OPINION: Meet The New Old New York Mets

In the early days of spring, New York was abuzz with Mets pride. The Mets were coming off a fairly successful season – albeit, one with a disappointing Wild Card playoff loss – and a poll conducted over the winter suggested that the Mets usurped the Yankees as New York’s most popular baseball team. The old Mets – the bumbling fools who choked throughout the entire month of September, the weaklings who were constantly going on the disabled list, and the dupes who found themselves wrapped up in the Bernie Madoff scandal – were dead and the new New York Mets were head-strong, young, and healthy. Most importantly, they were ready to win.

And then the season started.

It took a little less than three weeks for the Mets to fall below .500 and almost four weeks later, they have yet to recover.  So what has happened? Why do the new Mets look terribly like the old Mets, and, may I add, just look terrible in general?

Oy. Their best position player, Yoenis Cespedes has fatally pulled his hamstring (twice on the same play, wow!) and two of their super hero pitchers have proven themselves be mere mortals (Thor, some times referred to as Noah Syndergaard, tore a muscle in his back, and Matt Harvey, once known as “The Dark Knight,” has pitched like an actual bat might – not to mention his nocturnal habits). Their closer, Jeurys Familia, returned from a domestic violence suspension only to be completely ineffective and land himself on the DL where he joins starters Asdrubal Cabrera, Travis d’Arnaud, Seth Lugo, Steven Matz, Syndergaard, and Cespedes. Not to mention, David Wright, who has spent this season rotting away in a trainers room doing stretches or something.

Adding to this miserable list of injuries, players that were expected to perform, simply have not (those not expected to perform, on the other hand, actually have, i.e., Michael Conforto, Zach Wheeler, and T.J. “This-Guy-Is-Not-Supposed-To-Be-A-Major-Leguer-But-Always-Hits-Over-.300” Rivera). Their pitching, which was rightfully assumed to be the best in baseball, is statistically the worst at this point in mid-May. They also are the eleventh worst hitting team in baseball, and have committed the tenth most errors. They just aren’t playing well.

Finally, the Mets organization has reverted back to their scandalous ways. What do sex-toys, post-Cinco de Mayo hangovers, and angry refusals to take MRIs have in common? They were all fairly innocuous situations that the Met’s PR team managed to bungle beyond belief.

The new Mets have ultimately revealed themselves to be none other than the old Mets. The injury-ridden, scandal-covered, every-day-is-a-disaster Mets.

But there is a silver-lining: Met’s fans get to complain again, and I mean, really complain. For a while there, when the Mets were in the World Series in 2015 (what a memory), and when they made a strong summer push for the Wild Card, there wasn’t much to complain about. And if you did, you were labeled a ‘jerk,’ ‘pessimist,’ or a ‘delusional nut job’ (or so my friends would call me). But now, as the Mets skid towards a beautiful, hellish, meltdown, we can all join hands and yell deep down into the dark and musty well the team has fallen so far down into and say “Welcome back, old New York Mets! Go screw!”