ATLANTA – The 77-win Mets staggered to the finish line Sunday and mercifully ended their 2021 season with a monumental collapse. Even for die-hard loyalists, the second half was hard to watch as the Mets conceded their first-place edge for a third-place standing in a span of eight days. The 2021 Mets were an unlikeable, thumbs-down-for-the-fans, bunch.
Now, the Mets are preparing for an eventful offseason. Changes are coming.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen with the Mets organization,” said Francisco Lindor. “As an organization, we have a lot in front of us that we have to do. I definitely gotta train. I gotta train hard, hard, hard. It wasn’t a good year for me when it comes to performance.”
Lindor is the club’s shortstop for the next 10 years, and he will remain one of the constants in a winter that is expected to include several adjustments to the roster. He ended his first season as a Met batting .230 with a .734 OPS, both of which are career lows. He crushed 20 home runs and 63 RBI in 125 games. Lindor was booed by Mets fans particularly during his early-season slump, and he admitted that reaction from the home crowd affected him at the plate.
It was far from the type of performance Mets owner Steve Cohen envisioned when he signed the shortstop to a $341 million contract in April.
“I actually learned if you dwell on it, or if you sit on it too long, it affects you,” Lindor said. “But here, I have learned that things go by quick. It’s like one thing happens, we talk about it, it’s discussed, the next day it’s something different. Or, two days later, people forget about it. It’s about what you can do on a daily basis, and that’s good. It’s about what’s in front of you.”
Mets manager Luis Rojas could be among the names that will be dropped from the club’s plans for 2022 and beyond. He reflected on his year at the helm, taking accountability for the Mets’ wayward season. The skipper said the disappointment of the failed season and the group breaking apart to go home on Sunday night was weighing on him. Rojas said he failed as a manager to help the team win more games.
If Rojas is the fall guy for the team’s mediocre year, he said he has “no idea” when he’ll speak to team president Sandy Alderson about his job status. “Whenever that will happen, it will happen and we should find out soon,” he said. He plans to head back to New York to enjoy an offseason with his family and reflect on what he could’ve done better.
“As the manager, you gotta feel responsible for not winning enough games,” Rojas said. “You gotta feel responsible for not helping the team achieve the goal that was set at the beginning of the season. Managers get paid to win games and we won less than we lost this year. You get caught in thoughts like this in the last game of the season when you don’t achieve your goal.”
The staff shakeup will include Alderson, the team president, searching for a president of baseball operations. The future of acting GM Zack Scott is yet to be determined after his DUI arrest last month. Alongside Rojas, bench coach Dave Jauss, hitting coach Hugh Quattlebaum and other coaches are in jeopardy of being dismissed. Pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, who has done a great job the last two years developing arms, is one of the staff members expected to remain with the club.
Impending free agents Michael Conforto, Noah Syndergaard, Marcus Stroman, Javy Baez, Aaron Loup, Jeurys Familia, Jonathan Villar and others will find out what their futures hold in the next several weeks. Other players still under team control, like Dominic Smith, Jeff McNeil and J.D. Davis, could be part of attractive trade packages to help the Mets pick up win-now pieces.
While the Mets brace for changes, Game 162 on Sunday was emotional for a team that has maintained a tight clubhouse this season.
“There are some uncertainties where a lot of us, this could be the last day or the last game where that big group would be together,” said Davis. “The speculation, we don’t know what’s going to happen. But we all look around and we know this could be our last game together. It’s definitely going to be a different feeling. We’re going to not necessarily cherish it, but we’re going to look around.
“We hold each other very accountable. We love each other. It’s going to be different. It’s going to suck.”
