PORT ST. LUCIE — Mets baseball president David Stearns isn’t some hype man. Pardon the French, but he’s no BSer. He chooses his words precisely. In fact, the former Harvard Crimson scribe is said by co-workers to be an excellent writer. He’s the first baseball executive I suspect could write my stories better than me (no cracks, please), that is, of course, if he’s willing to take the pay cut.
Stearns doesn’t seem prone to hyperbole. That’s why I found it curious when he mentioned in his spring-opening presser a few days ago that he expects to see “exciting baseball at Citi Field in September and October.” Specifically, it’s the October part that got me.
Since the Mets’ regular-season home schedule ends Sept. 22, it sure sounded like he was projecting the playoffs for the Mets, a team that won 75 games last year (and that was with two Hall of Famers to lead the rotation the first half of the season). It’s also a team that didn’t sign a single player for $15 million a year, which is barely the middle class of major league free agents.
Was this Stearns’ first phrasing faux pas? No one else seems to think this is an October team, at least no one I know. But just to be sure, I checked, and no, Stearns didn’t slip. He truly believes it. He’s really thinking postseason.
“We are a playoff-caliber team,” Stearns asserted to The Post.
Stearns is a forthright fellow but he wasn’t about to get into the specifics of what went wrong last year, and why it will be better this year. About why a team that started the 2023 season with Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer and still ended up so poorly can rise to join baseball’s semi-elite.
But he isn’t backing away, either.
“I think it’s a talented group, and I think it was a talented group last year,” Stearns said. “And I think the players certainly feel the results on the field last year were not indicative of the talent in the clubhouse.”
I had to remind him he’s almost alone in this postseason prognostication.
“That’s OK, that’s OK,” he responded. “I’m not going to get into internal projection systems. But I’ll tell you, I feel good about our team.”
One thing that’s sure about Stearns is that you believe he means it when he says it. Some may wonder if he’s trying to excite the fan base when the team’s taking an apparent a step-back season, but that’s not his way. (And step-back is my phrasing. “We never said that,” he said.)
One thing we know is, Stearns certainly knows what a playoff team looks like. In quite the trick, he managed to make it to October four years in a row, and five out of six in small-market Milwaukee.
So could he be right?
The Mets do have some key elements of a champion. They have an ace (Kodai Senga) and a star closer (Edwin Diaz). They have a prototypical leadoff man (Brandon Nimmo) and a bona fide cleanup man (Pete Alonso, at least to start the season). They also have young talent on the rise (Francisco Alvarez, in particular).
I’m not privy to the Mets’ proprietary information. But it doesn’t take computer chips or even a genius IQ to know that one more great thing they have going for them in the National League derby is a top-heavy league, where only three teams (the Dodgers, Braves and Phillies) look like October shoo-ins. Almost everyone has a case.
While the Mets’ winter lacked excitement beyond the whirlwind, failed courting of 25-year-old Japanese pitching phenom Yoshinobu Yamamoto, which only resulted in $325 million of Cohen’s money staying in his Mets account. That was a nice effort, but once Yamamoto was getting multiple similar offers $100 million more than originally projected, it wasn’t about the money. He likes the West Coast, so unsurprisingly he went to America’s Super Team, the Dodgers.
Stearns did make prescient, smaller moves to fill out the roster, adding necessary depth to the rotation, pen and bench without coming close to breaking their big bank (the Mets now have a bank, like Bank of America). The team does look at least “competitive,” which was all owner Steve Cohen suggested upon dealing Verlander and Scherzer at last year’s deadline.
I’m sure they must have mathematical processes that justify Stearns’ confidence. He’s unlikely to be making his bold claim merely to inspire his players. But if it has some positive effect on the troops, so be it.
“I agree with him,” Diaz said when told of Stearns’ proclamation. “I think we are a really good team. Not many people think we are good. But I think we are. I think we’ve got a great bullpen this year. We improved the defense. And I think we will hit. So I think we will be playing good baseball. And our goal is to make the playoffs and get the ring this year.”
Whoa now, that would really be something. At this point, I think the fans would take the October baseball that the boss foresees.
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