NY Mets Monday Morning GM: 3 David Stearns decisions no one can rigthfully defend

This thing does go up to 11. In the ultimate tribute to mockumentary jokes, the New York Mets will go into Tuesday’s return to Citi Field with a chance to drop a dozen in a row. They’ll hope to avoid it with the power of positivity, belief in themselves, and no actual explanation as to why they can’t accidentally win a baseball game.

Carlos Mendoza is hearing it from the fans as is David Stearns, the architect of this roster. The wise baseball mind brought in to bring long-term stability to the Mets has failed to hit it out of the park with his unique offseason approach built. If he was forced to take the field, he’d be the ones receiving the loudest cheers.

Stearns came to the Mets with a reputation and as doubtful as many of his offseason decisions were, many were willing to give them a chance to play out. These three choices are no longer worth defending as they’ve completely failed to meet our demands.

There’s no defending these David Stearns decisions from the offseason

1) The first base plan

From start to finish, the Mets’ first base plan was questionable at best. They moved on from Pete Alonso. Expected but not exactly popular, the Mets bypassed signing any other credible or proven first baseman this offseason. Instead, they signed Jorge Polanco to be a first baseman/DH while planning around Brett Baty or Mark Vientos handling a heavy load at the position, too.

It couldn’t look much worse with Polanco on the IL and Baty and Vientos stuck in the same mud they’ve been in for years. Regardless of how Alonso performs with the Baltimore Orioles, the fact that the Mets didn’t keep it simple and add a proven first baseman is suspect. Their laissez faire attitude at a historically stable position in franchise history cannot be defended.

2) Keeping David Peterson and Kodai Senga

With Sean Manaea already having questions, the Mets couldn’t afford to keep David Peterson and Kodai Senga around. Both were offseason trade candidates who ended up, likely because no one was willing to make a decent offer, remain with the Mets.

Without knowing exactly what teams were offering, we can’t throw toilet paper on Stearns’ house for keeping the pair. This is more rotten egg in the mailbox on a Saturday night on a holiday weekend kind of punishment. It’s more about ill-planning and being a bit too fearful about losing a trade. Even if the return wasn’t going to be promising, it would’ve been a risk he needed to take. Consider this more of a bad future projection, something Stearns is batting close to .000 on this year.

3) The lack of feel around the locker room

Stearns doesn’t have a reputation as being a players-first type of executive. That’s fine. It’s the results that matter. Unfortunately, those results have been terrible. While we can gripe about ex-Mets playing well elsewhere, the bigger issue with the Mets might be the lack of a read on the locker room situation.

There was clearly something off with the 2025 Mets. That story just won’t go away and no one is completely denying there was a rotten egg in the ceiling. Stearns brought in good locker room guys. The problem is he got rid of a lot of familiar ones who might’ve known the instruction manual a little better. Was the trio of Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, and Jeff McNeil really that detrimental to the success of the Mets previously? It couldn’t have been worse than what the team is going through at the start of 2026.

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