Sorry excuses for Mets won't keep David Stearns warm this winter
A fan holds up a sign referring to the New York Mets after the Mets lost to the Miami Marlins in a baseball game, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Credit: AP/Lynne Sladky
David Stearns officially began what should be a very busy winter of the Mets discontent the correct way during Monday’s 30-minute news conference at a Citi Field way too empty for October.
By apologizing.
As president of baseball ops, Stearns went from Flushing savior a year ago to now the Mets’ resident pinata, which tends to happen after your personally tailored $340 million roster pulls off one of the most stunning collapses in franchise history.
Also, it’s not a great look when your boss Steve Cohen, a hedge-fund titan whose actual job takes place during Wall Street hours, was the guy who engineered the only two winter moves that worked this season: signing Juan Soto and Pete Alonso. Cohen has been doing the baseball owner thing for just five years, but he knew enough to throw nearly $800 million at the two most productive bats in the Mets’ top-heavy lineup.
And Stearns? He spent his offseason allowance on Sean Manaea ($75 million), Frankie Montas ($34M), A.J. Minter ($22M), Jesse Winker ($8M) and Griffin Canning ($4.25M). Those are hardly mega-deals, but that sum is bigger than the entire payroll of a dozen teams, and in the bang-for-bucks department, that $144 million probably goes down as one of Cohen’s worst investments.
Still, we’ll assume Cohen would’ve been fine flushing all that cash if the Mets still got to October. The fact that Stearns couldn’t squeeze an 84th win out of a group that went 38-55 over its last 93 games, then dropped the final series to a $70-million Marlins’ team with a rookie-stacked lineup, it’s borderline unforgivable.
Cohen is no George Steinbrenner, however, which is why Stearns was sitting at a microphone Monday issuing his mea culpa to the media rather than packing up his office on Seaver Way. So after Cohen issued his own apology, writing on X about how the “result was unacceptable” and the pending Mets’ postmortem, it was time for Stearns to fall on his sword a few hours later.
“Tremendously disappointing season,” Stearns said. “Not nearly good enough. I think we all know that. We came into this year, deservedly so, with very high expectations and we didn’t come close to meeting them. I’m keenly aware of that. I’m the architect of the team. I’m responsible for it.”
Stearns didn’t throw any of the hanging sliders Sunday that ultimately doomed the Mets in Miami, and it was Francisco Lindor who bounced into the game-ending double play at loanDepot park. But Stearns admitted Monday that he could have been more diligent in fixing the “run-prevention” issues that plagued the Mets, and in his view, were the primary reasons for the team’s agonizing 3 1/2-month disintegration.
In layman’s terms, “run prevention” is just analytics-speak for having pitchers that don’t torch your chances on a nightly basis and position players capable of catching the ball with regularity. Stearns is certainly right on both counts. During that season-killing post-June 12 slide, the Mets’ staff ERA (4.95) ranked 26th in the majors, and over the final week, when just a single victory would’ve nudged them into October, they had 1 1/2 reliable arms in the rotation: rookie phenom Nolan McLean and converted closer Clay Holmes.
It was curious that Stearns was given numerous chances Monday to disavow the bargain rotation-building philosophy that failed him this season and yet he wouldn’t repent. Instead, Stearns stressed the importance of growing starters down on the farm — no argument here — while claiming to stay open-minded about outside acquisitions, something that he shunned at this year’s trade deadline.
“I think my continued emphasis is doing everything we can to support our development infrastructure and developing starting pitchers,” Stearns said. “Ultimately that is where we’re going to have sustained success and get the organization to a consistently good spot from a run-prevention perspective.”
That’s an obvious fix. Stearns already signed Montas — who will be collecting next year’s $17 million on the IL recovering from Tommy John surgery — so he can’t make that mistake twice. More difficult is tackling the underlying issues within this current Mets’ roster, which Stearns pinned on the defensive side but seem to go much deeper than that.
We’re not buying the idea that the Mets’ meltdown was substantially due to kicking the ball around. You don’t go 0-for-70 when trailing after the eighth inning — the only team not to rally that late for a win — without something being off character-wise and that should have Stearns looking to shake up the current core. Pete Alonso is obviously headed for free agency, but in our view, letting a 38-homer, 126-RBI, 162-game, homegrown fan-favorite would be a bad place to start. That leaves Jeff McNeil and Brandon Nimmo as the next two in the crosshairs as Stearns aims to upgrade some everyday positions.
Stearns showed up Monday with plenty of talking points, and even though the Mets had been eliminated only 22 hours earlier, you can bet he already has a rough blueprint in mind. Cohen challenged the fans to show up this season and they responded by setting a Citi Field attendance record. Stearns was given the sport’s second-highest payroll to build a playoff team and the Mets couldn’t edge out the tiny-market Reds for sixth-place on the October invite list.
This winter, satisfying Cohen — and winning back an angry, betrayed fan base — is going to require much more than an apology on Stearns’ part.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
