How so?
Stearns signed the albatross known as Frankie Montas
Stearns brought back the growing albatross of Sean Manaea
Stearns “fortified” the bullpen with Ryan Helsley who is working up the ladder as one of the worst deadline moves the Mets have ever made.
Stearns brought in Cedric Mullins who has been terrible.
I could go on. To be fair I am NOT calling for his head…yet. But the whole Stearns walks on water is a real question. We can’t act like we have a $350m dollar payroll and the GM who had amazing resources can’t get us in the playoffs?
We are not there yet let’s see what happens. However, everyone and everything should be looked at when and if the post mortem happens.
He was also responsible for signing Canning, who was a revelation and carried the rotation during the team's peak, and Holmes, who has somehow been the most steady of the veteran pitchers in our rotations -- two moves that most GMs wouldn't even think about.
Rogers has been very valuable for the bullpen, Raley was a creative/smart signing in 2025 (paying him to rehab, basically). A lot of the periphery signings were pretty good wins, which culminate into a big win: Kranick, Warren, Hagenmann, Waddell, Devenski, Garcia, Castillo.
Stearns also deserves credit for not panic trading for Merrill Kelly or Charlie Morton. That would've probably cost Sproat, and blocked our other young arms.
Stearns also deserves credit for getting Soto. He helped give Soto confidence about organizational stability and smarts. We'd be fucked without Soto.
Think of where we'd be if we had typical Mets pitching depth. We'd be a disaster.
I have a hard time fully blaming Stearns on Senga and Manaea. Both had injuries and sidetracked them, especially Manaea. It's tough luck. I do think though, next year, it would be foolish to count on Senga for anything more than a backend rotation spot. Way too finicky and injury prone.
Montas deal didn't work out, but we only have it for one more year. Sucks, but if you look at every other deal in that stratsphere, almost none of them worked out. It's why hte young pitching coming through is so important. Helsley and Mullins have been an abomination, but I personally think the crux of the team's issues is who Stearns inherited: Lindor being basically horrific for a solid 7 week stretch, Vientos being awful for half the year, Senga/Manaea being injured and not playing well, and the other core guys (Nimmo, McNeil, etc) being poor defenders.
I do think next year, he has more responsibility to fix more things with the position players.