New York Mets GM David Stearns is taking plenty of heat for his shortcomings this week.
New York Mets GM David Stearns is being taken to the woodshed by fans and media, and deservedly so. Stearns had a disastrous offseason that sent the Mets to the bottom of the NL East standings, and he’s been in recovery mode this week as the piling on continues.
One of Stearns’ biggest failures was in free agency, which was the subject of a piece by Tim Britton of The Athletic as Britton took a look at why.
There are two reasons here that are interlocked: (1) the Mets failure to develop a consistent pipline of young talent (2) overrelying on free agency to move on from a core that collapsed in the second half of 2025.
As one executive noted, you “get what you pay for” when you avoid high-priced talent, and that proved to be the case for the Mets. Outfielder Luis Robert Jr. had a well-documented history of injuries and underperforming when the Mets chose to hand him the center fielder’s job at the start of the year, while second baseman Marcus Semien is clearly on the downside of his career.
But the worst decision was the one where the Mets chose to spend the most -- Bo Bichette. He’s not a third baseman, and putting Bichette at the hot corner forced the Mets to move the one competent third baseman they did have, as Brett Baty struggled with his offense when he was moved around the diamond in a desperate, ill-advised attempt to turn him into a super utility man.
But how about giving Stearns the blame for simple poor decisions? The Los Angeles Dodgers are about to take the field and try to make another World Series run because they signed Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Blake Snell, to go with getting Mookie Betts in a trade.
Similarly, the New York Yankees are on the verge of advancing base on multiple huge free agent deals, and so have the Philadelphia Phillies. As Britton pointed out, even the Tampa Bay Rays have hit on starter Nick Martinez.
Another big problem is the Mets organizational approach to all this. Owner Steve Cohen doesn’t like to fire underperforming people until he has no choice, and his approach instead is to hire more talent to provide different points of view.
They’re doing this again with Derek Falvey, who was just hired to work together with Stearns. It’s too soon to see if this is going to work, but we’re not seeing anything going forward to indicate that things are going to be any different.
