The start of the MLB season is always a fun time, but Mets fans will have a lot to cheer about this year.
Opening Day is met with an addictive feeling of unbridled joy and boundless optimism. The beauty of Opening Day is that, no matter what happened last season, every team wakes up with the same record: 0-0. A blank slate. Baseball fans are free to let their wildest dreams run wild. Anything is possible—okay, maybe the White Sox won’t be winning the World Series. Better luck next season, Chicago.
Opening Day signals the return of warm weather, trees and flowers blooming, and generally brighter days—literally and metaphorically. For all these reasons and more, Opening Day is my single favorite day on the calendar year. It is the start of a six-month commitment to having a baseball team from Queens dictate my emotions.
As Mets fans, we have endured far too many seasons where we knew heading into Opening Day that the club had little-to-no championship prospects. The excitement of Opening Day would last only for a few fleeting moments before the reality of bad baseball would smack us square in the face. It didn’t dampen the feeling of a fresh, new baseball season, but by mid-April, reality would set in and the excitement would wain. This was the reality of the Wilpon-era Mets of my formative years.
Then came Steve Cohen purchasing the team from the Wilpons at the start of the decade. With this came his promise of making the Mets a perennial contender, with Cohen going so far as to promise a championship in the first 3-5 years. While it hasn’t always been a smooth ride, Rome certainly was not built in a day, and Cohen and company have been meticulous about building the Mets into the kind of franchise where the optimism of Opening Day came with actual expectations and a sense of exciting (and winning) baseball to follow.
So going into 2025, in Year 5 of the Steve Cohen era, there’s a little extra dose of excitement and optimism heading into Opening Day. It’s evident in the announcement that the Mets have sold all of their season ticket packages. It’s displayed in the confidence of the players saying they view this as a team that will aim to always be on top and will no longer play second fiddle in New York. It’s apparent in the abundance of experts picking the Mets to win the division, the pennant, and the World Series. All of this speaks to a seismic shift in the basic definition of who the Mets are and where they fit within the baseball landscape.
There’s two big reasons why excitement is through the non-existent Citi Field roof. Let’s begin with the obvious: the Mets signed Juan Soto. We have talked ad nauseum about this signing and the impact of Soto switching boroughs, so I won’t take up too much space on the subject. But just the magnitude of signing a player of his caliber at his age to that deal with that level of competition for his services is a pendulum swing moment that the franchise has not experienced in a very long time, if ever. And more than anything, it speaks to Queens become a baseball destination, a place players can be proud to call home. We saw it in the post-Piazza bump, the post-Beltran/Martinez bump, and the post-Lindor bump, but when you win the offseason by landing a star of this magnitude, it translates to increased enthusiasm (whether it translates to wins and championships remains to be seen).
But I would argue landing a big star isn’t enough on its own. But Soto’s arrival, paired with he absolute fever dream that was the 2024 Mets, has all the makings of a special 2025 in Flushing. We’ve also talked ad nauseum about how truly special and unique the 2024 Mets season was, from OMG to Grimace to Playoff Pumpkins to the magical run from 0-5 to within two wins of the Fall Classic. It’s a season Mets fans haven’t experienced in almost a decade—it’s truly how the 101-Mets season of 2022 should have felt, but instead the ending of that season led to a palpable lack of excitement heading into 2023.
The vibes from 2024 had a noticeable carry-over into the offseason and stuck with fans all through the cold winter months. And now, after waiting out sub-freezing temperatures and snowy days, the thaw has officially concluded with the return of baseball. Whereas last year was a pleasant surprise, the Mets have made it clear with the addition of Soto that this is not a team that will sneak up on people. This team fully expects to be one of the best in baseball, and the fans should expect the same.
There’s so much to look forward to for this upcoming season. This could very well be the best Mets lineup of my lifetime—at the very least, the best lineup, top to bottom, this team has put together since 2006. Kodai Senga, who was a delight to watch in a lost 2023 season, will be back, and with it comes Sega Genesis sound effects and Ghost emojis on the Citi Field big screen, but also some great pitching. Their rotation, in general, is highly underrated, and if David Stearns’ ability to find diamonds in the rough and get the most out of overlooked pitchers comes through as it did last year, this rotation could be special. Getting to watch Pete Alonso break the franchise’s single-season home run record will also be a momentous moment, for both the organization and for fans young and old.
And most importantly, the Mets should be good. Anything can happen in a given season, but this team showed us last year that they have a lot of talent and are driven by good vibes. That same team, generally speaking, is coming back, and the addition of Soto should help considerably. The Mets will be in one of baseball’s most competitive divisions, and I would argue that it’ll only make the season more exciting to watch the Mets battle tooth and nail with the Braves and Phillies for six months. Every win and every loss will be magnified. Every game will be significant.
That’s all you can hope for as a fan of any baseball team. And as a Mets fan who has entered far too many Opening Days with nothing but false hope, it feels good—really good—to have real expectations. Buckle up. This is where the fun begins.