Don deal: the new york mets has sign again a world class player…
Big picture, David Stearns didn’t make a single move that seemed to significantly improve the 2024 club or excite the fan base.
There is a case to be made for Stearns maximizing his budget with some moves that could offer good value, though, if you accept the organizational reset as the best approach to create a sustainable winner, which meant very limited spending this winter other than the failed pursuit of Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Put another, it seems he had a very Milwaukee Brewers-like offseason, scouring the free agent market for players who might be classified as either undervalued talent or wise investments, just as he did in his previous role as president of baseball operations with the small-market Brew Crew.
Anyone who thought Steve Cohen’s billions would guarantee the Mets would never relent in their quest for a title will find this disappointing, to be sure.
It is, nevertheless, most likely the finest approach to guarantee success in the future.
Offering older players long-term contracts when winning a title in 2024 is a long shot at best made little sense once the Mets failed to get the 25-year-old Yamamoto. Not after Cohen agreed to pay enormous sums on the contracts with Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander in order to essentially purchase a few blue chip prospects to strengthen the farm system.
That being stated, should the Mets have gone above and beyond just trying to qualify for the postseason? I think, yes.
Using it as a kind of baseline, I’ve graded the offseason overall and each acquisition separately:
General
As previously said, this would be worse if I didn’t think the Mets are wisely adhering to a strategy established at the trade deadline of last year and had few attractive options for long-term pitching contracts if Yamamoto declined their $325 million offer.
Though they will require best-case scenarios from several of the starters and relievers they acquired, they have a chance to be satisfied with their pitching. Most notably, Stearns gave the bullpen some hard-throwers, which was deficient in that area.
Although I believe the Mets urgently needed an experienced DH to boost the offense in order to fight for a Wild Card spot, all signs point to them preferring to give Mark Vientos most of those at-bats over spending on someone like the still-available J.D. Martinez or Jorge Soler.
Perhaps their curiosity to learn more about Vientos will be validated. At the moment, though, it seems like their purposefully quiet off-season could have been somewhat altered by even one major offensive signing.
