{"id":736917,"date":"2026-06-27T13:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T13:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/736917\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T13:39:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T13:39:14","slug":"lupica-the-mets-are-david-stearns-and-he-is-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/736917\/","title":{"rendered":"Lupica: The Mets are David Stearns and he is to blame"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Knicks are Leon Rose, who has just capped off as great a front-office performance as his sport has ever seen. The Mets are David Stearns, who has done very little right since taking over the front office of the Mets. Leon Rose fired a coach last spring because he thought it would win him a championship. David Stearns just fired a manager<\/a> to try to get out of last place with one of the biggest payrolls in baseball history. And to save his own job.<\/p>\n

New York, New York. Hell of a town as one of our old anthems says, one that needs to be reworked these days. The Knicks are up and the Mets are down. Again. It starts with the men in charge, because where else does it start?<\/p>\n

Rose took over a team that had lost more games than the earth over the two decades before he arrived at Madison Square Garden. In the season before James Dolan hired him, the Knicks had a record of 21-45 in an NBA regular season finally cut short by COVID, did not make it into a bubble postseason that eventually saw LeBron and the Lakers win it all.<\/p>\n

The Knicks last game that season, nine days before it was announced that Rose was in fact taking over the basketball operation at the Garden, was a 136-131 overtime victory over the Hawks. The starters that night were Julius Randle, RJ Barrett, Maurice Harkless, Elfrid Payton, Taj Gibson. Even old friend Frank Ntiliklina, from the Class of Phil Jackson, was still around to play 23 minutes.<\/p>\n

When Stearns took over the running of the Mets, they were one year removed from having won 101 games under Buck Showalter, who still knew what he was doing despite the fact that so many things went wrong, over the second half of that season especially. Stearns, whom owner Steve Cohen decided had invented baseball in Milwaukee, got rid of Buck in a ham-handed and tone-deaf way.<\/p>\n

The Mets absolutely came within two victories of the World Series the next year, Stearns\u2019 first on the job. But they mostly did that with a team assembled by Buck and Billy Eppler. Then there was last year\u2019s Mets, Juan Soto having been added to the team that had gone to Game 6 of the NLCS before losing to the Dodgers. The \u201925 Mets started out 45-24, and had the best record in the National League at that point. When the Mets got swept this week by the Cubs, making six errors in one of those games<\/a> along the way, their record was 72-102. They came into the weekend exactly two games better in the standings than the Colorado Rockies.<\/p>\n

By the time that six-error game had mercifully ended on Wednesday night, the people who had stuck around were singing \u201cPete Alonso.\u201d That was a brand new Citi Field anthem in honor of one of the great Mets in history, kicked to the curb by Cohen\u2019s head of baseball operations, who really had wanted to get rid of Alonso a year earlier. It was about Alonso being past 30, and not being the second coming of Keith Hernandez at first base. Now Stearns has assembled an infield that reminds you of the Bad New Bears.<\/p>\n

The Knicks are Leon Rose. The Mets are David Stearns, who brought Jorge Polanco here and Marcus Semien and Luis Robert Jr. \u2014 whatever happened to him? \u2014 and Devin Williams and Bo Bichette who, let\u2019s face it, might just be passing through.<\/p>\n

Leon Rose: Who hired Tom Thibodeau to restore order on the court at the Garden and then moved on from Thibodeau when he believed in his heart that Thibodeau would never get the Knicks across the line. Mike Brown wasn\u2019t Rose\u2019s first choice to replace Thibs, but the right one, at this time in New York sports when Rose hasn\u2019t been wrong about much.<\/p>\n

Rose owns those coaching decisions, the way he owns the championship roster he assembled, the one with Jalen Brunson, and OG Anunoby; and Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges and an old-school Glue Guy like Josh Hart. You know the only guy still around from when Rose did get the job?<\/p>\n

Mitchell Robinson. Mitch was somebody else\u2019s guy. All the guys who took out the Spurs in five<\/a> and then headed straight for the Canyon of Heroes? They\u2019re Leon\u2019s. You know when Rose\u2019s Knicks were ever as bad as these Mets? Never for more than a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

Stearns\u2019 Mets have been one of the worst teams in baseball for more than 162 games now. A team spending $375 million on baseball players, or whatever it is, to take up residence in last place in the National League East. The way they have looked so far, just past the halfway point of the season, with this shambles of a pitching staff, you tell me what pathway you see for them to pass the Marlins and the Nationals, much less breathe the kind of air the Braves and Phillies are breathing at the top of the division.<\/p>\n

So now Carlos Mendoza takes the fall for a baseball team that looks as if Stearns dressed it in the dark. There is nothing fair about it, because there so rarely is. They really have turned into the New York Rockies. What happened on Friday with Mendoza was as inevitable as the tide. He ought to feel lucky, walking away from the mess that Stearns has made at Citi Field. We are two-and-a-half years into this with Stearns. Maybe he can still turn things around and the Mets can be something other than an afterthought across the second half of the season.<\/p>\n

Dave Dombrowski has watched the Phillies turn things around after he fired Rob Thomson and replaced him with Don Mattingly. But even when Thomson, a terrific baseball lifer, was gone, Bryce Harper was still there in Philly and so was Kyle Schwarber. And Zack Wheeler. And Cristopher Sanchez.<\/p>\n

For now, Stearns looks like a small-market executive who has acted like a small-timer here, despite the money he gets to spend on baseball players. It is Rose, a former agent, who came to this with a big-city feel for this, and flair, and a vision for his team that was more than numbers, and still about people. More than anything, at least so far, Stearns seems more comfortable with spread sheets than ballplayers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe in the talent in our room,\u201d Stearns said on Friday afternoon, at a time when no one who roots for his team shares that feeling.<\/p>\n

He talked about \u201csome of the advances we\u2019ve made,\u201d and you were waiting for someone in the room to say, \u201cName some.\u201d<\/p>\n

And finally the man who runs baseball operations for the Mets, and for Steve Cohen, and who has only succeeded in running them into the ground over the past year, said this when asked about Mendoza:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is never on one person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes it is.<\/p>\n

ANOTHER BLACK EYE FOR LONG ISLAND GOLF, TIME TO BAN THE PHONES & WHAT A START TO WORLD CUP \u2026<\/p>\n

Once again, a bunch of performative mopes, walking around Shinnecock Hills as if buying tickets to our national championship in golf gave them the run of the place, acted like the dumbest guys at the end of the bar.<\/p>\n

Enough of them did it at the Ryder Cup with Rory McIlroy and some of the other European players and now enough of them did it last weekend when they were jeering Wyndham Clark to give Long Island another great big black eye.<\/p>\n

No one is suggesting these idiots are more than a small minority of the golf fans who did show up at Bethpage Black, and then at Shinnecock Hills.<\/p>\n

But it was enough of them to make you wonder why the area should get a big golf event ever again.<\/p>\n

Rick Reilly is right: So much of this is about a bunch of overserved young guys waving their phones around after they\u2019ve just made an in-the-moment bet like day traders.<\/p>\n

So they\u2019re rooting against Clark \u2014 who stood in there like a champion against all of it and all of them \u2014 and rooting for themselves at the same time.<\/p>\n

Rick, a wonderful golf writer, is right about something else:<\/p>\n

When the PGA championship does come back in 2033, if it comes back, ban cell phone at Bethpage Black.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t bring your phone onto Augusta National for the Masters, so put the same rule into effect for the next major championship here.<\/p>\n

And if that notion offends you, stay home and watch on television, and turn your man caves into casinos.<\/p>\n

Or mom\u2019s basement.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the deal:<\/p>\n

We walked away from what was nearly the greatest comeback in Ryder Cup history last fall talking about bad behavior from fans.<\/p>\n

Now we walk away from what was such a tremendous final round at Shinnecock \u2014 mostly because of Clark \u2014 for the exact same reason.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it and that\u2019s all.<\/p>\n

What was Jazz Chisholm thinking being out on a big league ballfield with a Blow Pop in his mouth?<\/p>\n

Wait \u2026 Jazz was thinking, right?<\/p>\n

Just checking on something:<\/p>\n

Is Marcus Semien still supposed to be the second coming of Roberto Alomar out there at second base?<\/p>\n

HAS there ever been a better opening to a World Cup than the one we\u2019ve got going right now?<\/p>\n

Is an American man is ever going to make a run at Wimbledon \u2014 and win a major for the first time since Andy Roddick \u2014 this would be the time.<\/p>\n

I guess that 60 Scottie Scheffler shot on Thursday up at the Farmers Open was a decent enough bounce-back from not winning the Open.<\/p>\n

Megyn Kelly is punching so far above her weight with Larry David she\u2019s eventually going to need rotator cuff surgery.<\/p>\n

The Reflecting Pool down there in the nation\u2019s capital looks better than the Mets these days.<\/p>\n

It really was kind of tough for Jimmy Dolan to talk tough about the mayor wearing that jacket from the Creamsicle Shop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Knicks are Leon Rose, who has just capped off as great a front-office performance as his sport…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2396],"tags":[5,1443,9411,9703,1811,22714,101,4,1690,61,2548,4203,1192],"class_list":["post-736917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-mets","tag-baseball","tag-carlos-mendoza","tag-david-stearns","tag-fired","tag-knicks","tag-leon-rose","tag-mets","tag-mlb","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-mets","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkmets","tag-steve-cohen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116822354408321621","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}