The New York Groove guide to the 2025 New York Mets

And a pleasant good morning everybody. Welcome to another season of New York Mets baseball, which will be kicking off this afternoon in Houston. Which technically means that once again The New York Groove guide to the Mets is timely, provided you read it before 4:10 today.

We're entering one of the most anticipated Mets seasons in the history of the franchise, a season with massive expectations following last year's wild-eyed sprint from the toilet to the doorstep of the World Series. The team also had an off-season like none other in franchise history, so before the first pitch of the season, get reacquainted with Queens' baseball warriors, and what you can expect at Citi Field this year.

Mets World Series.
And also with you.

It's been a long time since I thought about baseball, is there some kinda cool "Previously on The Mets" video I can watch to remember what happened last year?
There is such a video, it's so good, I still get emotional when I watch it.

There's even a 10-minute highlight reel of the Mets' playoff journey, which is rare for a team that doesn't win the whole thing. And yet, it also brings in the emotions.

Last year's team was deliriously fun, so fun that it inspired two grumpy hater-ass Yankee fans to devote their time to writing a truly putrid column about how Mets fans are all gentrifiers instead of talking about the Yankees' upcoming World Series appearance (which they lost, by the way). The many totems of success from 2024 (Grimace, Candelita, the Hawk Tuah Girl, the playoff pumpkin) will live forever in our hearts, but you can't dwell on last year forever, so as a new season looms and-

Hey didn't you say the Mets would be bad last year? You wrote "Oooh, I don't really think so" when we asked if they'd be good. That's multiple o's!
Well like I said we can't dwell on last year, and also don't forget that Tim and Virginia let all that get through editing. But come on I've got a whole new season to be wrong about, let's move on.

Okay fine, what's new about the Mets this year?
Juan fucking Soto that's what.

In a completely new moment for the franchise, the Mets signed the free agent of his generation, a 26-year-old hitting machine whose career has basically only been compared to top-tier members of the Hall of Fame. And they signed him after he spent a year in playing across town for the Yankees, who for once were apparently not rich enough to keep a modern incarnation of Ted Williams in pinstripes.

In addition to Juan Soto, the team picked up another ex-Yankee in Clay Holmes, a former standout closer who the team braintrust thinks can be a starting pitcher. The results aren't always there for pitchers making the transition to a much heavier workload, but my theory about Holmes is that because he is a huge man, a linebacker-sized pitcher, he is as physically capable as anyone to triple his innings count this year. He's had a great spring training too, to the point where he's the team's Opening Day starter.

Damn that's cool as hell. Who else is on the team this year?
You've got Francisco Lindor at shortstop, still an MVP threat after carrying the team on his back for five months last year. Second-year slugging third-baseman Mark Vientos has to follow up a rookie campaign where he emerged out of a post-prospect miasma to hit 27 home runs, and pitcher Sean Manaea is back to show that his personal reinvention into ace-level hurler was no mirage. Also Pete Alonso is back! It was pretty touch-and-go there for a while as Pete and the Mets front office stared each other down over the slugger's ultimate value, but Alonso is back in Queens for at least one more season, a year in which we should see him become the Mets all-time career home run leader.

So, and this important for you not to screw up, are the Mets going to be good this year?
They are definitely supposed to be! You never know with baseball, but this is a team set up to win now and increasingly in the future. The people who run the computer programs that simulate endless amounts of baseball seasons pegged the Mets for 91.1 wins this year, second in the National League and just two games behind the hated Atlanta Braves. Some projection systems peg the Mets as the only team in baseball to feature two top-10 players this year in Soto and Lindor. Even with all these expectations, it's been about as relaxing a spring training for the Mets and Mets fans as I can remember.

Wow seems like it's gonna be pretty smooth sailing to the playoffs.
Let's not jump to conclusions, there are still some issues. For one, the team is gonna be without two starters for the first couple months of the season: dinger-smashing catcher Francisco Alvarez is out with a broken hand to start the season, and Belgium's favorite son Jeff McNeil is out with an oblique strain. It'll be tough to replace Alvarez's production at catcher, but in the case of McNeil there's a very interesting storyline to watch. Post-prospect Brett Baty is on what many think is his last chance with the Mets, and the team has shifted him to second base to from third base, where he's been supplanted by Mark Vientos. McNeil's injury opens up a huge opportunity for Baty, who's had a great spring for the third straight season, but has never put his tantalizing skillset together in the regular season.

But the Mets' pitching staff is what's going to have fans holding their breath all year. For one, Sean Manaea is gonna miss a few starts at the beginning of the year because of a strained oblique. The team's nominal number two starter, Kodai Senga, is coming off a completely lost 2024 but is being counted on to replicate his outstanding 2023 season after missing a year. And remember how last year I told you that truly desperate Mets fans would be muttering things like "This is Tylor Megill's year"? Well guess what: we're muttering that and saying the same thing about his left handed counterpart in the team's "Gonna breakout any day now" club, David Peterson. But this year for real they're gonna be good. Also the team is really counting on doing some of the turnaround magic they did on Manaea and Luis Severino last year on Griffin Canning this year, who led the American League in earned runs last year. Not earned run average, earned runs given up total.

The bullpen should be pretty okay though.

Okay fine. But is it gonna be a real party at Citi Field this year like it was last year?
We're certainly all expecting that, though I can't promise the starting second baseman will perform a hit single live on the field after the Mets dispatch the Astros. But also there are going to be some actual cool celebrations there. On April 19, you can celebrate Mr. Met's birthday before the game, since, contrary to reporting in Clickhole, the team's baseball monster remains very much alive. And on Sept. 13 the team is celebrating Mrs. Met's birthday. It's unclear if Noah Syndergaard will be there to make things weird.

There are gonna be mascot races at Citi Field for the first time this year, with each borough represented by a different New York City icon. Mascot races aren't really my thing but your kids will like it probably, and there'll be one or two viral videos that come out of the whole thing I'm sure.

The team has extended last year's big hit, $5 Tuesdays, where you can get Coors Light drafts and hot dogs for just five bucks each, to every Tuesday home game. And in a new promotion, the Mets are offering four tickets for $50 as part of Family Sunday games. It's not just limited to traditional nuclear families though, it's just four tickets for $50, so your family can be you and three of your friends in matching shirts featuring Mr. Met flipping off the camera, or it can be 10 dads. Well, eight dads in this case due to ticket limits, but anyway, thank you New York Mets for embracing new ideas of family in this era of repression.

The Mets are also retiring David Wright's jersey on July 19, which will be a really and cool emotional moment for one of the best Mets ever. The game is super mega sold out and even the worst tickets in the stadium are going for $150. But maybe you can get something an hour or so before the ceremony.

The Mets are going to be so good this year, so I bet they aren't even giving away cool stuff to entice you to come to a game.
Well you bet wrong, there are still plenty of cool giveaway days. There are bobbleheads for six different players, a Mr. Met bobblehead, two different Mrs. Met bobbleheads and a whole three-day Hello Kitty bobblehead giveaway from May 30 to June 1. Like last year, the team is branching out into other sports, with a Clay Holmes hockey jersey giveaway on May 9. Maybe on account of how large he is. And if you sweat out the dog days of August, your reward on Aug. 15 is a Shea Stadium replica.

Oh also there's Queens Culture Day on Aug. 28, where if you buy a ticket through a special offer, you can get a Queens Culture Hat, whatever that is. Yes the copy for the promotion ("Whether you’re from Astoria or Jamaica, let’s all come together at Citi Field to celebrate our local community") sounds like it was written by an AI lobbying for Steve Cohen's casino project next door, but hey, free Queens hat.

Okay great I'm excited all over again. Tell me again, how do I "meet" the Mets?
Nothing has changed since last year, which is mostly good but a little bad. Mostly good in the sense that the 7 train and Long Island Rail Road are still there and still great ways to get to the game. Citi Bike is still there too. The part that's the same that's bad is that no one has bothered to fix the whole thing where you need to cross two highway exits to get to Citi Field if you're riding a bike on 34th Avenue. If you'd like to avoid that mess, you can turn off 34th Avenue at 108th Street and take a slightly more winding route on the waterfront promenade, which deposits you under the highway at Citi Field.

What crazy new food options are the Mets rolling out this year?
There are a few new additions at Citi Field this year, including a halal spot, a patty place and a wings joint. The team has made also made one big new addition to its menu in the form of a pulled jackfruit sandwich. That's right vegans, you can also now pay too much for a barbecue sandwich at a baseball game. But honestly who cares about more ballpark food you probably can't afford, what's really exciting is how the team's resources are going to things like "brand new pitching lab" and other player development areas.

You can't eat a pitching lab!
Yeah well I'll remember you said that when Brandon Sproat is pitching a complete game shutout in late August.

Fine. But can I still get a plastic carafe full of bodega wine?
If that is how you wish to spend your time, yes you can do that, but frankly that is none of my business.

Isn't there a missing joke here? Something where you talk about a best-case scenario but you write about like, what needs to happen for the Knicks or the Rangers in the playoffs?
We're not going to talk about the Rangers. But no, this year, that neurotic pessimism is not part of the Mets fan experience. This team won't win 105 games, but the franchise is turning a corner toward total competence and competitiveness. Some Mets fans are having trouble with this idea that the team may no longer be baseball's charming yet ineffectual clown, and is instead finally embracing a role as a big-market behemoth.

I am not one of those fans, and you should not be either. The Mets were one time a gang of lovable losers who could shock you with a World Series win or berth, but also with a mule mascot that shit on the warning track. But those days of losing funny are long, long gone, and while the losses still piled up during the Wilpon Era, the fun was nowhere to be found.

The lovable loser schtick always papered over the fact that the Mets have always had the potential to act like a franchise in the biggest market in the country, and if it took the emergence of an ethically dubious Wall Street titan with a World Series bloodlust as owner, well, I'll roll with that. Being a Mets fan doesn't have to mean spending your life as a fan in a defensive crouch, not when it can mean watching Steve Cohen spend almost a billion dollars to employ Juan Soto.

Okay I'm sold. Mets World Series.
That's fucking right.