ORLANDO — The Mets didn’t see Pete Alonso as a player valuable enough to sign for more than a few years and more than $100 million. Yet the star first baseman received a larger contract than Kyle Schwarber on Wednesday when he agreed to terms with the Baltimore Orioles for a five-year, $155 million deal, only one day after Edwin Diaz signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers for a contract worth only $3 million more than what the Mets offered.

President of baseball operations David Stearns has effectively broken up the core of the team that was in place long before he took over two years ago. No longer will Brandon Nimmo be signing autographs until the ink runs out at Citi Field. No longer will the trumpets blare in the ninth inning for Diaz. No longer will Alonso hit gamebreaking home runs.

At this point, it’s clear that dismantling the group was intentional. They haven’t won anything. They’ve consistently fallen short of expectations. The electric moments never last long enough to sustain any sort of winning culture. With the three of them plus Jeff McNeil, the Mets haven’t won a division title and they’ve made the playoffs only twice since their 2016 NL Wild Card loss.

You could also make the argument that the Mets have a lot of offense to make up for and an unstable bullpen without them, and the options for replacing that production are limited. The Mets are coming away from the Winter Meetings with only one new player: right-hander Carl Edwards Jr., who was signed to a minor league contract with a Major League spring training invitation. If a 34-year-old who hasn’t pitched in the big leagues consistently since 2017 doesn’t get you excited for next season, I don’t know what will.

There is a plan for the rest of the offseason, but the Mets are staying quiet about it. They might want to rework that approach a bit to reassure the fanbase and change the optics.

Stearns doesn’t have to show his entire hand, but he does owe it to the fans to give them something more than what he gave them at the winter meetings. There was little to glean from his Tuesday appearance on SNY when he said the Mets are headed in an “outstanding direction.”

His ultra-conservative approach to the offseason doesn’t quite square with the resources he has at his disposal. Under owner Steve Cohen, Stearns practically has more money than god to work with, and yet the Mets actually shed salary with the Nimmo trade.

Why would the richest team in baseball need to shed salary?

Stearns appears to still be cautious about how he’s spending, wary about not doing it in a responsible way.

“Our resources that we have here are an enormous advantage, and as long as we allocate those resources intelligently, they’re going to continue to be an enormous advantage,” he said Tuesday. “Steve gives us everything we need to have. Not only a great roster, but a competitive organization in every single respect. I think our players and coaches recognize that, and I have no doubt that we’re going to continue to have the resources we need to compete at a very high level.”

It’s quite a contrast from how his counterpart in Los Angeles spoke about payroll.

“We are in a really strong position right now, financially, and our ownership group has been incredibly supportive of pouring that back into our team and that partnership with our fans,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told reporters this week. “As we look at things, if we were on a really tight budget, we probably wouldn’t allocate in the same way. But having more resources, it allows us to be a little bit more aggressive.”

Being aggressive is how the Dodgers landed Diaz. This is how the Dodgers tend to operate — they key in on who they want, and make competitive offers without wasting time. The Mets were far too reserved in their dealings with Diaz, allowing time for another team to come in and not only outsmart them, but outspend them.

The Mets have long had a desire to become the East Coast Dodgers, but at the moment, they’re looking more like the East Coast Angels. They can change this narrative by taking some big swings on players like Cody Bellinger or Robert Suarez. There is plenty of time left in the offseason and plenty of talent available.

Now, more than any other time in the Cohen era, they have to deliver. They also have to deliver more than hollow platitudes and generic adjectives.