A lof of people are praising the rebuild job David Stearns performed over this off season as a result primarily of landing Bo Bichette and Freddy Peralta. The other additions received thus far mixed reviews as questions exist over Devin Williams’ ability to handle New York, Marcus Semien’s trend of declining offense, Jorge Polanco’s still projected role at 1st base where he’s never played before, Luis Robert, Jr.’s inconsistent offense and high price tag, and how Luke Weaver may be overpaid for two good seasons across town while many, many more before that were flat out awful.
Then we need to look at what problems still exist even after the recent flurry of personnel moves. We’ll temporarily forget the corner infield positions and tentatively latch onto the new truth defensively about Bichette and Polanco. However, there is still no left fielder and no clearly identified DH. Yes, both Brett Baty and Mark Vientos are still around but neither has a consistent role identified. The team is also a bit too right handed at the plate and could benefit from another left handed swinger in the lineup.
The pitching situation is another matter of debate. Assuming Jonah Tong and Christian Scott are slated as backups in Syracuse, they still have 6 starting pitchers and need to decide how to juggle them or move one of them in a trade to become a more standard five man starting rotation. We’ve all done the math and it still appears that David Peterson is the most marketable with a modest salary and only one year of forced payroll commitment for his acquiring team.
There are still players out there in free agency who could serve the outfield or DH roles. Most starting quality outfielders are long gone off the board while role types or platoon partners exist.
For DH pretty much any kind of solid bat could work such as Marcell Ozuna who at this stage would be a short term investment for moderate money. Eugenio Suarez is coming off a 49 HR/118 RBI season and has yet to land anywhere. That kind of production might even make up for his .228 batting average and about 2 weeks from Spring Training perhaps he’d be surprisingly less expensive than he anticipated.
On the pitching side Framber Valdez, Zac Gallen, Nick Martinez, Chris Bassitt, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander are still looking for jobs. Relievers David Robertson and Danny Coulombe are still waiting for bidders. No one is sure
Trades, of course, can still be made and to some extent Stearns may be waiting for key Spring Training injuries on other teams to raise the value of his spare parts. Waiting continues to be his primary strategy for roster construction.
At this point I’d certainly give him a higher grade than I would have anticipated when the door flew open and a huge multitude of players from the 2025 Mets hit the road after he did nothing successful to address the issues during the team’s long June through September tailspin. Being charitable the best I can offer up is a B- which is an improvement but until the weird position assignments actually work and the still slew of vacancies are addressed it can’t be any higher.
12 comments:
I have no proof of this but I credit Cohen as getting pissed at LAD, getting Stearns on the bat phone, and opening the paycheck for a strong finish.
Therefore
Stearns C
Cohen A+
That averages out to about a B-
A+ for effort for sure. Steve Cohen has gone far and beyond in his quest to have a winning team, but if you don’t sign the player, how do you give an A+?
As for David Stearns, he certainly had some good fortune, but his efforts were rewarded late in the offseason as he was able to pivot to Bichette quickly and in the knick of time before he lost him to Philadelphia. As Stearns is criticized for the lack of length in his additions, that appears to be by design and could be an attempt to reset the Luxury Tax in a few years. If one were to assume that Alonso would be his 2025 version, what if he was his 2004 version? We cannot automatically expect great year after great year, and that means that his value would collapse. Furthermore, Nimmo is profiling as a DH soon and that would imbalance the defense.
I think when grading Stearns on his remaking of the team over the winter so far,you have to look at the subtractions made to the team as well as the additions. The subtractions may very well add to making this a better team as well as whom we added. For this reason alone I might have to give him a B+.
He has to extend Freddy to get a B+ AND be a beast at the trade deadline.
I agree with Gus. SO FAR, before Bichette, it wasn’t looking good. But the offseason is like a baseball game…the game isn’t over in the 6th inning. It is over when Howie puts it in the books.
Bichette and Peralta were back-to-back 7th inning grand slams.
And the team has gotten younger, with less contractual years what will turn out to be increasingly elderly ballplayers over the rest of the decade. Cohen already has two guys, and Lindor and Soto, that will be paid until shortly before they are eligible to collect Social Security. You can’t keep doing that and afford a day of future reckoning.
I want to sign a grade to the off-season until the off-season is essentially over. Because too much can change. Until then.
This is just a quiz grade. The real test is the regular season.
I spent much of my adult life giving grades, so I'll pass on doing so here. I will say two things. The first is a question. What is it that is being graded? You don't grade a person, so it must be, what the person has done? Ok, fine? Second, done, over what period of time? Third, how do you define the scope of the things you are judging/grading that were done over that period of time? How are you weighing the various things that have been done over the specified period of time in terms of their relative importance?
Without answers to these questions and no doubt a few others the grades aren't sufficiently well-defined to be informative. So to make it easy, you can ask this question: Is the roster better, worse, equally good or bad or just different? I would say, it's different. Then you can ask, in what ways is it different? This can be answered narrowly or broadly, e.g. is there more power in the line-up or less (would be narrow); Is the expected variance between floor and ceiling greater or lesser (broad)?
Or you can ask: what was it that Stearns/Cohen were trying to accomplish over the offseason? I would say that they were attempting a restructuring and a better fit with long term strategy and plans to implement it. From that point of view, every loss with the possible exception of Diaz, makes great sense. Even a modest interpretation of the distribution of risk principle makes the Nimmo trade perfectly sensible. Distribute to the present from the future, because the expected decline and opportunity costs of Nimmo's contract are not good. Then you see Semien as shifting risk to the present and in doing so dramatically reduce future opportunity costs. And so on.
In short, rather than focus on grades, I prefer a range of different kinds of questions -- some about the team on the field going forward and others about the extent to which they have been able to put the overall strategy into action.
Just my two cents. And when it came to grading, I found the most useful distinction I had available to me was this: the difference between a grade for outcome (whether a paper, exam or total course performance). and what I would say about the student in a letter of recommendation. I had several students who received Honors (the YLS equivalent of A) who I would not write strong recommendations for when it came to requests to assess them as future professors if that was their goal; and several students who I gave mixed grades to on performance metrics on papers and exams who I would strongly recommend. Looking for different things.
I think RVH first made the point about the Nimmo trade being about shifting risk to a different time frame when the opportunity and flexibility costs of his contract would be too high to a place where those costs in the form of Semien's contract would be lower
Does anyone believe Stearns is done yet? I keep thinking there are two moves that he is open to. I believe he feels comfortable with where the team is now, but not completely comfortable. Left field is a bit unsettlingly unsettled. There are two options on the assumption that Benge performs well enough to start with the team on OD. If that is not the case, I don't see the value of starting with Taylor in LF and Robert Jr in CF because while it works defensively it continues the possibility of a black hole in the bottom 3 in the batting order. Robert is a question mark with high variance, but his floor is low and made of soft material he can crash right through. Way too much variance to partner with Taylor whose floor and ceiling are virtually adjacent to one another. I can't help feeling that there is room for a low cost LF who at least bashes lefties, i.e. Hays. Taylor can be a replacement outfielder or defense or short term injury replacement, but cannot start along with Robert Jr if the team is looking to minimize variance overall.
as for pitchers, I just can't help feeling Stearns is waiting to see what shakes out with Valdez and Skubal/Tigers. More drawn to the latter though the competition will be stronger and the price higher. If Valdez comes down to 2y pillow offer w/option after the 1st year, I believe the Mets would be in on him; maybe even a 3yr with option after both years 1&2. If he has a good yr with Mets he will surely opt out. It costs Mets more draft capital but they make it up in IFA non-draft draft.
Most likely outcome is that nothing happens on pitching front, ut I don't think Stearns will miss an opportunity to upgrade if it can accomplished in alignment with overall strategy.
I’m late here today. Jules said it perfectly. We are different from last year - & that is very important - & we are much better setup for the future. Playoff Competitive or better now & more open to a bigger long term plan going forward. I view that as a very strong transitional offseason.
Diaz was the only regret. We should have kept him but the team was not yet restructured so I’m not sure that it is reasonable to take a pass on this LAD team cycle.
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