In the wake of the Mets' season ending with them falling all the way out of the playoffs, there will be no shortage of takes about what went wrong with a team that entered the year as an expected World Series contender.
There will be discussions about the inconsistent offense, the subpar defense, the coaching, the trade deadline, the decisions made by manager Carlos Mendoza, and the team's failure to win a single game they trailed after eight innings.
And while it's understandable to want to point fingers in a whole bunch of different directions, it can be argued that doing so is kind of a waste.
Yes, there seemed to be a spark missing at times.
Sure, the offense could've been more consistent.
And yes, there were injuries that threw a wrench into things.
But as the dust settles on the 2025 Mets and the 2026 team starts to take shape, it's pretty easy to determine the main culprit for what went wrong.
It was the starting rotation.
The rotation is the nerve center of a team. Everything flows from there. If there isn't enough length provided (the Mets finished 27th in MLB in innings pitched per start) it negatively impacts the bullpen, which becomes overworked.
If the starting pitching is constantly putting the team in holes, there's that much more pressure on the offense to dig out of it.
It's a vicious cycle.
Take Game 162 for an example.
The Mets had simply run out of starting pitchers to rely on. That led them to start a struggling Sean Manaea, who was pulled after 1.2 innings. From there, it was a march of relievers — Huascar Brazoban for 1.0 inning, Brooks Raley for 0.2 of an inning, Ryne Stanek for 0.1 of an inning, and Tyler Rogers for 0.1 of an inning.
By the time Edwin Diaz was called on to stop the bleeding in the fifth inning, the Mets were in a 4-0 hole. And the season, for all intents and purposes, was over.
You can question Mendoza's decision to pull Raley as quickly as he did, or to go to Stanek. But the fact of the matter is that he was managing the last three and a half months of the season with one hand tied behind his back. That's because the starting pitching was simply not good enough in any aspect, and it took the rest of the team down with it.
So this was a collapse, sure. But it's one with an asterisk, because it can be easily argued that the 2025 Mets were irretrievably flawed from the start.
Looking at how things were shaping up back on Feb. 18, following Frankie Montas' injury (and the questionable decision to sign him in the first place), the Mets' rotation still had a high ceiling. But the floor was alarmingly low.
As I laid out at the time, there were injury concerns with Kodai Senga, Clay Holmes was transitioning from reliever to starter, Sean Manaea's late-season results in 2024 were perhaps unsustainable, and David Peterson had yet to put together back-to-back strong seasons.
Meanwhile, Griffin Canning, Tylor Megill, and Paul Blackburn were fine as depth options, but counting on two out of three of them in the rotation could be asking a lot. Regarding Brandon Sproat, his initial struggle with the transition to Triple-A meant that it could possibly take longer than expected for him to become a big league option.
To put it simply, there were lots of what-ifs — too many for a team with championship aspirations. And while the starting staff excelled over the first few months of the season, the cracks were easy to see.
That included regression from Canning, who had a 5.90 ERA from May 23 to June 26, when he tore his Achilles. And it included the struggles of Megill, who had a 5.79 ERA from May 4 through June 14, which was his last appearance of the season as he dealt with injuries.
When the injuries hit Canning, Megill, and then Senga, the Mets — who were also without Manaea — were left in a precarious spot.
It would've seriously impacted any team, but the way New York chose to address it was puzzling.
They in effect punted a handful of games as they relied on bullpen games, four starts from Paul Blackburn (losses on June 13, 18, 23, and 28), and one start from Blade Tidwell.
The bullpen game strategy cost the Mets two games in July, and came at a time when Nolan McLean was dominating for Triple-A Syracuse.
Against the backdrop of David Stearns choosing to not promote McLean, the Mets kept losing games that were winnable.
It's impossible to know how McLean would've fared if he was called up a month or so before his debut on Aug. 16. But it's hard to believe his presence in the rotation wouldn't have led to at least one more win, which would've resulted in the Mets making the playoffs.
You can also point to not adding a starting pitcher around the trade deadline, but the scarcity of available arms and the high price tags make that one a lot more understandable than the strategy they employed over the summer as the injuries mounted — when it at times felt like New York thought a giveaway loss here or there wouldn't matter.
Still, it all comes back to the way the starting rotation was put together during the offseason. There was just not enough certainty, and it put the team in a precarious spot really quickly — one Stearns and Co. were unable to wrest themselves out of.
Given Stearns' history of success and analytical nature, it's fair to believe he'll take a different approach to the rotation for 2026 — one that places an emphasis on track record over hope.
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