David Stearns might be right. The 2026 New York Mets he built might be capable of better. They might even still be capable of being a playoff team, even though the beat-up, underperforming bunch that was nine games under .500 as Stearns spoke on June 23 certainly has not looked the part.
At the very least, Stearns is going to wait until the last possible minute to admit the roster he retooled after last year’s disappointment is still somehow wrong.
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“The cutoff is August 3rd. The cutoff is the deadline. Clearly, you have to have a strategic direction at that point,” Stearns said. “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.”
No one would argue Stearns is being particularly stubborn. Though the San Francisco Giants, for one, have already made known their willingness to trade from a disappointing roster, good teams and bad teams elsewhere are choosing to wait and see. No points are awarded for giving up first.
But where Stearns remains steadfast – if “stubborn” is too harsh – is in his insistence that this roster was built well from the start, and that it has failed to add up because of temporary inconveniences, not structural deficiencies.
For example, if the Mets are going to play their way back into contention, they will need better from their starting rotation, which entered Tuesday night’s game with the fourth-highest ERA in baseball this season and a 5.92 ERA in June. Clay Holmes breaking his leg is an unforeseeable outcome, but the idea of rookie Nolan McLean struggling for a period while growing into an ace is not.
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Even under the pressure of his free agent year, Freddy Peralta falling into the worst slump of his major league career is surprising. But given their lack of year-over-year history, none of Sean Manaea, David Peterson, or Kodai Senga not pitching like the best versions of themselves is not.
“We’ve clearly been inconsistent in that facet of the game. We’ve been inconsistent at various times around all segments of our team, which is why we have the record we have right now,” Stearns said. “From a starting pitching perspective, injury is part of it. That is real. We also haven’t gotten the level of consistent performances from most of our rotations that we expected and that our players expected coming into the season.”
Recently, Manaea has modeled a path to recovery for Mets starting pitchers who once looked like a lost cause. The lefty rebuilt his velocity, clawed his way out of bulk relief duty, and has allowed two runs and pitched into the sixth in two starts since rejoining the rotation. Certainly, the same should be possible for Peterson and Senga.
But so far, he and Senga have shown no signs of much-needed recovery. Senga left the Mets trailing 5-0 after two innings Tuesday, still unable to maintain command and velocity from one batter to the next.
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Christian Scott, who was increasingly reliable before suffering a hip injury, is tentatively scheduled to return from the injured list Saturday. That is one more day each time through the rotation that the Mets can feel confident about. McLean has steadied himself after some late-spring stumbles. That day is another.
Stearns admitted Peralta is working through things mechanically, and fixing them is so crucial to the Mets that Carlos Mendoza went out of his way to watch him throw on flat ground before Tuesday night’s game. Fixing things takes time, but the righty has never been as bad as he was in his last outing. History says he will be better. If he is, and Manaea remains consistent, the Mets have one last day to worry about. And at some point in August, if all goes well, Holmes will be back to fill it.
Speaking of Holmes, his injury is also a point in defense of Stearns’s argument that the Mets roster was not broken from the start, just because it is broken now. Indeed, the lineup is built around Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto, two of the most durable players in baseball over the last half decade. That both happened to miss significant amounts of time in the first three months of this season is not a foreseeable problem.
But it was not unforeseeable that Jorge Polanco, who has a history of leg injuries, would miss most of the first three months of the season with a nagging leg injury. That Luis Robert Jr., who has a history of lengthy absences and is a month-plus into another one, is not surprising. Stearns said Tuesday he and the Mets “have to evaluate injury risk as it relates to the entirety of our roster.”
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“Whenever you bring in a player with injury history, we are aware there is heightened injury risk,” Stearns said. “In many cases, we thought we were insulated by that risk in certain areas of our roster with other players. And we haven’t been.”
Maybe, in keeping with Stearns’ original view of their depth, they will be more insulated against injuries from now on. After all, while Lindor’s return from a calf injury is imminent, he isn’t the only Met close to returning.
Tyrone Taylor is a strong fourth outfielder and will improve the Mets’ bench immediately when he returns. He is currently on a rehab assignment. So is infielder Ronny Mauricio, whose major league track record is unimpressive but whose ceiling is higher than any of the backup infielders the Mets have tried in Lindor’s absence. Even just adding Lindor will give the Mets a significantly more troublesome lineup for opponents. If Polanco comes back – and despite the fact that he is hitting and doing baseball activities, no one seems certain when or if that will happen – the lineup could look even deeper.
So heading into the last week of June, it is still possible Stearns is right about the 2026 New York Mets. It is still possible their struggles are temporary, not inevitable. It is still possible they will play their way back into contention and be buyers six weeks from now.
For better or worse, all they have to do is be better than they have been at any point this year, despite having provided little on-field evidence that they can be.
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