New York Mets Make Wrong Kind of History

With the New York Mets winning 100 games in the 2022 MLB Season, it's hard to call their year a disappointment.

And yet, if you asked most Mets fans, they'd say they were disappointed that the team wasn't able to hold onto a massive National League East division lead over the Atlanta Braves.

Entering June, the Mets had a 10.5-game lead over the Braves, which seemed insurmountable. Especially considering New York was expecting to get Jacob deGrom back in the second half of the season.

But after June 1st, the Braves exploded -- winning 77 of 110 games for a remarkable .700 winning percentage. That was the best record in baseball to close out the season, and it resulted in them clinching their fifth-consecutive division title.

That's bad enough.

It's worse when considering something similar happened in 2021, too.

The Braves were just 23-25 entering June in 2021, then went 78-33 to finish the season, win the division and storm to a World Series title.

The Braves nearly unprecedented ability to turn on the jets when necessary has led to remarkable success -- and it's come at the expense of the Mets.

In fact, the Mets have done exactly what you don't want to do, make the worst kind of history.

New York has led the NL East for 289 days the past two years combined, which is the most of any team in baseball.

They have zero division titles to show for it.

The New York Mets are used to disappointment (Photo by Adam Hagy/Getty Images)

On baseball internet, "LOLMets" had become something of a running joke, where poor performance, bizarre mistakes, and just general organizational incompetence was associated primarily with the Mets.

Leading your division for that much of two consecutive years and coming away empty has to be infuriating for Mets fans.

That said, it's hard to fault the team for winning 100 games; in almost every season, that's more than enough to win a division title. The Braves have just been that much better.

But the regular season success hasn't paid off, and in 2022 that penalty is even more severe.

Instead of a first round bye and home field advantage in the NLDS and NLCS against any non-Dodgers team, they'll now be forced into a hard-fought best-of-three Wild Card and stuck being the away team throughout.

It's hard to believe that it's possible for a team to lead their division the overwhelming majority of two consecutive years without winning the title once.

Yet that's exactly what they've done. LOLMets indeed.