Question of the week: Are you ready to be done with Stearns?

[Frayed Knot]

These lists are a snapshot in time but you're using it to claim,, what exactly?, that the teams with high numbers now dominate these rankings consistently?  That must account for all of those Mariners WS titles er, appearances. And if Seattle promoted and/or traded five of their six they'd have five more pop up instantly? So the standard you're going for here is that it wasn't enough that the Mets had basically double their allotment on similar lists this past winter [6 of 100] but what they should have had, y'know, if only they had a competent GM/POBO, was something like 10 or 12 of the top 130 providing us with insta-replacements for each guy moved up. Good, cuz for a moment there I thought you were being unrealistic.

btw, the  "filling the list year after year" Yanx & Braves right now combine for seven total, more or less an average share though maybe not even that since five of those seven are in the back half of the list and only one in the top 30. 

 

[MFS62]

Yes

I want to be unrealistic.

I want  the Mets to fill those lists with loads of prospects who come to the majors and produce winners year after year. I'm sick and tired of "LOL Mets" comments. We were told that Stearns was they guy who would do that, and so far he hasn't delivered.

And that was the question that started this thread.

I'm done with Stearns.

Later

[Frayed Knot]

5 minutes ago, MFS62 said:

I want to be unrealistic.

Then you're succeeding.

And whether you are done with Stearns or not doesn't matter, this isn't a defense of Stearns it's a defense of logic. The conclusion that the GM suxx because a snapshot of the moment doesn't have the team on top the prospect list right after using current prospects to fill 2/3 of their ML OF and 2/5 of the starting rotation, essentially all at once, ignores reality.

[MFS62]

I don’t care. 
why do you feel it is necessary to do judge what I write? 
What do you do for a living? Smiling Proctologist?

later

[Frayed Knot]

It's a baseball issue, one that you brought up.  Discussing topics like this is what we do here!!

And I'll end it here, but my point is that using a prospects list -- which, at best, is just a snapshot in time and one that had the Mets at or near the top of the entire league just months ago -- as a reason to bury Stearns is using a defective shovel. Then the idea that other teams consistently replace promoted/traded (or failed) prospects with new ones as fast as the old ones age out to dominate these types of lists year in and year out is simply not true.

[metirish]

 

 

 

[The Hot Corner]

Regardless of how we feel about his performance (or lack thereof) it does not appear that he is going anywhere.  If he does as poorly in the upcoming trade deadline and offseason as he did last time around, then Cohen may change his mind.

Hopefully, things go much better this time around.  It would be hard to do worse.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I think the failure in the second half of 2025 can be written off as bad luck. If Ryan Helsley hadn't failed so miserably, the Mets would have made the playoffs.

But what happened this past offseason looked like a disaster from the beginning. It finally looked a bit better when the Mets got Bichette and Peralta, but we've seen that it wasn't enough. Getting Polanco and Robert didn't impress anyone, and the starting rotation was always looking like a lot of maybes. They need to rethink their rule about avoiding longer-term contracts. If they limit to three years, they won't get the best players and even when they do get a prime player, like Bichette, he'll be likely to be a short-termer. Stearns needs to put more value on stability. It's not a great idea to have to rebuild the roster every year as much as he has.

[metirish]

Surely time to hire a GM ? 

[Cowtipper]

Well, I mean, it wasn't just Helsley. It was ...

Mullins
Soto
Helsley

So 3/4 of the names he brought aboard to bolster the team sucked. And going back, recall he also traded Eric Orze for Jose Siri to help "bolster the team," and look what Siri did for NY.

And what he gave up for all those players currently are or have been productive since leaving. So not only is he bad at judging which 'talent' to bring aboard, he's bad at judging which talent to part with. And you're seeing it in 2026, as well. Peralta has underwhelmed. Bichette is improving but by every metric still pretty darn mediocre based on his past performance. 

[ashie62]

I believe Cohen's tone is one of resignation 

[Cowtipper]

It doesn't make sense for Cohen to keep Stearns around. Why get rid of the field manager but not the GM? Mendoza worked with what he was given. But Stearns gave him the team to work with in the first place. Stearns built this monstrosity; if anyone is most culpable, it's him. It's like a failing company getting rid of a floor manager when they should be focusing on the higher ups that are making the major decisions that drove the company to bankruptcy in the first place. Doesn't make sense. 

[Benjamin Grimm]

[Centerfield]

I listened to the podcast where Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman had Steve Cohen on.  He basically said that if he fires Stearns this early into his tenure, he's afraid he will be labeled as reactionary and that can deter good talent from coming here in the future.  I don't know if that's true, or if it's an excuse, but it sounds logical to me.

 

[metsmarathon]

I dunno… i think that as bad as stearns has been, do you really want to go into the trade deadline with an interim gm…?

[ashie62]

On 7/16/2026 at 1:54 PM, Centerfield said:

I listened to the podcast where Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman had Steve Cohen on.  He basically said that if he fires Stearns this early into his tenure, he's afraid he will be labeled as reactionary and that can deter good talent from coming here in the future.  I don't know if that's true, or if it's an excuse, but it sounds logical to me.

 

It tells me that Cohen has thought about firing Stearns

I don't like the idea of Stearns managing this trade deadline. Part is I don't trust him to do a good job of it and it increases his chances of keeping his job. All imho

[MFS62]

This popped up on facebook today:

Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

Is he really 6'3"?

[smg58]

"Given the underperformance" implies that people had the right to expect more from the team Stearns assembled.  There is plenty to debate there, but guys not playing to realistic expectations are not the GM's problem.  Guys getting hurt aren't necessarily the GM's problem either, unless they came in with an injury history (or are pitchers) and were paid like full seasons could be taken for granted (see Polanco, Jorge).  As far as the "excessive reliance on spreadsheets" goes, anybody who can read a Fangraphs page knew Peralta got lucky last year. 

There's a lot of anger over dismantling the team's core (Alonso especially), but I get the anger and I get concluding the Mets had gotten as far as they could go with them to equal degrees.  Like I said over the winter, I think Stearns would have been forgiven if he put a better team on the field, but he... didn't.

What I didn't (and most likely won't) forgive Stearns for was the way he completely botched the deadline last year.  Bringing in Mullins actually made the team worse.  There were available relievers having better years than Helsley that would have cost less.  (And Stearns would have known that if he relied excessively on spreadsheets.)  And he didn't get any righthanded bats, which they needed.  So I'm with ashie as far as Stearns handling this year's deadline goes.

That being said, the mess we have is not all Stearns' fault.  The team has gotten some crummy luck with injuries.  Soto wasn't out for long, nor did it compromise his play for an extended period of time, but the season was already over by the time he got back.  Lindor has just not been right.  I don't think I appreciated how brutal losing Clay Holmes would be, but given how our other veteran starters have performed, it's been brutal.  But we have a new young core emerging, some players will bounce back, and we'll have money to spend.  Next year is not a lost cause, and the deadline needs to be approached that way.

[Benjamin Grimm]

9 minutes ago, smg58 said:

Next year is not a lost cause, and the deadline needs to be approached that way.

I generally agree with that. I've never aligned myself with the angsty "let's tear it all down and suck for the next five years" position.

I think that it's important to get away from the plan to cobble together a new pitching rotation each year and hope that enough of them have a good year. I didn't feel comfortable with it in 2024, but it worked. But then they tried it again in 2025 and 2026 and it didn't work. I guess, at this point, they should look ahead with McLean and Scott and Thornton and try to get Tong's act together, but they should get at least two veteran pitchers on multi-year contracts. Injuries and disappointments are always possible, but I'd rather see them attempt stability rather than consciously avoid it.

[metirish]

 

[Centerfield]

That’s the thing. I haven’t seen the adaptable part. Maybe we’ll see it now. 

[ashie62]

It's easy for me to say this now but it feels obvious to me know that Mendoza should have been replaced far sooner than he was

[Gwreck]

1 hour ago, ashie62 said:

It's easy for me to say this now but it feels obvious to me know that Mendoza should have been replaced far sooner than he was

It was obvious then too!  Many observed as such here.  
 

Given the problems with starting pitching and injuries, it’s not clear to me it would necessarily have made a difference in whether the season would be a success* but it still was a move made far too late.
 

*”Successful” season = making the Division Series.

[Benjamin Grimm]