The playoffs are coming into focus for MLB, with two teams in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
The Detroit Tigers and New York Mets are both facing the prospect of daunting late-season collapses. The former has already relinquished its lead in the AL Central to the Cleveland Guardians following a 5-2 defeat at Progressive Field on Tuesday night.
Meanwhile, the Mets gained some ground in their pursuit of a wild-card spot in the National League, as they defeated the Chicago Cubs in a 9-7 thriller at Wrigley Field. Paired with a Cincinnati Reds loss, New York regained control of its own destiny.
But as both the Mets and Tigers flirt with bad history, which collapse would be worse, should they both occur?
Mets, Tigers flirting with the wrong kind of MLB history
At one point, the Tigers led their division by double-digit games, and still paced the group by 9.5 games as recently as September 10. To that end, any outcome that doesn’t result in a division title for Detroit would go down as the most egregious collapse since MLB instituted divisional play back in 1969.
The Mets also know plenty about historic collapses, most infamously when they blew a seven-game lead in the NL East to the Philadelphia Phillies with 17 games left in the 2007 season. And now, having been one of the worst teams in MLB for the last several months of this year, New York finds itself fighting for its playoff life.
That shouldn’t be true of the Mets, though, since they have one of the highest payrolls in baseball at $340 million and a generational talent in outfielder Juan Soto, whom New York inked to the largest contract in North American professional sports history last winter. It doesn’t help that they play in the largest media market in the country either, meaning their collapse would only be magnified further.
Ultimately, the question of which team’s disintegration would be “worse” is a complicated one, since both clubs should’ve easily clinched their respective postseason berths by now.
In terms of standings trends alone, the Tigers will have earned this distinction if they come away empty-handed. However, if we’re comparing expectations, there’s no question that the Mets had massive standards for 2025 given their star talent, payroll and media coverage, all of which weighed heavier than what the Tigers had to start the year despite a Cinderella run to the postseason in 2024.
