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Did not jibing with leadership on workout routines play in? I love when people use "jibe" or "jibing" correctly. You wouldn't believe how often I see it as "jive" or "jiving".

Devin Gordon has reported and written a 2021 coda for ESPN. ON SEPT. 14, less than 24 hours after Wainwright had micturated all over their freshly dug grave, the Mets players were back out on the grass at Citi Field for pregame drills, and goodness, they sure were cheerful. Goofing around. Taking grounders at positions they don't play. J.D. Davis and left fielder Dom Smith took turns seeing who could wing the ball the furthest into the black seats in center field. Davis went first, then laughed as Smith took a 15-foot running start. Look, nobody likes the Intensity Police. Nobody needs to be flipping tables in the clubhouse or cussing out teammates, but couldn't they at least perform some fury? Some disappointment? Here I was, a grown man with two kids, just a dopey fan, and I'd been in a funk all day. People's jobs were on the line. Manager Luis Rojas, who they'd professed to love, was about to get fired because they couldn't hit. Right fielder Michael Conforto, who cracked two home runs as a rookie in Game 4 of the 2015 World Series and in a just universe would retire a Met, might be playing somewhere else next season. This was bad, fellas. This Mets team is not lazy. They love to play, and they love to win. Lord knows they have flaws, but a lack of hustle isn't one of them. They played 66 one-run games, and their extra-inning record was 11-7. For three seasons now, a hallmark of this team has been battling to the last out, sacrificing your nasal cavity to get on base and tearing off the jersey of the hero who wins it. Following a walk-off victory in May, not one but two Mets, Pete Alonso and pitcher David Peterson, fell on their faces trying to hurdle the dugout rail. One of the reasons those boos so offended Baez, in particular, is because it's not like Lindor wasn't trying. This isn't about effort. It's about temperament. The 2021 Mets just didn't have a mean streak. They're a bunch of swell guys who got along great and had a blast playing baseball. Some nerve, right? It's heartbreaking to love a team that's just not good enough, which is why Mets fans feel more gutted than usual this time of year. We don't expect rings, obviously. A fun ride that gives us some laughs and thrills and groans -- that'll do just fine. Chaos surrounded this team, but on the field and in the clubhouse, they were easy breezy, lemon squeezy. If anything, this group of Mets liked each other too much. Folks in sports tend to speak about leadership in facile ways. Winning clubhouses don't have one leader; they have three or four, each of whom leads in their own style. The Mets clubhouse is filled with leaders, but temperamentally they're all like-minded. Alonso is positivity incarnate. Brandon Nimmo is the happiest man ever to wear a Mets uniform. Lindor had a huge smile even while cutting me off to end an interview. ("Brother," he said, with a gentle hand on my shoulder, "I gotta go.") Everyone loves Dom Smith, and Dom Smith loves everyone. Marcus Stroman, an absolute warrior, a student of pitching, a superb athlete and the MVP of this Mets season, will block you on Twitter if you bring any bad vibes into his feed. (Please don't block me, Stro, I love u.) It was a sealed cocoon of optimism and self-belief, and they had such faith that chemistry equals winning that at times they didn't seem to notice their season was slipping away. As the 2021 Mets crumbled on the field, fans were feasting on a new 30 for 30 series about the 1986 World Champion Mets, "Once Upon a Time in Queens," and at times I felt like I was watching a four-hour MRI on the spinal column of the current Mets. Who is the Keith Hernandez in this bunch? Where is the Gary Carter? "I think that's probably the one guy we might've been missing this year, is the [guy who says] 'OK, that's enough, it's time to get down to business,'" reliever Aaron Loup told me. "Because we all know everybody's trying, and you always get the rah-rah, 'next game, you got this' stuff. But at some point you need, 'OK, enough. It's time to go, now.'" In the delicate balance of clubhouse construction, guys like Loup, who played in the 2020 World Series with Tampa Bay, who loves Busch Light so much he's got the T-shirt to prove it, are as indispensable as the Keith's and Gary's. His season out of the bullpen was downright deGromian -- 0.95 ERA over 65 appearances. This is about what the Mets were missing, not what they had. "We don't really have one guy who's getting after people," McNeil told me. "Maybe it's something we do need." Is it essential to win? Maybe, maybe not, he said. He hasn't won anything yet. He knows this much: "I've never really had that on the Mets. Three or four years, I've never really had that." https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/32344914/a-fan-guide-abiding-lol-metshttps://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/32344914/a-fan-guide-abiding-lol-mets

11:30 PM yet it's sunny as hell up in here.

Eddie Robinson was kind enough to trade us Ron Darling and Walt Terrell for Lee Mazzilli.

Eddie Robinson, the last surviving world champion Cleveland Indian and the oldest living MLB alumnus, has died at 100.

They held a good record until they didn't. They held first place until they didn't. They finished eight games under .500, falling five games behind the runner-up Phillies and 11½ in back of the yet again division champion Braves. Continued exposure to these Mets over at least the final two months of this season, maybe all six months of it, renders these results utterly unsurprising. When the club was performing small miracles, it was via the wizardry of understudies to the original Bench Mob. Well, we reasoned, if we can stay aloft on the wings of the Mazeikas, McKinneys and Maybins, just wait until the REAL Mets come back! The Real Mets trickled into the lineup as summer heated up and the Real Mets wilted. Mind you, the C-team that kept us going was not sustainable as a unit. I developed one of those “you know who my favorite player is right now?” crushes on Jose Peraza for a couple of weeks, but Jose Peraza hit .204. When the stretch of not believing how much we'd gotten out of the contingency corps was over, we drifted toward not believing how little we were getting out of the main cast. So much of August and September, for me, became about inspecting the batting order and wondering how the hell we were doing this badly. Isn't Conforto better than this? Isn't Lindor better than this? Isn't McNeil? And so on. Average out all you could possibly have hoped to have gotten from the backups and the backups' backups; add in all you didn't get from the front-facing Mets; and toss in the usual bout of groping for an identity at the season's start (we were 9-11 as of April 30), and a final record of 77-85 resembles something barely above the minimum you could have expected. I just looked up the vaunted PECOTA projections for this season. Its formula pegged the 2021 Mets as finishing first, with a record of 96-66. I'm almost done laughing about it myself. Knowing what we know now, what addled algorithm, no matter how catchy its acronym, picks this team to go 96-66? Knowing what we knew then, why did we think these Mets resembled anybody eligible to be playing beyond October 3? Plummeting 18 games from your high-water mark and 16½ games in the standings tends to disappoint. But it didn't devastate, exactly, did it? That's because, as I personally began to come to grips with in early August, these Mets were never that good to begin with, with the beginning of “begin with” dating to our hopes being raised by an invigorating second half of 2019. That team's core was this team's core, except this team's core was enhanced by the presence of Francisco Lindor and, later, Javy Baez. This team's core, however, delivered next to nothing down the stretch. There were a few bodice-rippers, so to speak, when the walkoffs were wild, the jerseys came off and the stimulation shot through the ceiling for a day or two. But then it was back to the doldrums of what the Mets have been since baseball came out of COVID hibernation in July of 2020. http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2021/10/04/barely-above-the-minimum/http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2021/10/04/barely-above-the-minimum/

Bruce Bochy.

Being a “character” who doesn't blow too many leads will make a reliever beloved or at least recalled fondly. Everybody else who rises to bullpen prominence struggles to be tolerated.

Official release: FLUSHING, N.Y., October 4, 2021 — The New York Mets today announced the club will not pick up the option on Manager Luis Rojas for the 2022 season. In addition, decisions regarding the remaining coaching staff will be made over the next several days. The Mets have offered Rojas the opportunity to remain in the organization in a yet to be determined capacity. “The entire Mets organization is grateful for the dedication and devotion that Luis has exhibited over the last two seasons as manager,” said President Sandy Alderson. “He has shown a great commitment to the Mets over many years in multiple capacities. These decisions are never easy, but we feel a change is needed at this time.” “I want to share such heartfelt gratitude to so many in the Mets organization for not only the last two seasons as manager, but for the last 16 years in a variety of roles,” said Rojas. “In each and every position I held, striving for excellence was our daily mission. I will always hold the relationships and friendships, developed over the years, dear to my heart, and am forever grateful to have been able to wear the Mets uniform for so long. We live in a results oriented business, and am deeply disappointed for our staff and fans that we didn't reach our goals this season.”

As final games of disappointing seasons go, this was certainly one of them.

Howie checked in with Wayne and Eddie prior to first pitch. Says recovery's coming more slowly than he anticipated, and he did sound a little worn, but he was also feisty regarding the Mets needing to make changes — and he's still growling about the thumbs down business. Mostly he wanted to thank everybody for the torrent of good wishes.

Giants have 106 wins and haven't clinched their division. Dodgers have 105 wins and aren't in first place. Whoever doesn't finish atop the NL West standings can conceivably be knocked out in a single game by a team that recently won 17 straight. But if the Wild Card from the West does beat the Cardinals, then we get a Giants-Dodgers NLDS. Wow, y'know?

M's win, tie the Jays at one game behind Red Sox and MFYs.

Gsellman gslives.

Hansel still gets to the point.

Nice Instagram message to the fans from former closer and imminent free agent Jay R. Eese F'Meelia.

Gsellman gsactivated. Megill megoptioned. Drury DruFA'd.

Padres say Tingler's still their manager…for today.

MFYs lose.

Jesse Chavez pitches for Los Bravos.

Jayce Tingler reportedly out as Padre skipper.

Wayne does his research! Thanks for aurally spotting it.

Second-to-last game of the year. The Mets have won their last four Game 161s after being no-hit by Max Scherzer in Game 161 of 2015. In 2020, however, they lost Game 59 of their 60-game schedule. Carlos Carrasco goes for the Mets. Some Brave seems likely to belt a first-inning home run before the man they call Cookie settles in. Hard to bet against a pattern. It's a Fox game, starting at 7:15, ending too soon in the season-ending sense and not soon enough in the Fox sense.