NY Mets Monday Morning GM: 3 David Stearns thefts from a rival going brilliantly

In another life, David Stearns would be robbing trains. In this life, he’s robbing rivals of their players. The President of Baseball Operations for the New York Mets has a reputation for making smaller moves turn into big successes. Throughout the 26-man roster, there are multiple cases of seemingly insignificant additions turning into much more.

Last year we saw Stearns get much more from players we didn’t expect to do much at all. Keeping Reed Garrett around continues to pay off. Letting Max Kranick develop into a reliever last season has revived his career. Finally, after some struggles, the trade for Huascar Brazoban looks like larceny from the Miami Marlins.

Limiting this list to players added this past offseason—sorry Luis Torrens—we have enough examples of Stearns reaping the benefits of a theft away from rivals.

1) Clay Holmes

Clay Holmes had another good day on the mound for the Mets on Sunday. Toeing the rubber on Easter hoping to close out the four game sweep against the St. Louis Cardinals, Holmes went 6 innings and allowed only a single run. He added 6 more strikeouts, giving him a team-leading 34 in 25.2 innings.

Holmes is now 2-1 with a stone cold 3.16 ERA. Almost predictably because he’s wearing a Mets uniform, walks are his one downfall. He has 13. But it hasn’t been too costly. Holmes has kept the ball in the yard. No one has taken him deep yet.

Coming from the New York Yankees to the Mets is big enough. To do it while converting from a reliever to a starter adds to the storyline. The biggest question of all was probably how long he could last each outing. Until Sunday, 5.1 innings was his highest.

With the Yankees facing plenty of starting pitching woes of their own, we can revel a little extra knowing they didn’t bother taking a chance on Holmes as a starter.