David Stearns Live from the GM Meetings

David Stearns Live from the GM Meetings

Front office insights are presented by sage. We welcome in from the GM meetings, met President of baseball operations, David Stearns. David, it’s Brian Kenny here. Thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure, Brian, thanks for having me. It’s great having you here, David. I know you’ve been, you’ve been processing, I’m sure you’re going over lots of things, but this season, I know you as much as we can figure out and figure out what happened and understand what happened after you open up 21 and nine later, your 21 games over 500 but miss the playoffs. What’s your view of the season? And what happened? Look, we, we played very good baseball all around for the first half, maybe a little bit more of the season. And Then we played really poor baseball for the last two months and ultimately, that cost us a playoff spot. Uh It was an extremely disappointing ending to the season, not what we expected and , and frankly wasn’t good enough. And as we evaluate it, it becomes pretty clear as to as to where our shortcomings were as when we played well, we pitched well and we played pretty good defense. And Then when we didn’t play well, we didn’t pitch as well and we played league bottom defense and that’s a really tough combination to overcome. And that’s what we were doing over the last two months of the year. And so we’re, we’re certainly motivated and expect to be much better in both those areas going forward. David. We’re talking about Pat Murphy a lot. We’re talking manager of the year and that sort of thing. And he’s one of the finalists. Of course, you were at the Brewers for a number of years where your finances were limited. Now, they’re not as limited. So, going into this off season, how do you approach it? Given that you’re now a guy with the paycheck with the, the check book ready to go? Yeah. Have, having the checkbook ready to go is an advantage. Um, it gives us access to a universe of players that some markets and some organizations frankly don’t have access to this time of year. So we’re really excited to, to have that ability. Um We also have to use it responsibly. We understand that generally when you’re fishing at the top end of a free agent market, um, there are long term contracts and, and some of those work out really well and some of those don’t work out as well. And so we have to do our work, understand which ones are gonna work out better and, and try to pursue the ones that, that we think are going to be most impactful for the longest for our team. And one of the biggest decisions is stay close, close to home. Pete Alonso had a Pete Alonso season. Top 300 total bases slugged a bit better played all 162. Among these are our top five first baseman according to the Shredder last year, my top five , excuse me last year that we, that we ranked and he had the highest slugging percentage even with the stars. So how would you characterize the Mets level of interest in retaining Pete Alonso? We certainly have interest in bringing Pete back. He’s been a really good man. He’s been a great representative of the organization. He’s someone who cares a lot about the Mets in New York and we care a lot about him. So we’re certainly interested in bringing him back. We got to see where the off season goes and, and what Pete’s preferences are. Um, we were able to bring him back last year and certainly our hope that we can do the same this year. Have you had discussions with him yet? I’m not going to get into any, any specifics on any particular player conversations that we have or haven’t had, but I’m certain we’re gonna be talking over the course of the offseason. Ok. What about Edward Diaz? What about him? Yes. Similar with Edwin. He’s been a really good Met. He’s pitched at a very high level for a long time demonstrated he can perform in New York. Uh, we, we, we’d love to have Edwin back. Um, as is his right, he decides to opt out of his contract. He had two years remaining, wanted to see what else is out there. He’s earned that right. He deserves that will allow him to go through the process and, and certainly remain in touch with him yet, young pitchers come up very late in the season. Nola mclean Jonah to brandon Sprout mclean certainly looks like a finished product. I mean, a 2.06. Er, a, I’m just wondering, you know, broadly David philosophically, can you let these guys learn on the job, make their mistakes, maybe get beat up here and there or again , you’re with the Mets a little different. Now, do you need results now? And maybe they get fewer innings? There’s no question. There’s a different mindset to breaking in young players in a market like New York versus a market like Milwaukee where I was previously. That’s the reality of, of where we are. It’s the reality of our expectations. It’s the reality of our market. We’re aware of that. We also understand that in order to compete at a really high level, we do have to give young players consistent opportunities to both succeed and fail at the major league level. Um, we saw that in the second half, we saw Nolan show up and and have a really good start to his major league career. We also saw Jonah Tong and Brandon Spro show up and have some really exciting moments that showed how good they can be and also some of the natural struggles that young players are going to have at the major league level. So this is a balance and, and you’re right, it is a little bit more challenging and maybe there’s a little bit less patience in a place like New York than there would be in some other markets. Yeah, I was thinking of that like if they’re, if you’re in Milwaukee, they’re pitching and they’re just pitching and where you are, maybe not. Although again, mclean looks like completely legitimate. What are the plans? Do they open with the big club? I mean, generally, are you thinking if all goes well, those guys are in your rotation, look , I, I think very difficult for me to sit here in mid November and predict exactly what our starting rotation is going to look like on opening day next year. I think all three of those guys are going to play a big part in our team next year. I think they’re gonna earn that. We’re gonna ask them to continue to earn it. But what it looks like on opening day would be really tough for me to tell right now. Ok, I’m sure you’ve had plenty of planning meetings and what you want and maybe what happens later, you know, could be different. Here are things that you’ve done. You’ve made moves as far as coaching, moved on from pitching coach Jeremy, he who had a lot of success. First base coach Antoine Richardson widely credited for your number one stolen base percentage. You tell me the philosophy, both these guys go to the Braves, by the way, your rivals, your philosophy and making moves. II, I think we had a really talented coaching staff last year and sometimes, uh opportunities exist to, to change the mix um to bring in slightly different skill sets and, and we’re very excited with the coaching staff that we’re, we’re building next year, we’re gonna place an emphasis on ensuring that we’re preparing our players as best as we possibly can uh on continuing our teaching at the major league level. And I think we’re bringing in, in coaches throughout our major league staff who are really well aligned with our organizational goals and philosophies. So I’m very excited um with, with where our major league staff is headed with the coaches we have coming into the organization while also recognizing that, that we also had some really good coaches on our staff last year who are now going to be in other uniforms, David. I’m just wondering, we’ve gone over the Juan Soto season, you know, in a lot of ways, I’m wondering like, how much contact do you have, especially after year, one of a mega deal, how much contact do you have with Juan about team goals, personal goals, that sort of thing in the off season. We’re, we’re in regular contact with Juan and, and with most of our players throughout the off season, I’ve talked to him, Carl Mendoza has talked to him. Other folks in our front office have talked to him. So we want to make sure that, you know, we’re certainly aware of what he’s going on in the off season. Want sure he understands what we’re looking to do, get any feedback he has. And that’s true with a number of the players on our roster. We, we try to stay in touch as much as possible and, um, and, and gather their feedback as well. It’s important for it to be a really a two way street and have communication going back and forth. It’s funny now on the, on the lower third there as we call it , like they have his stats and you look at you go, man, what a season, Juan Soto had like there were ups and downs, but there’s real production. Give me your view of juan Soto as your signature player. Well, he had a great year, um and, and the fact that he’s MV P finalist proves that he had, he had a great year. He helped us win a lot of games. Um You know, at times he carried our team offensively and I think he also believes that he can be even better. Um, that, that he can be a more well rounded player that he can contribute to wins in, in more ways over the course of the game. And that’s what’s so exciting to us is that despite everything he’s accomplished, despite the type of year he had last year, he’s motivated to get better and that’s pretty cool. All right, David Stearns, again , president of baseball operations with the New York Mets. David. Thank you for your time and good luck with this off season. You’ll be making news, I’m sure. And we’ll be hearing from you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it.

11/11/25: Mets President of Baseball Operations David Stearns speaks to Brian Kenny on MLB Network about the 2025 season and his outlook on the free agency and trade market.

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