Laura Albanese: Is David Stearns up to the job of putting together a winning Mets roster?
Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns speaks to the media before a game against the Detroit Tigers at Citi Field on May 12, 2026. Credit: Jim McIsaac
David Stearns spoke a lot about potential Tuesday afternoon. The potential on this Mets roster, the potential it’s failed to live up to, the potential they change course in time for it to matter.
It’s the same script over and over, because the scene hasn’t changed.
Once again, the Mets have among the highest payrolls in baseball and once again, we’re regaled with the "what if" of it all. For a full calendar year, this disgruntled fanbase has heard all about the “talent on the roster” and “guys who will live up to the back of their baseball cards.” They saw the offseason projections that marked the Mets as favorites to make the playoffs, and then they witnessed the 12-game losing streak and ensuing stretch of mediocrity that has allowed those odds to plummet.
Which means it’s time to talk about a different type of potential.
Owner Steve Cohen wooed Stearns for a reason. He was considered a brilliant baseball mind, and one with the potential (there’s that word again) to build a sustainable champion.
But much like the team he’s constructed, Stearns hasn’t lived up to that level of success. And much like it’s fair to question whether the Mets are talented enough to wash away their bevy of early-season sins, it’s fair to question whether Stearns can build a contender here.
The Aug. 3 trade deadline is rapidly approaching, and if the Mets want to be relevant, the can only use the tools already at their disposal, and that falls on Stearns.They’re all but forced to pitch Kodai Senga and David Peterson for lack of options. Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert Jr. are ghosts that haunt the bowels of Citi Field, and assessing a timeline for their return is akin to shaking a Magic 8 ball and having it tell you to "ask again later."
Sure, you can point to those unfortunate injuries, which Stearns did on Tuesday. And you can also ask the question he did: “How do we get our players to play up to their potential, because in a large segment of our roster, I don't think we've seen th at this year?”
But in the end, a lot of it is self-explanatory. Polanco and Robert were injury-prone players when Stearns acquired them, and the Mets were overly confident in their ability to either keep them healthy or supplement the lineup if they fell short.
He brought Freddy Peralta in to be an ace, but last year’s All-Star season notwithstanding, Peralta is a career 3.69 pitcher; he’s better than he’s looked this year, but it also wasn’t exactly fair to expect him to be the monumental game-changer this scuffling rotation needed. They’re a team of motley parts that certainly wants to win, but hasn’t been able to come together at the same time to build a sustainable run.
There’s an adage that applies to all this: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.”
Too often, though, it felt like the Mets were more caught up in potential than they were in reality. The 2023 version of Senga was the potential, but the seven runs he allowed in 3 2/3 innings against the Cubs on Tuesday night in a 9-6 loss, and the accompanying 10.08 ERA is the reality. The first half of Peterson’s 2025 All-Star season was the potential, but his career 4.31 ERA might be closer to reality.
Could that change? Of course. But you can’t bank a season on it. You can’t bank on injury-prone players staying healthy. You can't bank on athletes playing out of position. You can't bank on an overhauled roster and coaching staff immediately finding their cohesion.
And when Stearns was asked how they actually could coax the very best out of players, it came with a verbal shrug.
“I think if we had exact answers on that, we would have done that,” he said. “I think it's a constant iterative process with our coaching staff working hard with our players to get the most out of them they possibly can.”
Which brings us to the trade deadline.
“We're going to continue to give this team time to prove that we can get back in this in a very legitimate sense,” Stearns said. “The cutoff is the deadline, and clearly you have to have a strategic direction at that point. We can prepare along parallel paths as we go through this, and we know we have to play better than what we've played right now, and we're going to give this team a chance to do that.”
As for the rotation, “there generally isn't a ton of external supplementation to do,” he said. “Another part of this, we think those guys are more talented than we've seen so far this year, and throughout periods of their career, they've demonstrated that.”
In other words, no one is coming to save them. This version of the Mets — the one that entered Tuesday nine games under .500 — has six weeks to live up to its potential, and potentially six weeks to prove that Stearns can live up to his.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
