Ultimately, wherever the 2025 Mets end up, as they perilously flirt with October oblivion, no one shoulders more of the blame than president of baseball ops David Stearns.
Stearns understands that, too. It’s not unusual in this business to be called a genius in June and a dunce by September.
The truth tends to lie somewhere in between, but that’s not how the game works when you’re sitting on a $340 million payroll — second in the majors — and have the sport’s richest owner as your boss.
What Stearns is banking on, and desperately needs, is for these mojo-less Mets to somehow squeeze their way into October. Pushing the reset button on this bizarro season is his only path to salvation and few teams would relish that clean slate more than this bafflingly underachieving group.
“You can’t win a World Series,” Stearns said, “if you don’t get to the playoffs.”
And the Mets, fortunately for Stearns, inched a little closer Tuesday night with an impressive 8-3 victory over the Padres, made possible by the creative piggyback deployment of Clay Holmes and Sean Manaea. Neither starter had to be overly thrilled with being used in this fashion.
Holmes was pulled after four innings with an 8-2 lead, having thrown just 53 pitches, and Manaea definitely doesn’t view himself as a reliever, despite swiping the win with his effective five innings (four hits, four Ks). But desperate times call for desperate actions, and the Mets are in survival mode now.
“We all want to win,” Holmes said. “Really, I think it’s just the mentality and the idea that whatever it takes, we’re willing to do.”
This was not how anyone, least of all Stearns, figured this would go. Not only were the Mets supposed to be a World Series contender on Opening Day, they had baseball’s best record (45-24) on June 12 and a 5 1⁄2 -game lead in the NL East.
Sure, Steve Cohen was the one responsible for signing off on more than $800 million for Juan Soto and Pete Alonso during the winter, but Stearns was lauded for his visionary rotation-building, turning a bunch of middle-market arms into MLB’s top starting staff.
Going into Tuesday night’s series opener against the Padres, however, with the Mets barely clinging to the last wild-card ticket, all that Stearns wizardry felt like it was done with smoke and mirrors. In a matter of months, the team’s early success vanished as the Mets morphed into a bottom-feeder, and even Stearns’ efforts to correct course at the trade deadline went sideways instead.
Stearns is just as stunned as everyone else.
“I think when you’re sitting where we were in mid-June, we would not have expected to be in this spot,” Stearns said before Tuesday’s game. “There’s no question about that. And we’ll have time to evaluate, and diagnose, and do all that stuff. For right now, my focus is from here forward, what can we do to win as many games as possible. That’s in the regular season and the postseason.”
Stearns can pump the brakes on the playoffs for now. In retrospect, the Mets’ biggest question mark heading into the season — the budget rotation — eventually turned out to be their Achilles’ heel. Injuries and regression took a heavy toll, denting Stearns’ valued depth only weeks into spring training, then threatening to sabotage the Mets’ playoff chances entirely before the trio of rookies — Nolan McLean, Jonah Tong and Brandon Sproat — were hastily summoned as saviors.
Nobody talks much about the Mets’ vaunted pitching lab anymore (remember Griffin Canning?). Here in mid-September, with only 11 games left, it’s become a scramble to the finish line, and that meant using Manaea — at $75 million, their highest-paid starter — out of the bullpen.
“Whatever it takes to help this team win,” Manaea said, “I’m going to do.”
Regardless of how they schedule the rotation down the stretch, it’s going to be a white-knuckle ride, which further emphasizes Stearns’ failure to acquire another starter at the deadline. He didn’t bank on Manaea backsliding, or Frankie Montas skidding into Tommy John surgery, but there were enough red flags to consider trading for rotation help.
Making matters worse, the deals that Stearns did pull off have yet to deliver the desired impact (despite his consensus Grade A deadline).
Gregory Soto and Tyler Rogers get passing marks, but Ryan Helsley has been a disaster (10.29 ERA in 17 appearances) and Cedric Mullins (.188 BA, .571 OPS) mostly a minus as well (though he did homer Tuesday night).
Perhaps the most damning stat of all? Since Aug. 1, the Mets were tied with the Twins for the second-fewest wins in the majors (15-26), so Stearns’ last chance to boldly fortify his roster has flopped miserably — so far.
“First of all, I’d say we’re not at the end of the line yet,” Stearns said. “There are potentially chapters yet to be written.”
As the author of this underachieving season, Stearns needs the ending to be staged somewhere in October.
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.
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