Mets' David Stearns playing the long game, but he needs some wins along the way too

While the world around them is busy plotting the schematics of an imminent fire sale, the Mets still have another 50 games left before the July 30 trade deadline. Technically, that’s plenty of time to engineer a turnaround, but the concept seemed like a fading possibility last week when president of baseball operations David Stearns held his scheduled once-a-homestand media briefing at Citi Field.

Credit Stearns for making himself available on a regular basis, something that is increasingly rare for front-office staff around baseball and practically unheard of in other sports. He’s under no obligation to do so, aside from the club’s own efforts to provide some degree of transparency for its fan base.

Given the sorry state of the Mets, in the midst of their 15th loss in 19 games, it was realistic to wonder what — if anything —  actually could be done to save the season, short of waiting for the returns of Francisco Alvarez (could be shortly) and Kodai Senga (no timetable).

So I asked Stearns, the guy responsible for running this roster, if there was some course of action for resurrecting these Mets. Or is it just a matter of standing on the bow and watching the iceberg creep closer?

“I think what you’re trying to focus on is just doing everything we can as an organization to construct a roster on a daily basis that gives the team the best chance to win that day,” Stearns said. “We’ve got a roster with a core set of players that are going to be on the roster. And that’s not going to change. So in terms of levers we can pull, we’re going to pull the ones at our disposal, recognizing the best thing we can do right now is support this group.”

The next day, the Mets began pulling those levers, for different reasons. Shortly after Wednesday’s humiliating loss completed the Dodgers’ three-game sweep at Citi Field — a defeat stained by Jorge Lopez’s glove-throwing episode — the Mets jettisoned the relief pitcher for behavior they termed “unacceptable.”

Was it an extreme reaction to a frustrated player’s on-field antics? Possibly. Was there some confusion regarding Lopez’s postgame comments, exacerbated by his dealing with a highly emotional situation in his second language? Definitely.

But the bottom line was this: The Mets were a spiraling team playing terrible baseball, Stearns and manager Carlos Mendoza are in their first year on the job, Lopez made himself a lightning rod for the storm clouds surrounding Flushing — and thus, a convenient fall guy.

If the Mets were three games under .500 at the time rather than 11 and the clubhouse wasn’t stacked with underachieving stars, I have little doubt that Lopez would have saved himself with an apology (coached by the PR staff, if necessary). But if Stearns and Mendoza indeed are committed to culture change with the Mets, they really had no choice but to make an example of Lopez, whether or not you believe the punishment fit the crime.

Stearns’ lever-pulling didn’t stop with Lopez, though. Amid Mendoza’s lineup shuffling, most notably moving Francisco Lindor into the leadoff spot, Stearns made some significant (if not wholly unexpected) roster moves after Thursday’s 3-2 victory over the Diamondbacks in the opener of a four-game series. After carrying two third basemen at the expense of zero middle infielders on the bench, Stearns finally demoted Brett Baty to Triple-A Syracuse, giving Mark Vientos the starting job he has earned (at least during this upcoming stretch of lefty starters).

On Friday, Mendoza declined to officially anoint Vientos as the new everyday third baseman, suggesting newly recalled veteran Jose Iglesias could see some time there, too (Iglesias started at second base Friday night). But Vientos, who has yo-yo’d between Flushing and Syracuse since 2022, deserves more of a look on merit, as he was hitting .327 with a .969 OPS after his 3-for-5, two-RBI performance in Friday’s 10-9 win, the Mets’ first back-to-back victories since May 6-7.

As for Baty, he’s again been a disappointment since the Mets handed him the third baseman’s job in spring training, and superior defense shouldn’t be enough to supplant Vientos, especially for a roster that had been starving for offense before Friday’s outburst. Baty isn’t the only underachieving Met. He was just the most vulnerable, other than maybe Omar Narvaez, who was designated for assignment in the same flurry of Stearns moves.

Narvaez is making $7 million in the second season of the two-year, $15 million contract given to him by former GM Billy Eppler, a deal that became a franchise albatross almost from the minute it was signed. Alvarez’s ahead-of-schedule promotion took his job last season, and after the youngster’s injury this year, Tomas Nido outplayed Narvaez in every way — though that wasn’t hard, considering that Narvaez was hitting .154 with a .376 OPS in 28 games. Alvarez should be back shortly, maybe within the week, and that will provide a much-needed boost for the struggling offense.

Stearns embarked on his first Flushing season with the understanding that it would be part evaluation, part housecleaning for Steve Cohen’s $324 million payroll, the highest in the majors. While those remain the primary goals, Stearns also made some relatively cheap moves in the margins to keep the Mets in the wild-card conversation for as long as possible — or until it does come time to sell off the team’s coveted pieces. Stearns sounds prepared to do that as well, but he’s not resigned to a fire sale in the first week of June. He’ll give these Mets every chance to change his mind.

Maybe the players-only meeting was a step in that direction. But Stearns has taken more tangible measures this week to deliver on his pledge, with more certainly to come.

“I think the guiding light on all of this is to put together the best team possible,” he said. 

Earning his pinstripes

Everyone loves a good origin story, and while “The Yankee Way” — a new book by SNY baseball reporter/analyst Andy Martino — isn’t solely about Brian Cashman’s rise to Bronx prominence, he’s the brightest star at the center of this pinstriped universe.

And a surprisingly entertaining one at that. Those who only experience Cashman as the guy sitting behind the microphone during news conferences will not only enjoy viewing the past 30-plus years through his eyes, but also the perspectives from everyone around him — whether it’s the Yankees’ clubhouse, the front office or during his playing days as a leadoff-hitting second baseman at Catholic University.

Plenty of reasons are provided for Cashman’s unparalleled run of success under George Steinbrenner — no easy feat in dealing with the temperamental Boss — and we can’t help but think his early training as a horse-stable farmhand probably made him capable of enduring almost anything. Among his chores: cleaning up after visits from the vet, who would don a shoulder-length trash bag to help, um, examine the digestive tract by reaching through the animal’s posterior.

Breaking horses certainly helped Cashman hone the steely resolve to handle Steinbrenner, as well as Derek Jeter’s contentious negotiations and repeated episodes of A-Rod drama.

Before getting to Cashman’s move to the Bronx, however, there is meticulous detailing of how the franchise developed what amounts to its own how-to manual — a 500-page guidebook entitled “The Yankee Way” — that covers everything from facial hair to position-playing fundamentals.

It’s interesting to note that the person credited as the architect of this Yankees' infrastructure — Cashman’s mentor, Bill Livesey — is a New Englander who modeled his system on Red Auerbach’s dynasty-building techniques for the NBA’s Celtics. The late Gene “Stick” Michael also figures prominently throughout Cashman’s development (no doubt giving him a road map to tiptoe though Steinbrenner’s minefield), and numerous relationships are explored while adding colorful behind-the-scenes insight, some of the best given by Jean Afterman, a senior VP and assistant GM to Cashman.

It’s Afterman, a former stage actress, who invokes a line from “A Streetcar Named Desire” to describe Cashman helping the Yankees reverse “the long parade to the graveyard” that followed the series of post-dynasty playoff failures.

“Baseball is not like real life,” Afterman said. “You get a do-over every year. Everyone did feel like one by one these players are retiring, but a new team does rise. And to me, that is one of Brian’s unmatched great strengths as a general manager — he puts together a team that rises from the graveyard.”

The Yankees did rise to win the 2009 World Series, but that triumph is sandwiched around Joe Torre’s falling-out with Cashman (over a relief pitcher named Colter Bean) and endless A-Rod aggravation, all well-documented with fresh details. It just so happens this book is timed with the most pivotal season in Cashman’s 27-year tenure, and even after what he’s already navigated in the Bronx, you could argue that winning a World Series this October would be his greatest accomplishment.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

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.