Unlike other Mets fans, David Stearns wasn’t waiting for the Mets to collapse when he came to games as a kid. With the Mets off to a fantastic start to the 2025 season, there is palpable excitement for the NL East’s best team, especially as the Mets start a seven-game swing against two division rivals Monday. A fanbase easily triggered by memories of disasters past seems to have more optimism than usual.
Maybe they’re taking cues from one of their own — Stearns.
“I was never waiting for the other shoe to drop; I was really excited to go to Shea [Stadium] and boo John Rocker,” Stearns said Monday at Citi Field ahead of the start of a series against the Philadelphia Phillies. “Look, every year is a new year, right? And frankly, what we accomplished last year doesn’t have a whole lot of bearing on how this is all going to play out this year. I think I feel like we got a good team.”
The Mets brought back several of the key players from the 2024 team that reached Game 6 of the NLCS. Fans were happy the Mets were getting the band back together, expecting the team to pick up right where they left off. In some ways it feels as though they have done that, with comeback wins and walk-off bombs showing the team has maintained its never-say-die attitude.
But behind the scenes, Stearns was hoping to avoid the optics of bringing back last year’s team with the hope of replicating last year. There are too many variables in a new season, too many ways things can differ from what happened in the past for anyone to be able to reasonably expect that the same team could replicate the past.
The 2024 Mets fell short of their ultimate goal of winning a World Series. The 2025 roster had to be a stronger one.
“The only thing I was concerned about — I know we talked about a lot internally — was that we didn’t we didn’t want to fall into the trap of trying to recreate 2024,” Stearns said. “It was going to be different. It is different. I think we’ve got a really good group in there and they’re bonding and they’re finding their identity. But it’s happening organically. It’s not because we’re trying to recreate something that happened organically last year.”
So far, he’s avoided having to take too much heat for the players he didn’t bring back because the players he replaced them with are producing.
There was a bit of blowback after Luis Severino said he would have taken less than the $67 million the A’s are paying him to return to the Mets. The decision not to re-sign popular infielder Jose Iglesias, whose hit song “OMG” became the anthem of the summer for fans and a rallying cry for the team last year, was criticized as well when second baseman Jeff McNeil was injured in spring training.
Instead, Stearns had right-hander Clay Holmes convert from a reliever to a starter, and the Mets are using Luisangel Acuña and Brett Baty at second. Holmes is 2-1 with a 3.16 ERA over five starts, while Baty and Acuña have picked up their production in recent weeks. The Mets have been able to withstand the loss of three starting pitchers (left-hander Sean Manaea, right-handers Frankie Montas and Paul Blackburn) with an outstanding bullpen, and the ground-ball pitchers are still getting relatively solid defense behind them.
“I’m proud of how our entire roster and the depth has performed here,” Stearns said. “We’re going to continue to need that to happen over the course of this entire season to have a successful year. It’s nice that so far it has been the case.”
However, no one on the roster has performed like first baseman Pete Alonso. Through 22 games, the slugger has compiled 1.5 fWAR. He’s driven in 24 runs, the second-most in baseball behind Aaron Judge’s 25, has the second-highest OPS (1.171) and paced the Mets with six home runs.
With teams being reluctant to pitch to Juan Soto, Alonso has become even more crucial to the success of the Mets.
“What Pete is doing is as good of a start as you could envision for any human,” Stearns said. “This is pretty impressive. He’s locked in, his zone control is incredible right now, he’s hitting everything hard.”
There is no early season lag in the attendance this year. The Mets have averaged 36,705 fans through their first 10 home games, the seventh-most in baseball, and four of those teams have played more games at home. Juan Soto and wins have solved the attendance issue.
“I get a sneak peek at some of the attendance numbers ahead of a homestand and with some of them I did double-takes,” Stearns said. “It’s like, ‘Wow, that’s really good for April.’ Not only have the numbers been good on paper, but it’s felt like that in the ballpark.”
It’s too early in the season to declare 2025 a success. The Mets have led the division in April a few times, only to be on the golf course by October. Adversity will come, but Stearns sees a team equipped to handle it.
