Mets Team of the Noughties - Crushing Ending

[G-Fafif]

It's not how you start, it's how you finish, particularly when you finish a little too memorably. Choose among the five poisons.

[Guest themetfairy]

2007. That final game was a death march from the top of the first forward - just painful from start to pathetic finish.

[metirish]

2006 , nothing more crushing than that curve.

[RealityChuck]

2007. The curve is overhyped as a crushing ending (the home run was much more crushing), but at least you felt that the season was an overall success and the team would be back the next year.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'm with Chuck on this one.

When my time comes, I'd much rather die like the Mets did in 2006; very quickly. The 2007 death was a slow lingering death. Although, as I've said a number of times here, I don't take Mets losses as badly as others here, that whole month had me jittery. (Much more so than in 2008; I think by then I was numb, and the "collapse" that year wasn't really what I'd call a collapse. It was just a lost pennant race.)

[TransMonk]

2006 by a mile. The 2007 team very likely could have lost in the first round of the playoffs. The 2006 team was the best shot of the decade to win it all. They were better than the Cards and better than the Tigers. Bummer.

[metirish]

Overhyped? , sure it is but 2007 there came a point when you could see it all unfold.......I could have easily voted for that year but 2006 does hurt.....although it was a great season the ending was CRUSHING.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

2008 was worse, IMO.

At least in 2007, you could say that the Mets sort of deserved their fate for playing as uninspired as they had all year: They seemed nearly bereft of character and had nothing to call on when the chips were down (Except you, Tom Glavine. Thanks a bunch). That team was outwardly boastful but a paranoid mess inside and hard to root for.

In 2008, the team showed some real life again, clawing themselves back into it and getting excellent years from all their best guys, only to see it go to waste because Omar couldn't be bothered to get the team some help at the deadline. They also didn't execute when the chips were down but I think that had something to do with its CAHNfidence having been shaken by the realization that nobody in the bullpen could be trusted. It was sadder.

[metirish]

sucks that we have had more bad/crushing/abysmal seasons than good in the noughties.

[bmfc1]

2006 for me. That moment lingers more than any other moment. It also set up management's philosophy of thinking that the team could be fixed, one hole at a time instead of improving the team as a whole (we need starters, we need relievers).

Isn't this the most fun discussion ever? Happy Holidays!!!

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I voted for 2000 by the way.

[smg58]

I had really high hopes for the 2006 team right up until the last pitch.

[Chad ochoseis]

2006 wasn't nearly the nutpunch for me that 2007 was. This article - still my all-time favorite Fafif piece - says it all.

http://faithandfear.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/10/15/2419049.html


It was a good team in 2006, but the post-season pitching staff was comprised of Glavine and duct tape. So I wasn't even expecting the Mets to get to Game 7 against the Cardinals. And that was a nasty curve that got Beltran.

2007 was awful. Depressingly, horribly, crushingly awful.

[Guest Rockin' Doc]

The 2006 team should have disposed of the Cardinals and gone on to the World Series, but sometimes the better team doesn't win. However, after the 2006 season was over, I could look back on the season with pride in the Mets accomplishments and look forward in anticipation of a promising future for the franchise.

Throughout the summer, the 2007 season appeared to be fulfilling the success I had envisoned following the 2006 season, but then came the unthinkable collapse. After the 2007 season, there was very little to feel proud about as the team collapsed and found a way to lose what appeared to be an insurmountable division lead in the final weeks of the season.

2007 was far more disappointing to me.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I don't know. Seasons end. Happens every year. We know it going in, so it's all kind of strange how people feel bait-and-switched. If the ending of 2006 is so terrible, and still is, then we're just setting ourselves up, because it's like the 10th-best ending a team can get out of ten thousand scenarios.

[G-Fafif]

Barring something positively Bucknerian, I find missing the playoffs in brutal fashion much worse than losing the playoffs in brutal fashion. At least there were playoffs, indicating something was won somewhere along the way. Of course the Mets in this decade have been courteous enough to let us sample from both types of toxic stew.

Though it technically didn't end the season, if this question was put to me before September 30, 2007, I wouldn't have hesitated one second in naming the Brian Jordan onslaught as the crushingest blow(s) I'd ever absorbed as a fan of this team. So close to a September 2001 miracle -- three-run lead in the ninth; four-run lead in the ninth six days later -- and stopped cold by our fiercest rival both times. I didn't vote for it here because of what came later, but it's still astoundingly awful.

I went with 9/30/07 over (or under) 9/28/08 since it broke the mold for horrible last days and recast an entirely new and more horrible one. The Shea Goodbye aspect of the second consecutive Eliminated From Playoff Contention On The Final Day After Having Held A Reasonably Healthy Divisional Lead Well Into September certainly added an evil twist, yet as frustrating as it was, the closing ceremonies made the experience bittersweet, which is to say there was sweet in there if you looked hard enough. Nothing sweet about the seven earned runs in the third of an inning and then sitting there and waiting for it to be over and then going home and listening to the starting pitcher say, in so many words, "eh, whatever." After 9/30/07 happened, you can't say anything the Mets did in the way of letting a good thing go irreversibly bad could surprise you.

[TransMonk]

I disagree that 2006 was the 10th best ending out of 10,000 possible endings. Even if it were, I don't spend time rooting for the 10th best ending.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Of course not. I don't mean to suggest you does or should.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

I went with 9/30/07 over (or under) 9/28/08 since it broke the mold for horrible last days and recast an entirely new and more horrible one. The Shea Goodbye aspect of the second consecutive Eliminated From Playoff Contention On The Final Day After Having Held A Reasonably Healthy Divisional Lead Well Into September certainly added an evil twist, yet as frustrating as it was, the closing ceremonies made the experience bittersweet, which is to say there was sweet in there if you looked hard enough. Nothing sweet about the seven earned runs in the third of an inning and then sitting there and waiting for it to be over and then going home and listening to the starting pitcher say, in so many words, "eh, whatever." After 9/30/07 happened, you can't say anything the Mets did in the way of letting a good thing go irreversibly bad could surprise you.

[ashie62]

I'm still calling it Shea

[metsmarathon]

I dunno... I still feel like 01 was the crushingest.

That team was staging a great late run, streaking through august, and with all the emotion of 9-11, then there was the braves game that punched us in the gut, but we picked ourselves right up, and got right back after it, only to fall crushingly in extra innings at home, while the home faithful mockingly chanted oh-oh-ohohoh ohoh-oh-ohohoh about one out too early. We had battled so hard for so long to get us there, and had such momentum going into those games that it really felt like we could pull off the miracle, only to have it all yanked right out from our furtively grasping hands.

That curve hurt, cos it felt like we were on top of the world, and to lose the next year the way we did sucked BHMC, but 2001 hurt more.

[Fman99]

Beltran. Wainwright.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I guess 2001 was particularly bad if you were one of the ones doing the tomahawk mock, but they kind of were begging for such a letdown, no?

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Really, there is nothing worse than having lost in 2000. It's not like we had a great team, even a very very good team, but we lost to the MFYs in the Worls Series, and not becaus erthey overwhelmed us with superior ability: Because we fucked ourselves up the ass by not winning Game 1, which set the tone for lousy Game 2, c etc etc. I will always feel some pain from Zeile's ball not leaving the park.

[Valadius]

I couldn't deal with baseball for months after '07.