3 ways this Mets season hasn’t gone as scripted

You can’t script baseball even if you have Kevin Costner involved in the project. This year’s New York Mets season hasn’t gone as planned—maybe for the better.

The Mets are in first place and have been for much of 2022. How they’ve done it is a mix of the stars stepping up and role players inching forward into bigger gigs. Usually we can expect things like this to happen throughout the year. However, like with all screenplays, there are rewrites and studios that have other plans in mind.

Not everything has gone the way fans planned. For better or worse, there have been revisions.

1) NY Mets haven’t had their back-to-back aces for the first two acts

The Mets were going to win the division and maybe more on the backs of Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer stepping on the hill on back-to-back days throughout the season. Maybe there would be a minor injury or two. Instead, it took deGrom until more than halfway through the year before he even made his season debut.

Scherzer also missed some time, leaving the Mets with zero aces. That is unless you consider Taijuan Walker’s year or what Chris Bassitt has given them or even the reliability David Peterson or Trevor Williams have offered.

Aces can be useful. It definitely should feel good to have deGrom and Scherzer on this roster. But it wasn’t that duo that carried the Mets through most of 2022. It was everyone else.

The deGrom to Scherzer or vice versa on the probable pitchers list will give New York an advantage most clubs don’t have when it comes to the postseason. Put any other rotation against this one, it’s tough to beat the Amazins.

If the Mets season was a screenplay, the late arrival of the deGrom-Scherzer duo could be a twist for the final act. In this case, an unexpected hero arrives to help the good guys.

2) NY Mets made indie films, not summer blockbusters at the trade deadline

The moves the Mets made at the MLB trade deadline made some waves yet they hardly sounded the alarms. None of the other teams would have been wise to run for cover. The Mets got better, just not significantly so unless those additions all get used properly.

Say what you will about the Mets’ trade deadline strategy, they did get better. It would have benefitted them to add another bullpen arm and possibly getting a slightly better bat. The Daniel Vogelbach/Darin Ruf duo still needs to stand the test of time.

Mets fans figured, with the team in full win-now mode, that at least one of the major prospects would get dealt for an additional bat. Would they upgrade the catcher spot with Willson Contreras? Was Josh Bell headed to New York?

There were a ton of options. When the clock struck 6pm and there was only a slim chance of more trade deadline news to flow out from reporters, fans were left scratching their heads. This was like knocking the bad guy off a balcony and when you go down to check on him, he’s gone.

Results are what ultimately determine whether or not the trade deadline moves were the right ones. We’ll need a bit more time to know for sure whether the Mets missed or hit it big.