Crash From Grace

""This summer, the Mets suffered so many difficult, late defeats in close games that no one on the team, surely, could have escaped the chilling interior doubt - the doubt that kills - whispering that their courage and brilliance last summer had been an illusion all the time, had been nothing but luck." -Roger Angell, in the wake of the 1970 season"

"The New York Mets have achieved baseball's state of intermediate grace, a slot within MLB's postseason matrix, eleven times in their 64-year history. In every one of the seasons that followed, their subsequent won-lost record paled in comparison to that which merited celebration. On average, Mets teams in those years after won twelve fewer games than they did during the preceding years when champagne flowed at least once."

"In 2025, the Mets' record was 83-79, six games off the pace of the 2024 Mets of increasingly sainted memory. Unlike 2000 and 2016, despite the availability of more postseason berths than ever, this presented a problem. Had the Mets gone 89-73 as they did a year earlier, they would have cruised into the 2025 playoffs. Had they won a single game more, they would have eked in, but that would have been fin"

The New York Mets reached the postseason eleven times across 64 seasons and then produced worse won-lost records the following year. On average, teams that made the playoffs won twelve fewer games in the subsequent season than they had during the playoff campaign. Some declines were small and the team sometimes returned to postseason play; other declines were steep and ended in substantial losing seasons. The 2024–2025 transition exemplified the pattern: a fall from 89-73 to 83-79 left the Mets outside the expanded postseason, where one extra win would have changed qualification.

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