On this 4th of July holiday the Mets can proudly display the team that David Stearns built, owning last place all by themselves and facing a ghastly 36-51 record, a full 15 games under .500 and in the standings 15.5 games behind their current opponent, the Atlanta Braves.
Now everyone jumped all over the announcement earlier this week when it was spun that owner Steve Cohen endorsed and reinforced his belief in the job David Stearns has been doing. The Mets desperately needed some positive headlines so that was an understandable interpretation.
Cohen’s first comment regarding the Stearns methodology was observant and critical but not unfair. He said, “Settling for less-talented players while weighing concerns about committing too many years has led to a lot of wasted payroll space for the Mets, so perhaps more targeted strikes for elite players can avoid these issues from happening in the future.”
However, as Steve Cohen went on a podcast to address the Mets season and how everything has unfolded, he sounded far more like a beleaguered fan frustrated by the poor decisions made and the money spent on players who have not contributed. At one point he admitted, “It's horrendous. No sugar coating it. This is not anything close to what I expected. It's really disappointing. Wildly disappointing.”
If I’m David Stearns then I am not taking out any long term leases in New York. It definitely sounds as if Cohen has heard and agrees with the sentiments of the fans who are fed up living off year one of the three years of Stearns in charge. The 2025 season was a major downturn as the club did finish over .500 but out of the October picture. Then came 2026 with free agent departures and oddball trades while nearly everything that can go wrong has gone wrong while nothing has been done to take corrective measures.
To be fair, no one is going to be 100% correct on every decision they make but being close to 100% wrong is just as unlikely yet it has happened even before the current season began. Part of how you evaluate an executive is by plan design, implementation and correction. Thus far Stearns in 2026 is having an 0-for-3.
Again, no one is blaming him for on the field injuries but it is fair to question what has been done while the wheels fell off. Thus far the only actions taken have been the promotion of 30 year old minor leaguers into starting roles and then making excuses for the losing record that resulted from this approach. Real leaders make new plans when the old one is clearly not working and the person paying his salary needs to hold him accountable just as he scapegoated Carlos Mendoza for not winning with a AAAA roster.
If the Mets stick by David Stearns then we need to see how he will change in the future to reflect positive actions. If not, there are any number of other baseball executives available who would gladly take Steve Cohen’s money to replace him.
11 comments:
If the Mets decide to part ways with Stearns, the new hire should be someone who has worked with big market teams and has shown the ability to turn around a losing franchise.
It seems like Stearns has this trade deadline & offseason to deliver corrective actions. Cohen will give him that much (unless cohen’s independent deep dive surfaces something egregious).
It will cost more than originally anticipated to correct this mess but cohen will spend that as long as it produces results.
Steve Cohen does not mess around. He is engaged. He is pissed off.
He is partially the blame for On The field injuries. The guys that he let go, Alonso and Brandon, missed about eight games combined last year. The other guys missed 30% of their games. This year clearly it’s more than 30% but the pattern was already there.
As many of you know, I have a professional relationship with Steve. I know him well enough tom know if he says David will stay around, David will stay around, but, trust me... Steve will get much more involved.
Happy 250th birthday USA! I live on the Gulf of America and I'm just getting use to calling it that very cool. Now lets get real Steve your spending 357 million on this s**t is unacceptable and one man David Stearns is to blame and you would NEVER put up with level of incompitence in your other businesses so WTF! Tampa, Washington and Miami's COMBINED payroll is only 263 MILLION and your gonna let this clown make more bad decisions going forward WOW!!!!!
You can't believe anything you hear through official channels. It has always been policy to never announce any discard before someone is let go. We heard that Mendoza's job was safe - it was not. We heard that there were no issues between Soto and Lindor last year - there were. And now we hear that Stearns, Lindor, and Soto will not be touched. Only time will tell.
We also have now heard the new line: development is not linear. Neither is patience.
Well said, Paul. Statements like, 'I support X' are like "I promise to do X.' They are statements of intentions that depend on unarticulated material conditions remaining more or less as they are.' They also have a normative structure, which in this case has two elements: constraints on my actions, and powers that those to whom I make a promise have against me. Typically we expect me to keep my promises, otherwise promises would lose their value in creating trust which is an important element of any cooperative relationship. But sometimes, things change and I can be justified in withdrawing my support or not keeping my promise. The most obvious is when there are overriding reasons not to, as in this case, the fans going crazy, the team unable to get players, the clubhouse becoming toxic, etc.
BUT, the grounds that justify my not continuing to support or to fulfill my promise (or contract), have no impact on the claims that the person to whom I made the promise or committed my support or my contract partner, has against me. And this usually means not that he or she can compel me to do as I intended, promised or contracted to do, but that my claim and its legitimacy be recognized in some other way, usually by paying damages in the case of contracting.
This is all a philosophical and legal way of unpacking what we can likely expect to happen if things go poorly.
It would be insane for Cohen to see himself bound to see the contract through if the team experiences another year like this. And it would be counterintuitive for Stearns to expect him to. What would likely happen is for Cohen to honor what is owed to Stearns monetarily under the contract, agree not to bad mouth him (no need to as the record does all the talking) and for Stearns to maintain confidentiality about what happened, etc.
Sometimes, philosophy, can be illuminating and make sense of what we actually experience or expect to occur. It can even help us to understand why common sense makes good sense from time to time :-)
Excuse my foray into philosophy, but I've got to keep the tools sharp every now and again, and I have always held the view that if you really understand a concept, you should be able to explain it in ordinary terms to nearly anyone, and in doing so help illuminate for them something that they intuitively grasped and make it clear and precise, or help them see that they missed something that they now can see clearly.
Mack's view rightly expresses a conception of what it means for someone to be a 'man of his word' and what I tried to do is to explain what that concept actually implies given our set of circumstances and practices that have evolved to realize that principle in our setting,
namely, a distinctive kind of economy, based on exchange, and a culture that is more focused on 'moving on from here' than 'on focusing on the wrong done' which in this case would have required that Cohen 'specifically perform' the act he promised. Even in our transactionally dominated world, we do require specific performance in the case of some contractual breaches, and in our personal relationships, we can't move on at all in the face of breach, but in ordinary transactions, we realize the normative claims and burdens created in ways that focus more on moving forward, since the bonds created in ordinary contracts are not typically deep. They are fundamentally instrumental, designed for the purposes of achieving goals.
I can provide free copies of one of my books, Risks and Wrongs, for any of those of you connected to Mack's Mets, if you are having difficulty falling asleep. All my books come with what I call the 'insomniac's guarantee.' That is, if you are having difficulty sleeping, open any of my books, to any page you like, and if you are not asleep in ten minutes or less, you get your money back. This book is available in several languages, though my publisher, OUP, has resisted a translation into pig Latin to this point!
Ankthey ouyay
you too my friend. hope you are well and enjoying the 4th. We are sweltering up in the NorthEast.
BTW, I definitely believe that Cohen is going to be very involved going forward and he doesn't approve of the short. contracts for lesser players approach at all.
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