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Reflecting on the Mets’ Amazin’ 2024 Season

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Mets Merized Online 

The reason we gravitate to sports is for the story they tell. There’s always a hero to root for, the home team, a villain to make an enemy out of, and a journey to embark on. The 2024 Mets took us all on an epic journey, no doubt about it. While it wasn’t the ending many wanted, and it stings coming up short so close to glory, the future has never been brighter in Queens, and the story for this new era in Mets lore is just beginning.

There is little doubt the 2024 Mets will go down as one of the best teams in club history. Yes, they didn’t go all the way, and yes, they didn’t even make it to the World Series, but what made them so special was their ability to constantly defy the odds. There were almost zero expectations for this team entering the season. Going back to the trade deadline in 2023, former pitcher Max Scherzer said it best when discussing his conversation with owner Steve Cohen after his trade to the Texas Rangers. “He couldn’t promise me they would be all-in in 2024.” To Scherzer and the rest of the world, the message was clear: the Mets were entering a transition era, a semi-rebuilding era. After their short playoff stint in 2022, another trip seemed at least a few years off.

But that’s the thing about good stories; they take you places you least expect them to. After finally hiring his white whale in David Stearns as the first president of baseball operations in Mets history, the team turned their attention to finding a new manager. Rumors swirled it would be Stearns’ former co-worker Craig Counsell in Milwaukee, but he went to the Cubs, and the Mets went with Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza, another rookie manager. The winter passed with no splashy free agent signings, just a few trades and one-year and two-year deals.
They signed guys like Sean Manaea, Luis Severino and Harrison Bader, players looking for rebound years — essentially players with low risk and high upside. The stakes were low, as were expectations.

Photo by Brett Davis-Imagn Images

Rough Start

The 2024 season began as scripted, just not the Mets’ script. They started the season 0-5, finally earning their first win on a walk-off hit in the second game of a doubleheader. Then, of course, came the infamous glove toss heard around the world, leading to a he-said, he-said moment and team meeting that seemed to spark the team for a while. However, they eventually plummeted to 11 games under .500 and were ultimately fated as sellers once the trade deadline struck. However, that wasn’t the story these Mets wanted to tell.

Meme City

Grimace, OMG, Rally Pimp, Seymour Weiner, Glizzy Iggy, Playoff Pumpkin, and so many more “gimmicks” of the year – it would be wrong to pay homage to the 2024 season without giving a proper shoutout to these heroes. While some teams might laugh these things off, the Mets full-heartedly embraced every iteration that came their way along with their fans. Did they believe in the superstition? That’s for the players and fans to decide themselves. However, baseball is a game — these players know that. They love the game and the fans and want to go out and have fun.

Sean Manaea said it best in his postgame conference after Game 6 of the NLCS: “Super proud of everything we accomplished and nobody else I’d do it with.”

Whether it be taking pictures with the OMG sign post-home run or the pitchers having their celebration after an elite start, the memes, the gimmicks, or whatever you want to call them, they united this team and this fanbase in a way nobody could have expected.

A New Captain?

Once the team became a full-fledged unit, they were unstoppable. Since June 1, they had the best record in baseball (65-40), hit the fourth-most doubles (188), sixth-most homers (146), and scored fourth-most runs (528) and fourth-best OPS (.761). The energy completely shifted, and while many want to attribute it to Grimace’s first pitch on June 12, it all goes back to Lindor’s team meeting on May 29.

Francisco Lindor has had good seasons with the Mets since his trade from Cleveland in 2021 but produced his best season, an MVP-caliber season in 2024. He finished the campaign hitting .273/.344/.500/.844 with 33 homers, 91 RBIs, 39 doubles and 29 stolen bases. He was second in fWAR in the NL (7.8) to Shohei Ohtani (9.1). For reference, Aaron Judge led all of baseball with an 11.2 fWAR. Lindor missed a few weeks in September with a back issue but returned in time for vital series against the Brewers and Braves and the postseason, playing through pain and putting his body on the line. He became the de facto captain and led a group of underdogs.

Heroes are Born

With players going down for injury early in the season, Kodai Senga, Brooks Raley, and Drew Smith, players were forced to step up and contribute. While things may not have clicked early on, eventually, everyone had their moment. Sean Manaea turned into a bonafide ace, Luis Severino had a bounce-back year for the ages, and former first-round pick David Peterson finally emerged into the front-line starter he knew he could be.

Jose Iglesias and Jesse Winker, two under-the-radar moves, one a Minor League signing and one a trade deadline move, proved dividends for the Mets. Iglesias completely turned the culture around in Queens, introduced Candelita, and ended the season with a 22-game hitting streak. Meanwhile, Winker turned from foe to best friend, coming through in the clutch.

However, the most notable Cinderella story of 2024 came in the form of Mark Vientos. The slugger didn’t even make the club out of Spring Training with the addition of J.D. Martinez, but once he got his shot, he never looked back. He became a postseason hero, setting a new club record with 14 RBIs, passing Curtis Granderson and John Olerud (12). Vientos solidified himself as a mainstay, and the Mets finally found their successor to David Wright at third.

Polar Power

There’s no sugarcoating it. Pete Alonso had a rough walk-year. In what could be his final season as a New York Met, the slugger struggled with runners in scoring position, hitting a grim .232/.344/.417 with just seven homers in 2024. In 2023, he hit .257/.377/.541 and 12 homers with runners in scoring position. However, in the postseason, the Polar Bear came through. He hit .400/.563/1.000 with runners in scoring position and smacked two home runs. He became the first player to hit a go-ahead homer with his team trailing in the ninth in a winner-take-all-postseason game when he launched a three-run dinger off the Brewers’ Devin Williams in Game 3 of the Wild Card.

Alonso noted he hasn’t thought much about free agency and, “I’ve loved being a New York Met. I love representing the city of New York, I love representing Queens. This has been really special.” Time will tell what the future holds for the slugger, but if this is the last we’ve seen as the Polar Bear in a Mets uniform, he gave it his all and went out in the best way possible.

Comeback Kids

The special thing about underdogs is that they always find a way to surprise you when everyone thinks they’re out of it. In the last month of the season, the Mets kept finding ways to outdo themselves, taking turns playing walk-off hero, comeback hero, or just all-around player of the game. Everything started to click for them when they clinched a postseason berth during their final doubleheader in Atlanta — when Lindor smacked his go-ahead two-run homer to send the Mets to the playoffs. Then Alonso did it against Milwaukee, and Vientos did it against Philly. And Lindor did it against Philly. And so forth. While the Mets’ magic might’ve run off against the Dodgers, they gave everything they had at the end of the day and defeated division-champion juggernauts along the way to get to the point they did.

What’s Next?

SNY’s Gary Cohen said it best postgame about Carlos Mendoza. “He is going to go down as one of the great managers of all time. That’s how highly I think of him.” The future is incredibly bright for the Mets’ franchise and organization. After years of figuring out their guy, they got him. There were doubts about a rookie manager, but Mendoza has proven to be a man of the players, a man of the fans, and a man of the people. He’s not afraid to show emotion, unafraid to listen to his players, and most importantly, not afraid to own up to his mistakes. With David Stearns and Steve Cohen by his side, the Mets look unstoppable in the future.

Mendoza said it himself after the Game 6 loss, “This should be our expectation every year moving forward.” They got a taste, they know what it feels like, and there is no doubt this is just the beginning of a new dynasty in Queens and Mets baseball.

Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

What About the Players?

Everyone knows the quote, “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.” Unfortunately, we’ll most likely never see the same group of players play together again. That’s what made this 2024 team so special. However, the Mets have an undeniable new core, headlined by Francisco Lindor and Mark Vientos, along with Francisco Alvarez, Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil. The team is only getting younger, too. Jett Williams, Drew Gilbert, Ronny Mauricio, Brandon Sproat, Luisangel Acuña and Blade Tidwell all wait to make their names known in Queens.

Final Thoughts

This season was a rollercoaster journey. But this season should be remembered with smiles, joy, and hope. There was negativity, but at the end of the day, the Mets rose and shed an old layer of themselves to transform into something new.

Howie Rose finished the night saying, “I’ll just say this about the 2024 New York Mets: they made this 70-year-old feel 15 again.”

And that’s what it’s all about. That’s what this Mets team did. It gave hope. It differs from teams of the past in that sense. While I was sad at the moment, I left with hope for once, hope that we would be in this spot again sooner rather than later. Hope that we can get to the World Series again. Hope that 1986 won’t be the last time.

The post Reflecting on the Mets’ Amazin’ 2024 Season appeared first on Metsmerized Online.