loading . . . The Mets Went Out Like Chumps The New York Mets—slowly and surely, improbably and inexorably—crashed out of the playoff race, and now there are no more games left to get back in it. This in itself is not unique. Many teams miss the playoffs. Some miss the playoffs every year! Likewise, there have been previous rosters that have found their Octobers surprisingly free despite an ownership hellbent on spending for hardware, possibly even to the level of the Mets' $340 million or so payroll, once inflation has been accounted for. There have even been nosedives as steep as New York's, which saw them go from the sport's best record in June to a mere 83 wins when all the beans were counted.
Perhaps Mets fans would be feeling a little better today about the long winter ahead if it had just been the collapse; the three-and-a-half monthlong fracturing, buckling, and subsidence of a contender, which seemed to have so many of the right pieces but no sense of how to fit them together. From that day in Mid-June when they were 21 games over .500, only two teams had worse records than the Mets: the woeful Nationals, and the I-wish-I-hadn't-just-spent-that-adjective Rockies. But it wasn't only the collapse. It was that you could see it coming from so far away, the lip of the abyss approaching and the Mets powerless to change course. They went out like chumps. https://defector.com/the-mets-went-out-like-chumps
