Of course. Lindor and Soto are no brainers, and the type of players a big market team should be signing. Of all the moves Stearns made this offseason, Bichette was the best of them (or the least worst of them), but even that had issues.
He gave a 1 year opt out to a player attached to a QO. The AAV was insane, and once you factor in the opt-out bonus, he costs us $47M this year. Keep in mind this was exactly the structure Cohen had a problem with in the Alonso negotiations a year ago. To now just grant that, and lose the QO compensation is evidence of panic. I agree that the issue with the lineup was the hitters behind our top 3, but part of the reason we are left with that is because Stearns paid elite level money to a good, not elite player.
The much bigger issue, of course, is Polanco. Paying to bring in an over 30, oft-injured player, coming off an outlier year and asking him to repeat that outlier year is how you end up in trouble. And relying on Bichette and Polanco, not to improve the team, but to make up for lost production from two very good, reliable hitters, is why were in this mess.
I think we ended up 9th in runs scored last year. Everyone agreed we needed to get better. Our plan to get better was:
1. FIrst, get worse, by losing Alonso/Nimmo/McNeil.
2. Sign Polanco and Bichette to make up for Alonso/Nimmo/McNeil and hope that you've covered the difference.
3. Rely on the upside of Luis Robert
4. Rely on the upside of Baty/Vientos/Alvarez.
5. Rely on the upside of Carson Benge.
6. Hope that all of this was enough to make up for the inevitable offensive downgrade Marcus Semien was going to provide.
In hindsight, I think it's pretty clear to me that David Stearns felt that he was going to get Kyle Tucker, and if he didn't get Tucker, the market would be soft enough that he could cobble together some Polanco-type moves. I think he never thought the FA markets would stay hot all through the off-season. A huge miscalculation on his part.