According to Baseball Prospectus, the Mets had a 99.8% chance of making the playoffs on September 12th. The take into account strength of schedule, which qualifies this as the most unlikely collapse in history.

A few weeks ago I read an essay by William O. Stephens and Randolph Feezell called "The Ideal of the Stoic Sportsman." In describing stoic conduct they state: "The Stoic appears calm, cool, and dispassionate, perhaps in the face of situations that normally cause people to act quite differently: failure, tragedy, separation, loss, even death."

After the last out I immediately changed the channel and went about business as usual. I'm still ridiculously calm about the matter, very detached. However, I've been avoiding the news and newspapers, not because I might become upset, but because I don't want to deal with the thrashing the team will receive.

Their melt down doesn't change my allegiance towards them.

How many days 'til pitchers and catchers, anwyay?

To the general attitude that the METS failure is no big deal in the overall cycle of Life, the Universe and Everything, Bill Shankley (unforgettable Liverpool Football Manager)had it right. 'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death.
I'm very disappointed with that attitude.
I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.' Simply substitute 'baseball' for 'football'.

I went to Shea yesterday to see a game and a funeral broke out.

GO PHIGHTIN'S! By merely being present for the 2007 Mets, the Phils have erased 1964. Now we need to go back to 1950 and take a World Championship back from those hated Yankees!

Am I alone?! I'm in the acceptance stage of grief.

I was angry in June when the team began this slump, which essentially lasted all season. I can't count the number of times I watched them lose a game they should've won and thought, this is it, they're gonna drop out of 1st place.

I denied it for months over the summer when the only reason they didn't drop out of first sooner was because Philly and Atlanta kept losing games also.

I'm saddened and disappointed, and in utter disbelief, but I knew this was possible very early in the season, if not likely. I believed and supported the team until the last pitch, but now it's over. I'm ready for 2008!

Glavin should not be the scapegoat. He pitched a heck of a season and didn't get much offensive support. It's not his fault that the entire season came down to this one game - the whole team bears that responsibility.

You might call it biggest September collapse in the history of baseball. Or that is, Mets fans might. But, let us not forget that the biggest collapse (period) in Major league baseball history happened with the 2004 Yankees against the Red Sox up three games to nothing, losing four straight to blow the American league championship series. The Mets "collapse" pales in comparison. Even in failure the Yankees out to Mets.

I am in the resignation stage.

It's all part of being a real Mets fan!

Mets in '08 - you gotta believe!!!

As for the dynamics of the collapse, it doesn't come down to some terrible failure of character, as the media love to make out. There were flaws in the team. There were injuries throughout the season.

There were serious flaws in the pitching staff all season. There was a hole in the starting rotation from the beginning, and they made do with patchwork measures that worked adequately for most of the season.

Two baby pitchers pitched considerably above themselves for the first half. The bullpen was never bulletproof. It was September when these flaws came to the surface-- both the starting rotation and the bullpen ran out of gas. It shows that pitching is everything-- because just about everybody was hitting throughout the swoon.