The first major domino in the Mets’ horrible season fell last week with the dismissal of manager Carlos Mendoza, who was in the final year of his contract. Andy Green will manage the team on an interim basis for the remainder of the season. He’ll return to the front office at year’s end, while the club will conduct a search for a new skipper at the beginning of the offseason.
President of baseball operations David Stearns will get the chance to lead that hiring process. Owner Steve Cohen reiterated his faith in his baseball operations leader this week, telling Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman of The New York Post that he hasn’t considered a change at the top of the front office.
“It’s a five-year contract and we’re going to live that contract out,” Cohen said on Sherman’s and Heyman’s The Show podcast. The owner praised Stearns’ communication skills and aptitude before elaborating on his thought process:
“We’re two and a half years into a contract. Everyone forgets, does he get any credit for ’24? Does that not count? We almost made it to the World Series. That was just two years ago,” Cohen said. “It’s a mixed record. I’m not going to say it’s going great, but it’s too early to really make evaluations. I feel really strongly that if we’re going to burn and churn, that’s a terrible place to be. Every time you burn and churn, the next time nobody wants to come. Is someone going to put their career in your hands if you’re going to be short-term oriented?”
In response to a follow-up question about whether Stearns was unquestionably locked in through the end of his deal in 2028, Cohen replied that “there’s no guarantees in anything” and he’d “evaluate as it goes along.” He implied it was unlikely the team would make any change before the final year of the deal, however. “The change that’s not going to be made is moving David out at this point, I’m just not going to do it. Now if we get to year five and our performance continues to suffer, at that point everything’s fair game.”
The Mets and Stearns signed the aforementioned five-year contract at the end of the 2023 season. It was an open secret for years that Cohen had his sights set on Stearns, who’d led the Brewers to four playoff appearances in seven seasons from 2016-22. He stepped down from the top of baseball operations in Milwaukee at the end of ’22 but was under contract for another season, so he worked in an advisory role for his longtime chief lieutenant Matt Arnold.
Stearns, who grew up a Mets fan in Manhattan, took the job with New York once his contract with the Brewers expired. He moved on from Buck Showalter and hired Mendoza a couple months later. The Mets went 89-73 and earned a Wild Card spot in the first season of the Stearns/Mendoza era. They defeated Milwaukee in the Wild Card Series and bounced Philadelphia in the Division Series before dropping a six-game NLCS to the eventual champion Dodgers.
The Mets looked on track for their second straight playoff appearance last year. They fell apart after the trade deadline and ended up outside the playoff field on a tiebreaker to the Reds at 83-79. Their 36-51 record this season places them above only the Rockies, Royals, Giants and Angels. Over the past calendar year, only Colorado, the Halos and Minnesota have a worse record.
Cohen and Stearns signed off on the record-shattering $765MM Juan Soto contract over the 2024-25 offseason. He has a .274/.399/.536 batting line in his first 1000 plate appearances as a Met, giving him the fifth-highest OPS among qualified hitters since the start of last year.
That signing has worked, but the team’s other moves dating back to last summer have mostly not panned out. They traded for impending free agents Ryan Helsley, Tyler Rogers, Cedric Mullins and Gregory Soto last summer. Only Rogers played up to expectations, and Helsley and Mullins had terrible finishes.
They responded to the late-season collapse with a dramatic roster overhaul over the winter. Pete Alonso and Edwin Díaz walked in free agency, as did all of last year’s deadline acquisitions. They shipped out Brandon Nimmo for Marcus Semien in a swap of underwater contracts. Jeff McNeil went to the A’s in a salary dump.
New York signed Bo Bichette to a monster three-year, $126MM deal with opt-outs within hours of missing out on Kyle Tucker. They picked up Devin Williams and Luke Weaver for the bullpen, signed Jorge Polanco to play first base, acquired Luis Robert Jr. to handle center field, and traded for Freddy Peralta as a co-ace with Nolan McLean.
Only Weaver has been unequivocally good from that group. Bichette and Williams have begun to turn things around after poor starts. Robert and Polanco have been hurt for almost the entire seasons, which isn’t a huge surprise given their respective injury histories. Peralta has an earned run average pushing 5.00 and a career-low strikeout rate. Semien has had a poor season on both sides of the ball while playing through a hip flexor tear that’ll likely cost him a couple months.
Much of the stated offseason focus was on improving the infield defense. Through the season’s first half, their infield is 25th in Outs Above Average after finishing middle of the pack in 2025. Some of that is due to losing Francisco Lindor to injury, but Semien’s struggles and regression from Brett Baty and Mark Vientos are big factors.
The Mets are clearly trending toward a deadline sale. Peralta seems a near-lock to move. The currently injured Clay Holmes could go given the likelihood that he’ll decline his $12MM player option and become a free agent. There are some solid potential trade chips in the bullpen (e.g. Weaver, Huascar Brazobán, A.J. Minter, Brooks Raley). As discussed on the MLBTR podcast this week, it’s possible they look into some kind of conditional cash considerations to entertain trade scenarios involving Bichette. Cohen strongly downplayed the possibility that either Soto or Lindor would be moved.
Fans are encouraged to listen to the full podcast episode for more from Cohen on his approach to owning the team, the decision to move on from Mendoza, the state of the farm system, and CBA negotiations.
