The 2024 Mets have moved on, just not to the World Series.
Last night, the 2024 Mets season came to an end. The Dodgers—a clearly superior team, assembled by the best organization in baseball—were too big an obstacle, particularly as every arm on the New York roster ran out of gas.
This was, from any perspective, an absurd season. The Mets were expected to be a team in transition and had an offseason that was anything but flashy. They then started 0-5, went 9-19 in May, were 17.5 games back in the division, and seemed to be cooked well ahead of the trade deadline.
Somehow, that same team wound up prompting Keith Raad to describe them as “a team that will not die,” a moniker they more than earned. They refused to die after their horrid start, spring boarding off a comeback win in London, an appearance by an ancillary McDonalds mascot, and the emergence of an unlikely pop star to stamp to the best record in baseball from June onwards.
They refused to die when forced to play a doubleheader in Atlanta the day after the season ended. They refused to die down 3-0 in the eighth, then again down 7-6 in the ninth, when Francisco Lindor hit a game-winning home run in “a game of the ages in Met history,” per Keith Hernandez. That win sent the Mets to the playoffs and played no small part in the Braves’ early playoff exit.
They refused to die down by two in the ninth in a winner-take-all Game 3 in Milwaukee, even with one of the best relievers in baseball on the mound against the struggling Pete Alonso. Instead of Pete’s Met career ending in a whimper, we got one of the biggest home runs (and arguably the best radio call) in team history and another comeback win.
They refused to die in all four NLDS games against the Phillies, dismantling one Philadelphia All-Star reliever after another to dispatch the division winners. Francisco Lindor somehow outdid his work in Atlanta, launching a series winning grand slam against Carlos Estévez—and giving us one of the greatest reaction GIFs in baseball history.
Even against the Dodgers, this Met team didn’t really die. Sure, they got blown out multiple times, but they punched back with two sizable wins of their own. They avoided the gentleman’s sweep and avoided watching another team clinch at Citi Field (again). Even in the decisive Game 6, the Mets rallied after being down 6-1 to keep the game briefly in reach, then put together a mini-rally in the ninth down 10-4. Yes, they came up well short, but that spirit is emblematic of the fight this team demonstrated for most of the season.
In the course of a few weeks, the 2024 Mets delivered multiple all-time moments, each drenched in the undeniable, effervescent magic that keeps us coming back for more baseball. It’s the kind of season that makes 70-year-old Howie Rose “feel 15 all over again” (incidentally, Howie Rose was 15 in 1969).
Going into Game 6, I was content—how could one ask for more than what this team had already given? That contentedness held until the music began to play Howie off for a final time this season, giving way to a sadness that seemed all too familiar. But as Thomas Henderson pointed out in our group chat, this wasn’t the usual feeling after a frustrating Mets loss or a season wasted. Instead, for the first time in a long while, quite possibly the first time in either of our fandom, we were sad not because the team lost, but because there wasn’t more left.
One of the greatest follies of baseball fandom is the assumption that a team’s success one season will be expanded on the next, that you’ll get another shot, that next time, things will work out. As Gary Cohen talked on SNY’s postgame show, this is exactly the message he delivered, comparing the 2024 team to the 1984 or 1999 iterations who fell just short before finding later success.
Unfortunately, things are rarely ever that simple. Free agency, trades, injuries, the inexorable march of time, and the inherent randomness of the game we spend six months (and often more) of the year obsessing over conspire to pull down all but the best organizations as they pursue consecutive deep playoff runs. Faced with a universal rule like this, it’s dangerously optimistic to assume your team will be the exception.
Yet the Mets do feel different. Objectively, this team has the richest individual owner in the sport (one who seems to be telling anyone who will listen that he intends to sign Juan Soto) and one of the best presidents of baseball ops, and they consistently demonstrated improved organizational processes this season while reaping the rewards of several nice player development wins (e.g., Mark Vientos, David Peterson). Subjectively…well, go back and read the story of their season again.
The 2024 team is gone. The 2025 team will be different, perhaps vastly so. But no, this team didn’t really ever die. It’s just moved on, and the moments it’s left us and the organization as a whole will stay with us for a long long while.