David Stearns left out one reason why the NY Mets aren’t bringing Jose Iglesias back

David Stearns made it about as official as can be yesterday. Jose Iglesias will not be a part of the 2025 New York Mets. Well, we can always hope for a trade deadline move. But as he sees it, the team needs more roster flexibility.

You know, as disappointing as it is for Iglesias to leave, I get it. Roster flexibility is crucial. And on top of it all, re-signing Iglesias means things end with more magic or a very sad DFA.

Stearns tried to give the best excuse for why Iglesias has fallen out of their plans: the young kids. Mets fans are overly excited for some of those players to get their chance on a regular basis. But if one thing went differently this offseason, it wouldn’t be a question of Iglesias or any of the young kids. The problem is the Mets weren’t able to trade Starling Marte.

The inability to trade Starling Marte feels like a bigger hurdle to re-signing Jose Iglesias

The Mets could certainly DFA Marte and eat the salary. But that would also be irresponsible. He was good in the playoffs. The idea of trading him this offseason required some sort of return even if it wasn’t something magnificent. Less of a salary dump and maybe more of a swap for a pitching candidate who could bounce back, the Mets haven’t found an offer they felt was worth ridding themselves of Marte.

Keeping him around as a part-time DH and outfielder to platoon heavily with Jesse Winker isn’t the worst thing except the team will head toward Opening Day with six outfielders on the roster. Two of them can’t field well at all—Marte and Winker.

This will give the Mets a very limited pool off the bench as far as backup infielders go. There is essentially one roster spot up for grabs and it’s a battle between Luisangel Acuna, Brett Baty, and newcomer Nick Madrigal. Iglesias would have bumped all three to the minors.

If we’re going to point at the failure to trade Marte, we can do something similar with the continued presence of Jeff McNeil on the roster. However, there wasn’t quite the same amount of momentum this winter regarding a potential trade. Remove him from the Mets and there’s a wide open spot at second base for Iglesias to share with any of the younger players.

Fans will mourn the declaration that OMG never had its BRB. We thought maybe there’d be a TTYL but instead it was a GTG or G2G as some kids who grew up in the early days of the internet might have preferred. This isn’t a SMH decision by Stearns. IMO, it would have been the move to make ASAP if there were ever any true intentions of moving forward with Iglesias again.