There is perhaps no executive in baseball, not one, under more pressure to get things figured out for his team during this off-season than David Stearns of the Mets.
Listen, all the folks in charge of baseball ops are under pressure, every year, especially if they’re running point for a contending team. If their team wasn’t good enough, they go hard to make it better.
With these big jobs absolutely comes bigger responsibility — and accountability — especially in this time when ownership has given executives in charge more and more authority, almost treating them like stars. The Blue Jays just came as close as you can to winning it all. The Mariners came as close as you can to finally making it to the World Series. The Phillies have been knocking on the door for years. The Yankees haven’t won a Series in 16 years. The Astros and Braves, who have been perennial contenders in this era, missed the playoffs entirely.
But none of the teams that did fall short, wherever they did fall short, had a payroll as high as David Stearns did.
Stearns watched his team fade across the second half of the season, until finally watching the Reds beat the Mets out of a Wild Card spot on the last weekend of the season. The team’s record over the last 93 games was 38-55.
A year before, the Mets had lit up their fan base, and the National League. They won a memorable, come-from-behind Wild Card series against Stearns’ old team, the Brewers. They upset the Phillies after that and pushed the Dodgers to Game 6 of the NL Championship Series. This time around, they missed the postseason despite a payroll of $342 million, one only exceeded by the World Series champion Dodgers.
There have been other late-season fades by the Mets in their past, including a rather epic one in 2007, when they blew a 7-game lead in the last 17 games of the regular season. But one could argue there was never a more disappointing one for the fans — and for their owner Steve Cohen, who grew up a Mets fan — than this one.
Here is something Stearns said at the Trade Deadline this year:
“I don’t view this as ‘windows.’ Our responsibility here is to give ourselves a chance to make the playoffs and ultimately win a World Series every single year. That’s what this should be.”
The Mets didn’t come close after starting 45-24, despite spending $765 million on free-agent slugger Juan Soto. They didn’t have anybody resembling an ace starter, they didn’t have nearly enough of a bullpen in front of Edwin Díaz, they couldn’t get across the finish line despite Soto having a tremendous year once he got going (43 homers, 105 RBIs, even 38 stolen bases, third in MVP voting). Despite Pete Alonso hitting 38 homers and knocking in 126 runs. Despite having shortstop Francisco Lindor, the team’s beating heart, hit 31 homers and score 117 runs batting ahead of Soto and Alonso.
Now Alonso has opted out of his contract. Díaz, the NL Reliever of the Year, has done the same. Stearns says he wants them both back. We’re about to find out how much. It is now Stearns’ (big) job to put the whole thing back together, for the Mets to contend again for the NL East title, for them to once again be the thing they aspire to be, and what the owner desperately wants them to become:
The Dodgers spend money, too. They assemble big-name talent, too. They just do everything better these days than everybody else. The Blue Jays came as close as they did to beating them, up three games to two and heading home. But the Blue Jays didn’t close the deal at the finish of a World Series for the ages. Hard to do that against the Dodgers. The Mets found out first-hand in October of 2024.
In 2022, the Mets won 101 games with Buck Showalter as their manager and lost in the Wild Card round. The next year they only won 76. Buck was gone and Stearns was running the Mets. He hired Carlos Mendoza to replace Buck. We all saw how strongly they finished in ‘24. Then they fell down hard across the summer of ’25, ending up with a starting rotation of kids (Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong, Brandon Sproat) who had just been in Triple-A. The kids showed great promise, but they couldn’t save the Mets, who were beaten out by the Reds, whose payroll was around $120 million.
Now Stearns has to figure out what to do if Alonso and Díaz leave. He has to find a true ace, and a center fielder, and build a new and improved bullpen.
Steve Cohen chased David Stearns like a free agent a couple of years ago. It was because of the work he’d done in Milwaukee. Bigger stage now, bigger payroll. Bigger spotlight. Brighter than ever on the Mets’ baseball boss this offseason. He wanted New York. Now he’s got it.
