The Mets earned their terrible first-half offense last year.
The front office talked the spring-training talk of contenders in 2015. But it was only talk. The Mets refused to behave like a big-market team that expects big things.
There was a young, elite rotation ready to win, but a refusal to invest in the kind of quality positional depth to weather the long season. The wallet was closed until a) the team proved it was a winner and b) fans filled Citi Field to inflate revenue.
That philosophy nearly doomed the Mets. Once long-term injury struck Travis d’Arnaud and David Wright and combined with underperformance by players such as Michael Cuddyer and Juan Lagares, the Mets were at the mercy of too many futile at-bats from the likes of Darrell Ceciliani, Johnny Monell, Danny Muno and Kirk Nieuwenhuis.