NEW YORK — Back on March 30, a Mets fan with the handle Unbiased Mets Fan posted a confident take on X. The Yankees had just traded Devin Williams to the Mets in the offseason after a rough 2025 season in the Bronx. Yankee fans were unhappy. Mets fans were gloating.
His post read: “Devin Williams wasn’t the problem with the Yankees, the Yankees were the problem with Devin Williams.”
He was very sure of this. Until he was not.
Three weeks later, Williams had a 10.29 ERA with the Mets and had failed to retire a single batter in what became the gut punch of a 12-game Mets losing streak. The poster came back to X with a screenshot of his original comment and a public correction attached.
“I was 100% fooled by the ‘stuff+’ propaganda,” he wrote. “I’ve grown and matured as a man since. Apologize for this horrific take.”
Yankees fans had been waiting for exactly this moment.
What Williams did with the Yankees and why fans were angry
The Yankees acquired Williams before the 2025 season in a trade that cost them left-hander Nestor Cortes and outfielder Caleb Durbin, who went on to become a National League Rookie of the Year candidate with the Red Sox in 2025. That trade had Yankees fans grumbling from the start.
Williams then made it worse on the field. He allowed 33 earned runs in one season with the Yankees. That resulted in a 4.79 ERA and a minus-0.3 bWAR. For context, he had allowed just 48 earned runs across his entire six-season career in Milwaukee. He matched 70 percent of that total in a single Bronx summer.
The Yankees removed him from the closer role early in the season. He finished 2025 as a setup man with a bad ERA, a famous blown save that Pete Alonso had already helped engineer in the 2024 playoffs, and a reputation as a pitcher who had lost command of his signature Airbender changeup.
When the Mets signed Williams to a three-year, $51 million deal in December 2025, Mets fans were certain the Yankees had mishandled him. The Stuff+ metrics backed a bounce-back argument. His expected ERA the year before had been 3.02, nearly two full runs below what he actually posted. Mets fans felt they were getting a deal on a pitcher the Yankees had broken.
Williams’ early form gave the Mets hope. Then the wheels came off.
To be fair to the Mets fan who made the now-infamous April 3 post, Williams did look like his old self at the start of the 2026 season. He went five scoreless appearances without allowing a run. He struck out seven. He recorded two saves. For a brief window, the case looked like it was being made.
Then the Mets hit a 12-game losing streak. Williams went eight days without pitching. When he finally returned at Dodger Stadium, the rust showed immediately. He recorded one out and allowed four earned runs. The Dodgers won 8-2.
That outing opened the floodgates. Williams blew another save in Chicago. He walked the first batter he faced on four pitches against the Minnesota Twins, then loaded the bases with another walk and a fielder’s choice, then allowed a go-ahead hit and a bases-loaded walk. Five batters. Zero outs retired. His season ERA ballooned to 9.95 in that span and eventually reached 10.29.
His body language during those outings drew as much attention as the results. He was caught on a hot mic complaining about Royce Lewis standing behind home plate near the pitch clock. That clip spread fast.
Mets fans pile on as the X posts roll in
Mets fan reaction on social media ranged from disbelief to dark humor. The general sentiment was that they had watched this movie before, just with the Yankees as the main character, and somehow convinced themselves the sequel would be different.
One fan noted that his vertical movement on the changeup had been in decline for five straight years. Another said the $51 million contract felt like something the Mets would do. A third pointed out that David Stearns, who reunited with Williams in New York, had also overseen him in Milwaukee, and perhaps knew better than anyone that the good years were behind him.
The Unbiased Mets Fan account summed up the collective embarrassment better than anyone. His self-aware walkback was clean, direct, and widely shared among Yankees fans looking for exactly this response.
The irony was complete. The Yankees gave up Cortes and Durbin to bring Williams to the Bronx. Williams flopped. The Mets paid $51 million to bring him to Queens. Williams flopped again. The only people who came out of this looking right were the Yankees fans who said none of this was worth the original price.
Yankees fans will now print that April 3 post and frame it.
What do you think about it?
