NEW YORK — On Monday, hours before their critical final homestand of the season kicked off, the New York Mets presented a special honor to one of the catalysts of their remarkable turnaround. Fenway Park has the red seat for Ted Williams, and Citi Field now has a purple seat in right field for its own hero.
Grimace.
No, not for the expression on fans’ faces inspired too often by the home team’s play in Septembers past. For Grimace, the McDonald’s mascot you associate with Happy Meals and Mets fans credit for kickstarting their about-face with a ceremonial first pitch back on June 12. The Mets started a seven-game winning streak that night, and they’ve been the best team in the majors ever since, in what fans have called their “Grimace Era.”
“For the first seven games of Grimace, I didn’t even know about it,” said Brandon Nimmo. “I was like, ‘What is that?’”
While Grimace is the totem of a turnaround, the reasons for the Mets’ unexpected revival, from 11 games under .500 to 15 over with a week and a half to play, from spring irrelevance to fall legitimacy, are difficult to count. There’s the kid from Manhattan who grew up to run his favorite baseball team. There’s the manager from across town whose belief in himself and his players never wavered. There’s the utility infielder who moonlights performing postgame concerts. There’s player after player who has improved as the season has progressed. There are immaculate vibes everywhere.
“We’re playing much closer to the level I thought we should be playing at,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said. “We’ve just taken a little bit of a different path to get there.”
For the first two months of the season, the 2024 Mets looked, bluntly, like a budget version of the 2023 Mets. Lower payroll, lower expectations, similar underperformance.
They stumbled out of the gates at 0-5, their first-year manager earning a suspension before a regular-season victory. They lost series after series in May, a different member of the bullpen giving it up on a nightly basis. Their best players were the biggest culprits, with slow starts from Nimmo and Francisco Lindor limiting New York’s offensive output.
“It was not fun, I’ll tell you that,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Forget about the 0-5 — that’s baseball, that’s going to happen. But getting suspended? I didn’t expect that.”
“There was certainly a recognition that we weren’t playing well enough. That was certainly frustrating,” Stearns said. “There was also a recognition that we were better than we were playing. But you get into June, and it’s fair to say you have to turn it around quickly or else you’re going to run out of time. We’ve got to start playing better now for this season to matter.”
Those 2023 Mets crashed and burned. The 2024 Mets have revived and thrived.
The Mets hired Stearns last September, after years of waiting for him, in part because of his rational approach to team-building. Stearns had hired Mendoza, in part, because of the steady demeanor he’d showcased while a bench coach in the Bronx. The hope was it would end an absurd carousel of organizational change: Stearns is New York’s eighth front-office leader and Mendoza its fifth manager since 2018.
The new duo was stress-tested immediately. Even with a markedly lower bar following last summer’s trade-deadline sell-off, the Mets underachieved. They were swept in the opening series by Stearns’ former club, the Brewers. They lost the series opener to the Tigers, sat through two days of rainouts, then lost the first game of a doubleheader.
“I felt bad for us as a team and the town, but I really felt bad for him,” hitting coach Eric Chavez said of Mendoza. “Man, this is your first year and we haven’t even won a game in a week.”
“Honestly, it was loud, it was noisy,” Mendoza said.
In the final game of a lopsided home sweep by the Dodgers, reliever Jorge López was ejected, tossed his glove into the stands, and called himself the worst teammate in the majors. The Mets were 22-33. The season already seemed like a slog.
“That was a pretty tough stretch for us, emotionally,” Chavez said. “It wasn’t just the fact he threw the glove. It was everything at that time didn’t seem very good.”
Added first-base coach Antoan Richardson: “There’s a lot of noise when things aren’t going well. Sometimes you’re just looking for somebody to be in your corner. It only takes someone being positive to reel you back in.”
For Mendoza, that person was Stearns, whose message talking to the rookie manger was simple: Let’s win today.
But it wasn’t just winning on the field he wanted Mendoza to focus on.
“(It was) let’s win at 2 (p.m.), let’s win in the training room, let’s win in the weight room, let’s win in our meetings,” Mendoza said. “Let’s win today in every area. That hit home with me.”
As Stearns reassured Mendoza, Mendoza reassured his team.
“He did a great job of just trusting that the talent and the ability of the guys in the room would translate over the course of the season,” first baseman Pete Alonso said. “We’ve fed off that.”
Mendoza didn’t turn over tables or start looking over his shoulder. Players were impressed with his demeanor during the first few weeks of the season, as he acclimated to being under the microscope under less-than-ideal circumstances.
“He really is the best of both worlds,” said Nimmo. “You want to do the best that you can for him. But he also has that empathy of being able to be like, ‘Hey, it’s a hard game. Don’t be too hard on yourself.’ And he knows when to use both.”
“In this business, it’s real easy to jump ship, man,” said bench coach John Gibbons. “It’s such a volatile business and wins are all that matters. But if you want to get the most out of your guys over the long haul, you’ve got to understand the ups and downs of what they’re going to go through. It really comes down to: If you want them to fight for you, you’ve got to fight for them. And that’s what he does.”
Gibbons was one of several veteran coaches the Mets hired around Mendoza, most of whom he didn’t know personally. He wasn’t afraid to have a former manager like Gibbons on his staff, and he wasn’t threatened by coaching experience. He welcomed it. That’s something that several people pointed out shows a lot of confidence for a rookie manager.
“We were just looking for the best quality people for the job,” Mendoza said. “I wasn’t looking for friends, you know? You build those relationships.”
He showed just as much confidence in his team, even when things were rough.
“I was looking around the locker room, and I knew we had good players, and I knew we were going to turn it around,” he said. “Obviously it took a lot longer than we anticipated.”
This spring, the Mets’ leadership stressed positive reinforcement and getting the best out of people.
“It got tested pretty early,” Chavez said. “ We got put in the fire. And we held it together.”
It wasn’t all about a vibe shift. The roster also underwent some key changes toward the end of May. The Mets promoted Mark Vientos and eventually gave him the everyday job at third base. When they demoted Brett Baty back to the minors, they called up veteran José Iglesias, who has infused the clubhouse with a different energy. His own song, “OMG,” became a Billboard hit in June and the unofficial Mets anthem. It’s played whenever the Mets hit a home run, with “OMG” signs populating the stands and shirts appearing in the Mets clubhouse. The song is about living in the moment and being thankful for what you’ve been blessed with. It’s no wonder it’s made for such an easy rallying cry.
The Mets claimed Luis Torrens on waivers to upgrade their catching duo and slow opponents’ running game, a move that paid immediate dividends. After surrendering 64 stolen bases on 72 attempts in the first two months, the Mets have yielded 54 since while catching 27. Stearns fortified the bullpen even before the trade deadline. The bullpen ERA was 4.88 in May and has been under four since.
The result is a roster with more depth than the Mets have long been accustomed to, one better able to withstand injury. The 2023 Mets were about stars. The 2024 team has been a story of lesser names, a younger group that has infused energy in the clubhouse and earned praise around baseball.
“The constant evolution of the roster is really important,” Stearns said. “The roster is never a static thing. We got to May, and there were areas of our roster that we thought needed to get better.”
The Mets stars also turned it around, none more so than Lindor. In the third week of May, his average started with a one and his OPS barely peeked above .600. Since then, he’s hit better than .300 with an OPS of nearly .950 while playing superb shortstop. Lindor will be out at least a few more days with an ailing back, but he’s been the best two-way player in the National League.
“This is what everyone wanted and dreamed of when they traded for him,” Nimmo said. “He had amazing years, but this one is really special.”
Added hitting coach Jeremy Barnes: “He’s always been consistent, but it just has taken another level. For me, it’s not even the physical stuff he does — which he’s the utmost pro at that. It’s the mental side of it. He’s so stoic with his process. He’s just on top of everything.”
Lindor has also taken on a larger role as a leader, and the clubhouse seems to mimic his quiet yet focused vibe. Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, big arms with big personalities and World Series rings, aren’t in the clubhouse anymore. So Lindor and Nimmo, the two players signed into the next decade for the Mets, felt a greater responsibility this year.
“It’s more like a mantle passed down,” Nimmo said. “We’re the guys around here now.”
That was most apparent in May. In the middle of the month, Nimmo, Lindor and Starling Marte engaged in a long postgame discussion about how to prevent the season from snowballing on them the same way 2023 did. Two weeks later, the Mets held a players’ only meeting where the trio talked about shutting out the external noise and being accountable to those in the room.
“It’s one of those years where coming in, you know you have something special,” said Lindor. “Obviously, we’ve all got to build to get to the place we want to get to. It didn’t click right away. Then we started clicking.”
Two weeks after that, the Mets went to London for a two-game series against the first-place Phillies. Numerous players pointed to it as a turning point.
“Where we were at, it was time to figure things out,” said Sean Manaea. “No better time than at that point.”
“London was a huge momentum builder for us,” Alonso said. “People brought families and it was a huge bonding experience for everybody in the organization.”
Added Nimmo: “We really got to gel as a group, and I don’t know if it was just getting out of our environment or what, but it really did start to feel like, OK, we can do this.”
The Mets are within reach of doing it, but the road remains difficult. They play three more games this weekend against the Phillies, who have a chance to clinch the National League East in Queens. They then travel to Atlanta for a critical September series — a recipe that has exclusively ended in disaster for a generation of Mets teams. They finish with three games in Milwaukee, which may be a preview of a Wild Card Series.
“We’ve demonstrated over a significant part of the season that we can hang with anyone and play at a very high level,” Stearns said. “I’d love for this group to have the opportunity to see what that means in October.”
These Mets have given themselves a chance, saving a season that could have slipped away. In 2022, the Mets ran out of gas down the stretch, surrendering the division and bowing out in the first round. In 2024, they hope it’s the inverse: that the worst is behind them and the best is yet to come — the Grimace Era giving way to the Stearns and Mendoza Era.
“It’s been a fun ride,” Mendoza said, “but we haven’t done anything.”
(Top photo: Dustin Satloff / Getty Images)
