So now Pete Alonso, effectively on his option to being the best dwelling run hitter the Mets have ever had, is gone to the Orioles. It occurs the day after Edwin Diaz, the very best nearer the Mets have ever had, is gone to the Dodgers. And after Brandon Nimmo, the group’s fourth-best hitter and one of the crucial widespread guys on the group, is already lengthy gone to the Texas Rangers for Marcus Semien, who hit .230 final season however is meant to be aces at run prevention.
Semien, by the way, is 35 years previous. Alonso turned 31 this week. However the Orioles are reportedly giving Alonso 5 years and the Mets, we’re advised, didn’t a lot wish to go previous three. So the Polar Bear goes. So does the Trumpet Man. David Stearns, the top of baseball operations, continues to be right here. And no worries there. Steve Cohen nonetheless desires Mets followers to imagine that’s nonetheless a feel-good story at Citi Area.
Right here’s a heads-up for the proprietor, who stored Alonso round for another yr than Stearns wished to: Mets followers like Pete higher. And Diaz and Nimmo, for that matter. Now they’re ready for Stearns to start out constructing a group for 2026 that makes them wish to like him.
The Phillies positive didn’t get any worse this week after they re-signed Kyle Schwarber. The Dodgers, who simply received the World Sequence and proceed to indicate us they aren’t screwing round right here, obtained higher with Edwin Diaz.
How are the Mets doing within the early innings of the baseball winter, the one during which Stearns is meant to make them lots higher subsequent summer season than they had been final summer season? Proper now, this minute, Mets followers are about as proud of Stearns as Giants followers are with Joe Schoen.
Right here is without doubt one of the issues — one in every of many — Stearns mentioned from the Winter Conferences the opposite evening on SNY:
“As we look at our organization, we are very optimistic and confident about where we are headed.”
And you understand who he should have seemed like in that second, with out saying that he appreciated the query concerning the 2026 Mets? He actually did sound like Schoen of the Giants. Stearns then proceeded to provide the sort of phrase salad that would out-salad Schoen or every other government on the town. That’s excluding Leon Rose, in fact, who speaks up about as usually as a Trappist monk.
“We’ve got all the resources we need, all of the payroll space we need to put a really good team on the field,” Stearns continued. “That doesn’t mean it’s infinite, nor should it be. And so, every decision point — whether it’s a trade, whether it’s free agency — has constraints on it and we do our best to work with them in the context of what is a very heavily resourced and well-supported team.”
Stearns has actually put extra factors on the board than Schoen has with the Giants, because it was simply 13 or so months in the past that the Mets obtained to Recreation 6 of the Nationwide League Championship Sequence, even when they did make it that far with a core of gamers assembled by Stearns’ predecessor. Now he’s coming off a season when the Mets did one thing fairly outstanding:
They added Juan Soto and never solely obtained worse, not solely didn’t make it again to the NLCS, they didn’t make it to the postseason in any respect.
We’ve heard since Cohen employed Stearns away from the Brewers that the Mets’ short-range objective and long-range objective was to mannequin themselves after the Dodgers. Cohen and Stearns have simply watched Diaz head west on a brand new deal and Alonso — together with his 264 profession dwelling runs for the Mets and his 126 RBI final season — prepare to move down the coast to Baltimore.
In fact, there’s nonetheless time for Stearns to hit some dwelling runs of his personal between now and Opening Day. However guess what? The subsequent home-run-type deal he makes working the Mets can be his first. To this point he hasn’t come shut. And you understand what Mets followers don’t wish to hear, simply on Edwin Diaz alone? That the Mets supply to Diaz was corresponding to what he obtained from the Dodgers; that he by no means obtained again to the Mets after the Dodgers threw their cash at him.
The very fact of issues to Mets followers is that he’s gone the best way Alonso is gone. And Nimmo. If the Mets did need Diaz again as badly as we had been advised they did, they didn’t do sufficient, similar because the group didn’t do sufficient final season, tripping over themselves after a 45-24 begin all the best way to the final weekend of the common season.
Now they’re down a leftfielder. They’re down a primary baseman. They’re down a better who was much more elite than Devin Williams, the brand new man, was for the Yankees. They don’t have a centerfielder, both. Or an ace for his or her pitching employees. That’s the quick listing. If Cohen’s baseball guru goes to start out guru-ing, this might be a wonderful time for it. And to indicate his fan base that he’s able to doing the sort of work right here — with a ton extra money behind him — than he did in Milwaukee; succesful, actually, of doing greater than inform Mets followers that he’s obtained a plan.
There’s time, to make certain, for Stearns to start out turning issues round. He could make a run at Tarik Skubal. Or Cody Bellinger, or Kyle Tucker. Or Joe Ryan. There are almost 4 months till Opening Day. However there was no government in baseball, not one — and never even Brian Cashman — beneath extra strain on this low season than Stearns. He’s now beneath that sort of strain to start out fixing the Mets occasions ten.
Everyone is aware of Stearns was good at his job in Milwaukee. All he’s been good at in New York to date is making Mets followers mad.
