David Stearns keeps Mets on course for playoffs and future with MLB trade deadline deals
Mets President of Baseball Operations David Stearns responds to questions during a news conference about trade deadline deals on Tuesday at Citi Field. Credit: AP/Pamela Smith
Should the Mets stumble over these next two months and somehow not make the playoffs — hey, stranger things have happened — the public blowback over their low-wattage trade deadline performance will be severe for president of baseball operations David Stearns.
He’ll be blasted for refusing to overpay for Jack Flaherty or Zack Eflin or Trevor Rogers or Tanner Scott or Carlos Estevez. Any number of the more high-profile pitchers that switched teams before Tuesday at 6 p.m. Or ones like Blake Snell and Tarik Skubal he couldn’t pry from those clubs.
But we don’t expect that to happen.
Stearns dutifully checked all his boxes in the weeks leading up to the deadline using a pragmatic, if not flashy, approach. By trading for four relievers — a group headlined by Ryne Stanek, Phil Maton and Huascar Brazoban — Stearns fortified a bullpen that he’s routinely refreshed as this season has sped along. He got Mets-killer Jesse Winker for his D.J. Stewart upgrade, and Paul Blackburn to be the back-end starter desperately needed after being blindsided by the injuries to Kodai Senga and Christian Scott.
Not a very thrilling list. We get it.
But we remember thinking the same thing during the winter when Stearns was stockpiling his collection of short-term deals: Luis Severino, Sean Manaea, Harrison Bader, Tyrone Taylor, Jose Iglesias. There also was the last-minute flyer Stearns took on J.D. Martinez, but that felt like less of a dice roll.
Bottom line: Stearns hit on the majority of his mid-range moves during his first offseason being the Mets’ top shot-caller, and that gives him the benefit of the doubt in working the margins again at the deadline. Rather than auctioning off a roster with pieces priced to sell, Stearns found himself straddling the Mets’ surprising rise as a wild-card contender and the farm system he’s been tasked with rebuilding.
Not an easy tightrope to walk. But these Mets aren’t yet in the same category as the Dodgers and Orioles, two teams further along the World Series timeline, and Stearns has been telegraphing his ’24 intentions from the moment he took the reins in Flushing. Stearns stuck to his plan, but don’t confuse that with bailing on the Mets’ playoff hopes — or shortchanging what they could accomplish come October.
“I think that’s always the balance, right?” Stearns said before Tuesday night’s game against the Twins. “Trying to figure out the right segments of your system to include in any particular deal. And in this situation, given the players that were available, given the prices on certain players, we felt like this was the right course to take. And the transactions that we were able to execute were the right ones to do.”
Translation: Stearns is staying the course. And anyone who’s been following his stewardship of the Mets had to know this was coming.
Look at it this way. The Mets entered Tuesday with MLB’s best record (32-17) since June 1, and that’s been the byproduct of the current clubhouse mix, the same group that gave itself an accountability check to right the ship. They also were only a half-game behind Atlanta for the top wild-card spot, close enough to suggest Carlos Mendoza & Co. are in this for the long haul.
What Stearns did with his deadline deals is make a legit contender even better, without touching his pile of prospect chips. He wasn’t going into those stacks, not halfway through his first year at the helm, and Stearns gave up virtually nothing in these transactions. Understanding Stearns’ mission for this year, I asked him Tuesday if the Mets’ resurgence tempted him to go bigger than he did at the deadline, or as some might suggest, “all-in” for the second half. He claimed his blueprint hadn’t changed in regard to the Mets’ 2024 goals.
“I think the plan coming into the season was to compete and make the playoffs,” Stearns said. “That was the plan and that remains the plan. And so I think where we are right now doesn’t matter how we got here. We’ve gotten to a place where we’re a playoff-caliber team ... and we did what we thought was the right thing to do.”
Could Stearns have done more to solidify that? Of course. But deadline dealing always comes down to a cost-benefit analysis, and Stearns isn’t carrying the weight of a World Series or bust mentality during his rookie year in Flushing. He’s trying to set up the Mets as an annual October player, and for a franchise that’s only made back-to-back postseason appearances twice since 1962, that’s no small feat.
Also, Stearns wasn’t alone in his sensible shopping. There were plenty of difference-makers that stayed put because GMs couldn’t extract the ransoms they wanted and Stearns wasn’t about to go way above market. If owner Steve Cohen wants to flex his financial might this winter, so be it. But Stearns wasn’t feeling quite as rich in talent capital. We’ll see soon enough if his conservative mindset pays off.
“Clearly, we value some of our top prospects very highly,” Stearns said. “We think they’re going to contribute here for a long time. And we were very mindful of that as we went through the process.”
Stearns’ process has worked out pretty well so far. And we have no reason to be skeptical of it now.
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.
