Mets collapse just confirmed the truth that every Yankees fan already knew

This was supposed to be the New York Mets’ year. After a thrilling 2024 season that saw a lovable, underdog (albeit talented) team come within two wins of the World Series (one in which they would've faced the Yankees!), Steve Cohen sought to capitalize on all of the momentum by vehemently refusing to lose the winter’s Juan Soto sweepstakes, ultimately signing the superstar to the highest-paid contract in the history of professional sports. 

Inking a player of Soto’s caliber appeared to be a no-brainer for any franchise with a big enough wallet to do so (the Mets included). Still, in landing Soto, the Mets may have committed an under-the-radar mistake: they immediately destroyed their powerful and magical underdog identity, the very thing that had propelled the franchise to such great heights in 2024.

That caused some fans and pundits in their intoxicated-by-success delusion to declare that the Mets had now usurped the Yankees as the city’s alpha baseball team. Yes, even notable media members!

Entering the 2025 campaign, no one was considering anything close to the idea that signing Soto had been a misguided move. Even today, with the Mets having missed the playoffs in a shocking and profoundly disappointing series of events, you can’t reasonably argue that it was Soto’s fault. Soto hit 43 home runs with a .921 OPS in 160 games played. 

The Mets' failures this season are even more confounding when you consider that their offense was among MLB's most powerful and productive. Sure, the Mets lacked the capacity for timely hitting all season long, and they were alarmingly the only team in baseball not to mount a ninth-inning comeback win in 2025 (yikes), but Soto and Pete Alonso still headlined a reasonably dangerous lineup, and the numbers reflect that.

So, what the heck happened to this team? The absence of a ninth-inning rally certainly hints at the lack of “fight” associated with the 2025 Mets, a theory that isn’t unrelated to them signing Soto and instantly morphing from hungry underdog into sated favorites.

Of course, you have to acknowledge the team’s pitching woes. Both Sean Manaea and Kodai Senga had disappointing seasons, and yes, injuries were part of that. Senga had a sparkling 1.47 ERA when he hit the IL in June (hamstring), but he was never the same again in 2025, tallying a 5.90 ERA after his return.

“I wasn’t able to control my body the way I wanted to after the injury,” Senga said through interpreter Hiro Fujiwara on Sunday, per The Athletic’s Tim Britton and Will Sammon. “That showed up in the results.”

Manaea, who began the year on the IL but debuted in July, never got it going. By September, the Mets had moved him to the bullpen, and he finished the year with a 5.64 ERA.

“If I performed half as good as I did last year, we’d be in a good spot,” Manaea said Sunday, per Britton and Sammon.

The struggles of Senga and Manaea still don’t tell the full story of this team’s epic failure, however, nor does any finger-pointing at second-year manager Carlos Mendoza, although he didn’t exactly do an adequate job of steering his highly talented ship back on course.

Perhaps, in Mendoza’s defense, the Mets were a ship destined to sink since the onset of summer. As The New York Post’s Madeline Kenney noted on Monday in looking back at New York’s season, this was a team that looked like a World Series contender in early June … just before they entered a colossal downturn.

“On June 12, the Mets were riding a six-game winning streak and boasted the best record in MLB at 45-24. They held a 5 ½-game lead in the National League East. The Mets seemed unstoppable. Their team ERA was the best in the majors and their OPS was the fourth-best. But 3 ½ months later, the Mets were playing for their postseason lives in Game 162.”

The Mets were terrible in the second half of the season, and they seemed to get worse as the games became more important, culminating in losing five of their last eight, including a pathetic 4-0 loss on Sunday in a game that could have saved their season. The Mets were 28-36 after the All-Star break. They were 11-17 in August and 10-15 in September.

The 2025 Mets juxtaposed against the 2025 Yankees is a reminder of which club continues to reign supreme

As the Mets wake up on Monday, seeing every newspaper in New York calling them failures, the Yankees — following a World Series appearance in 2024 — are playing their best baseball of the 2025 season as they prepare to begin another playoff run. For Lugauer and others who so confidently declared last season that the Mets had surged past the Yankees as New York’s No. 1 team, the past few months have been a sturdy reminder that the Mets never, in fact, replaced the Yankees in any way, shape, or form.

Neither team has been perfect over the last two seasons. The Yankees went through their own free fall during a stretch this summer, playing sub-.500 baseball for over two months.

The difference was that the Yankees, being the superior of the two clubs, emerged from their slump the stronger for it, growing once again into a viable champion as the season entered its pivotal stretch (the Yankees won 10 of their last 11 games, nearly snatching the American League East lead away from the Toronto Blue Jays in the process).

Less than a calendar year ago, Mets fans were mocking Yankees fans about stealing Soto from the Bronx. As it turned out, all of Soto’s big free agent suitors except the Mets are playing postseason baseball in 2025. 

Oh, and the Mets are in real danger of losing Pete Alonso this winter, with whispers identifying the Yankees as a potential landing spot. Indeed, the Mets and their once-swaggering fan base have learned that a lot can change in a year. They are hoping that the winning pendulum swings back towards Queens in 2026, but they were just reminded that making unfounded declarations is a dangerous game to play.