Discounts For Ticket Plan Holders Are Nice, But...

Since 2002, I have been a Mets ticket plan holder. During the last seven years of Shea Stadium's existence, I was a proud owner of a Sunday Plan. This plan allowed me to have the same seats (Mezzanine Section 7, Row E, Seats 16 and 17) for all 13 Sunday home games. If the Mets were playing at home on a Sunday, I was sure to be there.

Then in 2009, Citi Field opened its doors and I wanted to be sure that I was there on Opening Day. Therefore, to guarantee my seat for the inaugural game, I purchased the Weekday Plan in addition to my Sunday Plan. However, now the Sunday Plan consisted of 15 games, of which five were weekday games. In addition, not every Sunday game was part of the package (three Sundays, including the season finale, were now allocated to the new Weekend Plan).

Therefore, I now had two plans totaling 30 games and my Sunday Plan now had weekday games that I couldn't attend. But I did get into the inaugural game and I still had most of the Sunday games. I also had the same two plans for the 2010 season.

Now I just received my 2011 invoice for the two plans in the mail. Yes, the ticket prices are down from previous years. The Mets have been quite vocal about sharing that bit of information with fans. But they neglected to mention one little detail about these tickets.

This is the schedule for the Weekday Plan (the one that includes Opening Day):

Fri. April 8 vs. Washington @ 4:10 p.m.
Tues. April 12 vs. Colorado @ 7:10 p.m.
Thurs. April 21 vs. Houston @ 7:10 p.m.
Tues. May 3 vs. San Francisco @ 7:10 p.m.
Wed. May 18 vs. Washington @ 7:10 p.m.
Mon. May 30 vs. Pittsburgh @ 7:10 p.m.
Thurs. June 23 vs. Oakland @ 1:10 p.m.
Wed. July 20 vs. St. Louis @ 7:10 p.m.
Mon. August 1 vs. Florida @ 7:10 p.m.
Tues. August 9 vs. San Diego @ 7:10 p.m.
Mon. August 29 vs. Florida @ 7:10 p.m.
Thurs. September 1 vs. Florida @ 7:10 p.m.
Mon. September 12 vs. Washington @ 7:10 p.m.
Thurs. September 15 vs. Washington @ 1:10 p.m.
Wed. September 28 vs. Cincinnati @ 1:10 p.m.


Did you notice anything missing up there? Where are the games against the Phillies and the Braves? Believe it or not, every series played by Philadelphia and Atlanta at Citi Field this season falls on the weekend. That leaves undesirable games against teams like Washington and Florida to put on the Weekday Plan.

In all, seven of the 15 games in the Weekday Plan are against the Nationals (4 games) and the Marlins (3 games). That's almost half of the games in the plan.

Because so many of these games are part of the value category of ticket prices, the Mets were very happy to let me know that my invoice dropped from $695 for two Promenade Reserved Infield seats to $574, a savings of almost 20%. But they're not exactly advertising that these games are mostly against the poorer teams in baseball. Ten of the 15 games are against teams that finished .500 or worse in 2010.

The moral of this story is to be careful what you wish for. Since the Mets opened Citi Field, the product on the field has been less than stellar. The high prices have not been justified by the Mets' performance. So fans asked for lower prices if they were going to come back for another subpar season.

You want lower prices? You got it. Now you can tell me how all those Mets-Nationals games were because I surely won't be renewing my ticket plans.