired Buck Showalter and the newest general manager, Billy Eppler, were gone.

Heads rolled as a result of the Mets playing as poorly as they did in 2023. It’s a treat for fans to see change. As much as Showalter probably didn’t deserve to get fired, the cycle would have continued if Stearns kept him. Eppler left under different circumstances which is probably for the best. Hiring a President of Baseball Operations would have sunk Eppler’s role downward and frankly, that’s not a position anyone deserves to be in.

We won’t get greedy and take the whole bowl from the neighbor’s porch. We’re just happy we don’t have to feel guilty about taking half of it thanks to the treat of seeing a new era of Mets baseball begin.