Are the NY Mets Screwed On Day One of 2012 Season?

The New York Post is reporting that the prospect of empty seats at today's season opener has the team management freaked out:

The Mets are so terrified by the embarrassing prospect of playing to empty seats at today's opener, they've made an Amazin' "buy one get one free" pitch.

Some 15,000 of their fans have been offered one free seat for Saturday's or Sunday's Atlanta game in exchange for every ticket they buy for today’s opener.

Plenty of the 41,880 seats for this afternoon’s game at Citi Field against the Braves were still available early today.

If the Mets don’t sell out, it will be the first home opener since 1997 that didn’t fill their stadium.

The Mets sent more emails yesterday, cutting ticket prices to today’s game by between $4 and $22, depending on the seat.

At this rate, the Mets are going to be offering anyone who buys a game-day ticket season tickets for all remaining games by June 1. That’s just bad. Real bad.

The team isn't expected to be very good, but this is the first day of the new season and fans should be optimistic that they've got baseball to look forward to in a great ballpark (which in many respects has more creature comforts and better food including the Shake Shack than the new Yankees Stadium, which was built at the same time) and finally has enough Met memorabilia to make one think that the Mets actually play there. The Mets ownership also finally realized that they needed to bring in the fences and reduce their height because they simply couldn't generate runs at home.

So, what else can the team do to get fans in the stands? Reducing ticket prices further seems to be the way to go, including on those games that the team charged more in the tiered pricing scheme that charged more for games against some division rivals (and the Yankees of course).

It might make sense for the Mets to seriously cut ticket prices, and to include other incentives for those who already bought season tickets or ticket packs, because they’ll be able to make it back on concessions. If no one is at the games, they aren’t making money on concessions.

Then again, if no one is going to games, it might make the Citifield Shake Shack the only one in the chain where you wont have to wait on line for a great burger or shake in the chain's presence across the city.