Viral Mets moment after Pete Alonso's return validates Astros' David Stearns decision

It was January 2023. The Houston Astros were fresh off their second World Championship. The team had a vacancy at general manager after Jim Crane declined to give James Click a legitimate offer to stay with the team. Click was only offered a one-year deal off a title, it was an offer to say that he was no longer welcome.

It was in January 2023 that a former Astros assistant GM named David Stearns was now a hot name for the Astros actual GM position. Stearns had been serving as President of Baseball Operations for the small market Milwaukee Brewers until stepping down from the role in October 2022.

Stearns had been named the GM in Milwaukee in 2015, making him the youngest GM in MLB at the time. He became President of Baseball Ops in 2019. He authored the Christian Yelich deal for the Brewers, and led them to four straight playoff berths from 2018-2021. The 2022 team won 86 games, but failed to make the postseason.

Stearns was now being connected to the Astros job, and seemed like he would be a great fit for the position. However, the Astros would hire Dana Brown as their new GM on January 26, 2023. It seemed Stearns was holding out for a bigger role/title, like President of Baseball Operations. That was a position the Astros did not have.

By September of 2023, there were rumors of the Astros creating a position of President of Baseball Operations for Stearns. Dana Brown actually had to address this. Stearns would agree to become the President of Baseball Operations for the New York Mets on September 12, 2023.

Presumably the idea of taking over a team that had just cratered from 101 wins in 2022 to 75 wins in 2023 was appealing to Stearns, as it offered an immediate chance for a big turnaround. Big turnarounds are how names get made in MLB, and with a roster that had talent and a new owner with unlimited funds, Stearns likely saw a great opportunity.

It didn't start how he expected, as the Mets were 22-33 on May 29, 11 games under .500 two days after Memorial Day. Memorial Day is often cited as the first quarter-market of the season, and being 10 games under at Memorial Day is considered "red alert" status for a franchise. However, the Mets would rebound from there. They went 67-40 the rest of the way, had a league-leading 44 comeback wins, and at 89-73, grabbed the third and final Wild Card spot in the National League. Incredibly, they went to the NLCS, where the finally fell to the eventual world champion Los Angeles Dodgers in 6 games.

This is where the story changes for David Stearns and the New York Mets, and it turns in a very negative way.

In 2025, the Mets got off to a terrific start. They opened the season 45-24. It was the best record in MLB on June 12 and the second-most wins through it's first 70 games in team history, behind only the 1986 World Championship team that won 108 games.

Then it happened. The historic collapse.

New York finished the season 38-55. It was a monumental collapse of legendary proportion. They wound up using a record 46 pitchers. This all happened while both Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor had 30-30 seasons and Pete Alonso set the Mets franchise home run record.

Stearns decided to get to work rebuilding the team in a different image. He was going to focus on run prevention, and oddly enough for a team with unlimited resources, he was going to move on from some of their best talent over money.

He chose not to bring back 1B Pete Alonso, the team's new all-time home run king. He also allowed star closer Edwin Diaz to walk. Leadoff man Brandon Nimmo was traded to the Texas Rangers for aging and declining 2B Marcus Semien. Former batting champ Jeff McNeil was sent to the Athletics along with nearly $6M in cash for a 17-year old lottery ticket.

Stearns signed Devin Williams to a 3-year deal, despite Williams struggles with their crosstown rivals in the Bronx the year before. They signed Jorge Polanco to a 2-year, $40M deal to be their new 1B, despite having never played 1B before at the MLB level. They signed SS Bo Bichette to a 3-year, $126M deal, and then moved him to 3B., where he had never played before. They traded for oft-injured CF Luis Robert Jr. from the White Sox and surrendered their #7 prospect in Luisangel Acuna to do so. They traded for SP Freddy Peralta of the Brewers, giving up their top two prospects in SP Brandon Sproat and IF Jett Williams.

I probably don't have to tell you how this season has turned out for the Metropolitans. You probably already know. They are dead last in the NL East right now at 69-8, 18.5 GB of the Atlanta Braves who come to Houston on Friday for the final home series of the season.

Mets fans are already fed up with Stearns for allowing popular and productive players to walk or be traded and binging in a new group of players that all failed. Mets fans were chanting FIRE STEARNS during yesterday's game.

While Dana Brown's tenure in Houston was not as successful as everyone would have hoped (whether or not he ever had full control or operated with one hand tied behind his back notwithstanding), Stearns' tenure in New York with an owner who green lights a $300M+ payroll every year has been nothing short of disastrous.

Brown will have potentially three division winners on his resume, and ALCS appearance, and the one season Houston failed to make the playoffs in his reign was a season they lost out on a tiebreaker. Stearns' 3 years in New York will have gone from a miracle postseason run to the NLC, to missing the postseason, to a disaster season where fans chant for his head at the game.

Sometimes the best moves a team makes are the ones they don't make. If you didn't like what happened in Houston under Dana Brown, it certainly seems things would have been much worse under Stearns.

Bullet dodged.

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