Mets' David Stearns would certainly be earning 'MVP' chants at front office level
Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns speaks to the media before a game against the Marlins at Citi Field on Aug. 16. Credit: Jim McIsaac
With all due respect to Francisco Lindor, he’s not alone when it comes to MVP consideration within the Mets organization. The Citi Field crowd should be saving some of those chants for David Stearns, only in his case it refers to Most Valuable President (of baseball operations.)
Just as the Mets wouldn’t be closing on the third wild-card spot minus Lindor’s unmatched two-way consistency and daily leadership, you think they’d be 11 games over .500 here in early September if Stearns hadn’t hit on such a high percentage of his roster imports?
That includes building a rotation almost from scratch, patching together a bullpen to support closer Edwin Diaz and bolstering a lineup with under-the-radar finds like cult hero Jose Iglesias, a 1-A catcher in Luis Torrens, glove-first sparkplug Tyrone Taylor and deadline pickup Jesse Winker.
Don’t forget it’s Stearns who also brought on board first-timer Carlos Mendoza, a strong candidate for Manager of the Year and the steady pilot of the Mets’ remarkable 53-31 turnaround since May 29, which again ticked upward with Tuesday night’s 7-2 rout of the Red Sox. Lindor hit his 30th homer, Mark Vientos and Pete Alonso also went deep and David Peterson celebrated his 29th birthday with 11 strikeouts while lowering his ERA to 2.75.
The Mets stayed a half-game behind Atlanta for the third wild-card spot, a place that few figured they would be this time of year. Most people figured Stearns’ primary function during this transition season would be stripping the $358 million roster down for parts, just like the few remaining chop shops along Seaver Way. The Mets dipped awfully close to the hacksaw through the first two months, but whatever Stearns saw in these players — the highest ceilings he imagined — actually manifested itself after Memorial Day.
“We’re in the thick of it,” Stearns said Tuesday afternoon. “We’ve earned the right to be here. We’ve played well enough to be here. This isn’t a fluke, and we’ve got a month left to play really good baseball to give us a chance to have some fun in October.
“That’s what you want this time of year. And I’m optimistic and I’m confident in this group that we can continue to play at a high level.”
The Mets were supposed to be a .500 team. Maybe a few wins over, with a puncher’s chance at a playoff spot -- and that was if everything broke right. But Mendoza & Co. turned out much better than those predictions, despite losing their presumptive ace, Kodai Senga, for all but five innings of this season.
Stearns and owner Steve Cohen tried to sell us on the 2024 Mets as a playoff contender early on, even signing J.D. Martinez during the final week of March to help bolster their argument. But they still needed too many best-case scenarios from a rotation that spent as much time in MRI tubes as the mound, a collection of prove-it rentals with a surplus of unrealized potential.
It was a relatively low-risk, high-reward strategy: Hand out short-term deals to talented pitchers with an eye toward cashing in. And that’s what Stearns got in Luis Severino and Sean Manaea, two front-line starters that not only have pitched the Mets to the brink of the playoffs, but guaranteed bigger paydays at season’s end.
Severino’s seven-inning, five-strikeout gem in Monday’s 4-1 victory over the Red Sox lowered his ERA to 3.84 in his 27th start, bringing him to a whopping total of 159 1/3 innings, the most since he threw 191 1/3 way back in 2018. It’s probably safe to assume that Stearns never dreamed of such a workload from Severino, only because the former Yankee didn’t dare to imagine it himself.
“Actually, if you asked me in spring training if I was going to be 150-something innings right now, I would have said no chance,” Severino said.
As for Manaea, he’s got a 3.35 ERA while providing the length that only aces are capable of on a regular basis — pitching seven innings in seven of his last 12 starts (and six innings twice). Over the past month, a total of 28 starts, the Mets’ rotation had pitched the second-most innings in the majors (161 2/3, behind only the Astros’ 165 2/3), with the fifth-best ERA (3.67) during that span.
Before Stearns’ arrival, Cohen actually did him the favor of paying more than $50 million to clear out Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, two aging Cy Young winners on bloated contracts. This season, Scherzer is back on the IL after making only eight starts (3.89 ERA) while Verlander has just 13 starts (4.52 ERA) and won’t come anywhere near the 140 innings necessary for his 2025 vesting option, taking Cohen off the hook for another $17.5 million.
But it’s not about the money now. Stearns has created a bona fide playoff team earlier than expected, and what he’s put together looks poised to punch the Mets’ ticket to October.
“How many guys have walked through those doors — whether it’s injuries, trades — and seem like they fit right in,” Mendoza said. “I feel like we’ve done a really good job.”
Not a bad first year of work for Stearns, who’s no longer that small-market guy from Milwaukee.
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.
