Season-to-Season Turnover

[Edgy MD]

There are many ways to measure such a thing — percentage of change from one opening day roster to the next, percentage of change in innings pitched and plate appearances from one full season to the next, etc. Obviously, replacing Terry Leach with Don Aase isn't the same thing as replacing Darryl Strawberry with Hubie Brooks.

On the other hand, at least Hubie Brooks was Hubie Brooks.

But this really feels at the outset like perhaps the most pronounced offseason rebuildings this team has seen. The 2001–2002 Beanie Boom-era makeover is the main competitor that comes to mind, but even then some of the faces that were "new" — Roger Cedeno and Jeromy Burnitz — weren't exactly new.

[smg58]

That was the last really dramatic overhaul. The 2004-05 offseason brought a couple of very major signings, but the team's core wasn't dismantled to do it. Hopefully this team won't duplicate the 2002 team's performance.

[Gwreck]

Alomar, Vaughn, Burnitz, Cedeno, Astacio, Estes, and D’Amico combined had 2.1 WAR. It was so bad.

[Edgy MD]

The offensive makeover was so profound, that one indeed may be tempted to overlook Astacio, Estes, and D'Amico added to the heart of rotation, which certainly was a bigger chunk of the starting rotation than we swapped out this winter.

Each of them had runs of success (of varying lengths) before running out of steam (and falling off a cliff) in the second half. It was like the rotation collapse of 2025, except it happened six weeks earlier. Astacio's last 10 starts that year — trying to log enough innings to trigger his option before shutting it down — were some of the most poorly anticipated starts I can imagine. The guy was clearly too damaged to be effective, and everybody knew it, but he and Valentine had some sort of secret agreement to pretend otherwise.

[Centerfield]

Looking back, I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised that a bunch of players in their mid 30s would sharply decline. Still it sucks that it happened to all of them.

Even Juan Signs had an injury plagued season. Just being linked to us was enough to crater him.

[Cowtipper]

2024 and 2025 were awesome because by that point the Mets had established continuity. You knew the core you'd be getting each year. Even though there was SOME continuity in the 2017 to 2019 era (you could include 2020, too), if the Mets continue to do these shakeups in the future, I could see this current era resembling the aforementioned.

I mean, Adeiny Hechavarria? The 873 pitchers they used between 2017 and 2020? Brian Dozier? What even was that team? The era is a blur and sometimes I look back and assume I must not really watched it or paid much attention. But when I watch specific clips from it, I remember a lot of them. So I was there and present during the era, there was just so much churn that it was hard to make any truly deep memories.