I decided to keep a new list for myself this winter, that of offseason additions. Every time the Mets make a move, no matter how minor, I open a Word file and type in the player’s name and his position; I also add his birth info to the conditional section of my all-time roster so if/when player sees action in a Mets uniform, I won’t have to look up any vital stats. I can’t say it’s a time-saving device as much as it’s a way for me to stay engaged with the inevitable personnel shuffle each winter brings. Every February, I find myself mildly flummoxed by various new faces, thus I figure by getting an early jump on these guys’ basic identities, they won’t seem like total strangers to me in St. Lucie, let alone should they make the team come late March.
I’ve added the names in chronological order of acquisition. Names like Chris Devenski and Dylan Covey and Kevin Herget, to name the first three. No, I’d never heard of them, either (they’re righthanded pitchers). Within a couple of weeks, I was decently familiar with some of the talent procured by David Stearns. I surely recognized the outfielder Jose Siri and the first baseman Joey Meneses. Jakson Reetz is a catcher whose spelling rang a bell. Reliever Genesis Cabrera isn’t pronounced like he’s spelled, not to those of us who first acquainted ourselves with Phil Collins in his pre-solo days. Of course Luis Severino replacement Frankie Montas was a name that didn’t need much introduction. Clay Holmes, neither, even if he’s going to have to say hello to the first inning for the first time in a while.
I have twenty names in all on the list so far. The three most recently entered are Edward Olivares, Oliver Ortega and Juan Soto. Entering Olivares, an outfielder, and Ortega, another righty pitcher, was business as usual. When I had reason to type “Juan Soto [1]” on a list of Mets is when I nearly plotzed [2] from realizing Juan Soto can be inserted within a list of Mets and it’s not a typo.
Juan Soto is a New York Met [3]. I wasn’t counting on that. I wasn’t counting against it. I pledged to myself I wouldn’t allow my happiness to hinge on a young millionaire’s thought processes regarding how he was going to be come a slightly older multimillionaire many, many times over. I sure wasn’t against the Mets going after Juan Soto. But I was sure I wasn’t going to let Juan Soto not becoming a Met ruin my state of mind. Soto to the Mets? Great! Soto not to the Mets? Life goes on.
Now we get the best of all worlds, as can be gauged from the second week of December: life goes on with Soto on the Mets. That’s a life I’m willing to try.
[4]¡Bienvenido, Juan! Greeting the newest superestrella de Los Mets with open arms.
The old adage that “it’s not my money” is why I’m not worried about the staggering numbers that it took to get this deal done: $765 million across 15 years, with allowances for optouts and elevator clauses. Kid’s here a while, at least five seasons. Still a kid at 26. As good a hitter and on-base machine as there is. And he’s on the Mets, with Francisco Lindor and Mark Vientos.
Life goes on and gets better, Metwise. It’s surely got a solid baseline. I don’t know what the rotation will look like. We wouldn’t know that as of the second week of December no matter what Soto decided. I don’t know if our homegrown slugging first baseman will be back. I can’t imagine Pete Alonso won’t get an offer from Steve Cohen that would satisfy a regular person. The Polar Bear might have his own ideas. We’ll see.
We’d see, anyway. We need a fully stocked team and then we need that team to go out and contest all its games, succeeding in enough of them to qualify for another postseason, and in that postseason, succeed some more. Baseball basics right there. Securing the services of Juan Soto isn’t the end of what needs to be done to spark joy.
But, boy oh boy, does it ever start the fire.
The pundit talk in the wake of the news [5] that Juan Soto is a Met (say that three times fast; then three times slow; then as many times as you like at any pace you choose) centered on what it means that the Mets plucked away a player who had been a Yankee, and who the Yankees were intent on keeping. If the Mets could outbid, outcharm, outswag the Yankees, the coalescing conventional wisdom seemed to suggest, everything forever assumed about how baseball works in New York is no longer automatically operative. The ghost of George Steinbrenner no longer wins every battle just by blustering “boo.”
I should be extra delighted that we scored one in the offseason edition of the Subway Series, and I suppose I am, but to be over the moon about that aspect of Juan Soto becoming a New York Met would indicate I believe it’s foreordained that the Yankees maintain an eternal edge in every significant baseball category, save heartbreak. I never have. I know recent decades indicate otherwise, but I have a functioning memory [6]. I remember New York in 1969 and the first half of the 1970s. I remember when worms turned in the mid-1980s and stayed turned until the early 1990s. Though the leagues have been redesigned to be barely distinguishable from one another, I have always clung to the founding principle of the New York Mets — that what at heart was a National League town required a National League team to make itself whole. That DNA never fully dissipates. When we went to the World Series in 2015, the atmosphere around the region harked back. For a couple of weeks this October, I could honestly sense a rumbling that whispered plates were shifting, if just a smidge, to where they belong.
Nevertheless, I recognize the Mets’ failure to fully re-establish themselves as what they were in their most glorious days and the toll it took in the market. We had ownership that got in its own way too often, to put it kindly. We came up short in potentially defining moments. Hearts and minds were there for the capture, and we let them go. I walked along Main St. from the subway station to the hotel where QBC was taking place [7] Saturday — downtown Flushing, for goodness sake — and I spotted I think four Yankees caps. Probably another couple on the 7 and LIRR coming and going. Par for the course most anywhere I’ve been in the Metropolitan Area since let’s say 1996. I didn’t doubt that those caps I saw Saturday were fashion accessories more than they were symbols of unshakable baseball allegiance, but I also knew that the logical alternative to a Yankees cap in New York has not, in the past thirty years, been what you’d call fashionable outside our diehard circles.
And maybe I don’t care about such trends as much as I do who’s gonna fill out the infield and who’s gonna set up Diaz. But I’d sure like to see a few more Mets caps worn on December mornings by people who don’t quite know why they’re wearing them, yet wouldn’t think of leaving their home without one on their head. My long-term goals for this franchise have been 1) win consistently, so reaching October isn’t a novelty; and 2) kill the “little brother” narrative that didn’t exist as a staple of the New York baseball dialogue until the Mets were in their thirties. The first part, with the owner we’ve got and the front office we’ve got and the playoff structure that exists, seems within reach. The second, I figure, will follow.
Luring Juan Soto with ample Cohen currency is part of that. But so was trading for and then signing Lindor long-term. And keeping Diaz. And keeping Nimmo. And cycling out Scherzer and Verlander as fast as they were reeled in once it became apparent their continued presence wasn’t advancing the cause. The cause was getting good and staying good. We got to this offseason good. We got better Sunday night. We signed Soto. He’s a Met. He wouldn’t be on my list if he wasn’t.
It’s sinking in. I’m still plotzing, but no worries. It’s the best plotzing possible.