Mets' David Stearns says team could be buyers at trade deadline
New York Mets President David Stearns speaks to the media before a doubleheader against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Citi Field on Tuesday, May 28, 2024 in the Queens borough of New York City. Credit: Jim McIsaac
David Stearns is a perpetual smiler. As he met the media at Citi Field on Friday before the Mets hosted the Astros, he truly had something to smile about.
The Mets went into Friday having clawed their way back to .500 at 39-39 after sweeping the Yankees in the Subway Series. They had won 15 of 19 to turn the conversation with Stearns — the team’s first-year president of baseball operations — from whether the Mets will be sellers at the July 30 trade deadline to if they will be buyers.
If the Mets are still clicking in late July, Stearns was asked, could they end up being buyers at the deadline?
“Sure,” he said.
The Mets’ turnaround has been dramatic. They were 11 games under .500 on May 28. Now they are in the thick of the National League wild-card race and thinking of building it up rather than tearing it down.
“The truth is we still have time before we have to make decisions,” Stearns said. “Clearly, our team performance has improved quite considerably over the past few weeks. I think we’re playing much closer to the level of baseball and consistency of baseball that we envisioned throughout the course of the season, and now we have to continue with that. I think everyone in that room understands that, that we’ve now given ourselves an opportunity and we need to continue to run with it.”
If they do run with it, does Stearns expect owner Steve Cohen to authorize an increase in the Mets’ MLB-high $374 million payroll?
“I think Steve has shown repeatedly that he’s committed to investing the resources in the team that we need to compete,” Stearns said. “Certainly, I think we’ll continue to do so.”
On June 9 in London, in his most recent public interview, Cohen said: “I tell you, it’s amazing. Forgetting the Mets, all anybody wants to talk about in the season — it’s not the season. It’s the trade deadline. It’s going to come, guys. I’m telling you, it’s going to come. It will be here shortly. But in the meanwhile, I’m going to focus on winning games.”
Why have the Mets been so streaky?
“I don’t know that I have a defined answer to that,” Stearns said. “I think health is part of that. I also think we’ve had some of our better players now get hot all together at the same time. When you do that, it lengthens the lineup, it allows you to score runs in bunches, and that’s what we’ve been able to do.”
Stearns stressed that he doesn’t have to decide today which direction to go because “as we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, we can continue to get information as we go along and the world can change very quickly. In this case, we played much better over the last couple of weeks and that is very encouraging. I think we’re now playing at a level that more resembles what we thought the team could do throughout the course of the season.
“In theory, you can take it all the way up to the actual deadline if you wanted to. At some point, you have to make decisions, and decision points surface at different times in different years. Sometimes there are decision points in front of you about potential transactions on July 15. Sometimes the decision points really don’t surface until much closer to the deadline or deadline day. So it’s tough to predict when those will occur. But we’ll certainly be prepared to make the best decisions we possibly can when we’re faced with them.”
One decision Stearns likely won’t have to make — especially if the team stays in the playoff race — is whether to trade free-agent-to-be Pete Alonso.
Alonso went into Friday batting .241 with 16 homers and 43 RBIs.
“I think Pete’s had a good year,” Stearns said. “He’s on pace for a bunch of home runs. He’s sitting in the middle of our lineup. He gets pitched very carefully every single day. I think he’s doing what we would expect Pete Alonso to do.”
Stearns had praise for the manager he hired, Carlos Mendoza, who started his tenure 0-5 but never wavered in his belief that better days were ahead.
“He understands this is a long season,” Stearns said. “He’s been around this town a long time and has seen all the ups and downs that you can see. He’s been the same guy from Day One through when we’ve had our struggles to now when we played much better. From my perspective, that’s very helpful, and I think that’s certainly a real reason why we’ve been able to bounce back here throughout the course of the season.”
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.