David Stearns hiring finally makes Steve Cohen's vision visible
David Stearns, left, and Steve Cohen.
In fairness to Steve Cohen, we’re willing to reset his World Series clock, the three-to-five-year pledge he made to deliver a championship upon buying the Mets in 2020.
Not that someone sitting on a $17 billion fortune needs our largesse, but only now is Cohen’s true vision being realized, with former Brewers exec David Stearns finally coming on board as the franchise’s first president of baseball operations.
This was Cohen’s plan from the start, shortly after the ink dried on his $2.4 billion purchase of the Mets, until the hedge-fund titan discovered that hiring people under MLB’s jurisdiction wasn’t as simple as making them a (lucrative) offer they couldn’t refuse. As a result, Cohen went without his desired POBO and burned through three general managers, which included an interim GM stint by president Sandy Alderson.
Stearns, 38, had been Cohen’s guy for a while, but Brewers owner Mark Attanasio wouldn’t let the Manhattan native out of his contract to go back home. Instead, Cohen had to wait, and in the meantime, the Mets developed a more glaring need to fill the vacant position.
It was easier to stick with a one-GM operation during last year’s 101-win season, though Billy Eppler’s hoarding of prospects resulted in meager trade deadline upgrades for a Mets’ team that got bounced in the wild-card round of the playoffs. This year’s catastrophe, however, only reinforced Cohen’s desire for a front-office do-over, and hiring Stearns was the clear path to a Flushing rebound. When the Mets had reached crisis mode in late June — think Titanic just before the iceberg — Cohen called his own news conference and hinted where he was heading.
“My view is this is a very complex job,” Cohen said then. “There’s a lot to do — it’s a lot on one person.”
Eppler was hired with the understanding that Cohen was likely to get his target eventually, and Stearns checks all the boxes — plus a few more. A Harvard grad, Stearns is part of the sport’s Ivy-educated front-office generation, and made his name by performing some baseball alchemy in Milwaukee, turning one of the lowest payrolls into a perennial playoff contender.
Doing more with less is considered near-miraculous in a league with no salary cap, and Stearns’ baseball IQ combined with his analytic background is just the profile Cohen has been searching for. Then there are the bonus factors. Stearns grew up in Manhattan as a Mets fan, interned in the team’s front office — mentored by Omar Minaya at the time — then worked his way up the ladder through Cleveland and Houston before landing with the Brewers.
Now, the Mets will have two lifelong fans running the show in Flushing, and one of that duo also happens to be the sport’s richest owner -- giving Stearns a wealth of resources at his disposal that didn’t exist in small-market Milwaukee. The best comp would be the Dodgers’ hiring of Andrew Friedman from the Rays, and he’s helped turn that deep-pocketed organization into a prospect-manufacturing machine with the financial might to win any free-agent bidding war.
That’s what Cohen has visualized all along for his Mets. But this being New York, he wanted to speed up the winning part, figuring that a rebuild of the farm system could take a backseat. To do that, Cohen relied on his checkbook, but his record spending for a $377 million payroll this season soon taught him the limitations of trying to buy a championship. His shortcut turned out to be a dead end by late July and led to Cohen greenlighting a roster dump that focused back on restocking the minors.
The Mets’ trading spree wasn’t so much a sell-off as it was a buying of prospects, with Cohen once again finding unique methods to flex his muscular bank account. Stearns now inherits a vastly improved farm system, and the Mets further cleared the decks for his own remodeling by firing a number of scouting and development heads last month.
Cohen already has made it clear that Eppler will remain, but based on the front office hierarchy, is now under Stearns. Less clear is what happens to manager Buck Showalter, who has one year worth a guaranteed $4 million remaining on his contract. Cohen and Eppler obviously have loyalty to Showalter. But Stearns is likely to be given carte blanche to reshape the organization, and that could mean bringing in his own guy — such as his former Brewers manager Craig Counsell, who is in the final season of his Milwaukee contract.
Regardless, Cohen already pushed the reboot button for his Mets at the trade deadline, and now Stearns will be coming in at the end of this disappointing season to take those efforts to the next level. This isn’t Milwaukee, but Stearns’ New York pedigree should make him well-suited for the task ahead, and his Mets fandom goes beyond the usual professional investment.
Finally, Cohen’s plan is truly coming together. And, with Stearns’ arrival, it’s never looked more promising.
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.
