When the NY Mets failed with a recent David Stearns-style free agent plunge

With David Stearns, we’ve come to expect a certain approach in free agency. He doesn’t so much hunt for bargains as much as he seeks out players with greater upset than the season they recently produced. New York Mets fans got their first taste heading into the 2024 season when they signed Sean Manaea and Luis Severino, the Mets bought low on a pair of pitchers who had performed well in the past. It opened our hearts up to him doing the same prior to 2025 with a little less success.

Feeling a bit more unique than how Billy Eppler operated with his flashy signings, it wasn’t all that long ago when the Mets actually did attempt something similar to the Stearns style. Forgettable for two big reasons, the pandemic-shortened 2020 season was a failure for the Mets because of how horribly wrong a few of the fliers they took turned out to be.

The 2020 Mets were built with risks that backfired badly

Michael Wacha hadn’t done well in the 2019 season with the St. Louis Cardinals. With a 4.76 ERA in 126.2 innings, he went into free agency on a low. The Mets snatched him on a low one-year deal worth $3 million which even at the time felt like a “so what?” kind of price tag. Adjusted for inflation, it would have probably been more like a $5 million deal today.

Wacha couldn’t have done much worse. Without the benefit of a normal year with spring training and enough innings to turn things around, he was 1-4 with a 6.62 ERA in 34 innings.

The Mets weren’t done there. Days after signing Wacha, they brought former Cy Young winner Rick Porcello to town on a pricier one-year contract. Porcello made all 12 starts he could possibly endure in a 60-game season. Unfortunately, at 1-7 with a 5.64 ERA, it was bad enough to convince the rest of the league he was fried. While Wacha has since put together some good seasons, Porcello never signed another contract. Only 31 at the time, it was a premature ending to a player who had been durable in his career and a surprise 2016 AL Cy Young winner.

A modest $10 million was spent on Porcello for his one and only year in New York. It had shades of ending poorly because Porcello hadn’t finished his time with the Boston Red Sox strongly. From 2017-2019, he was 42-36 with a 4.76 ERA. As badly as it went, there was one more failed flier the Mets took that ended worse.

Days before Christmas 2019, the Mets signed Dellin Betances for (Lebron James voice) not one, but two years. A deal worth $13.5 million to be a setup man, they were banking on health for Betances. He pitched just 1 game in 2019 for the New York Yankees before a season-ending Achilles injury. They received 15 games from him in 2020, resulting in a 7.71 ERA performance. He wasn’t completely healthy either, adding to uncertainty in 2021 when he’d have a complete repeat of his 2019 season. Betances pitched one game for the Mets before hitting the IL for the remainder of the year.

Three pitchers coming off of bad years and/or injuries seem to fit the modern profile of Stearns. A lot went wrong for the 2020 Mets who finished 26-34. Receiving little help from these three was a big reason why.