Mets’ Stearns on trade deadline with one trade already under his belt



SAN FRANCISCO — The Mets and the Baltimore Orioles began talking a few weeks ago, and when a deal for left-handed reliever Gregory Soto was finally reached Thursday night that the two parties agreed to, David Stearns knew he had to take it.

A week away from the July 31 deadline, the clarity is minimal with so many teams still trying to decide whether or not they can reach the postseason.

“It’s still murky,” Stearns said Friday at Oracle Park. “It seems like talking to a lot of my counterparts, this weekend looms large for a lot of teams. A lot of teams are going to give themselves this weekend, see where they are Sunday night and then plot a path forward on Monday.”

The priority was fixing the left side of the bullpen, and with a “murky” market, the Mets felt it best to act decisively instead of waiting out the weekend. The Mets traded two minor league right-handers, Wellington Aracena and Cameron Foster, to the Orioles in exchange for Soto, a veteran high-leverage lefty.

“It’s a big arm pitching leverage spots,” the Mets president of baseball operations said. “We were looking to help complement our bullpen from the left side. It’s not always easy to do that this time of year, so as we began to overlap on some names with Baltimore, we figured this was the time to push this one through.”

Further bullpen upgrades could still be coming, but as for any other specific areas of improvement, Stearns could go either way.

Starting pitching and run production have been two areas of inconsistency since June. Four starters are on relatively strict pitch-counts, and with three coming back from injuries, the Mets have to build them up slowly. It makes it difficult for manager Carlos Mendoza to deploy his bullpen, and the Mets have been forced to use minor leaguers to eat innings. They’ve had varying levels of success, but it’s proven to be unsustainable in recent weeks.

“We’re still in the process of building some of those guys up, and that’s unusual for it to happen this time of the year, and we’re doing that with multiple starters,” Stearns said. “That’s the spot we’re in right now, and because of that, it does put a little bit of extra burden on the bullpen. We’ve tried to manage that through shuttling guys through the back end of that group to do our best to try to keep those guys fresh. But we know as we go through this over the next two months, we are going to need to ask more out of our starters.

“From a length perspective, I do think we’ll get there. We’re probably not there quite yet.”

When it comes to run production, Stearns mentioned center field as an area with limited production during the last homestand. After hitting .264 with a .707 OPS in May, Tyrone Taylor has regressed to the mean offensively. But he’s still an elite defender, so the Mets currently have him splitting time with super utility man Jeff McNeil.

McNeil’s value is in his versatility, but it’s tough since he’s probably the team’s best overall second baseman. While he hasn’t been as elite as Taylor in center field, few are. Still, McNeil has been very good in center field, rated high for his range and his success rate. He’s also the better bat, with the third-highest OPS in the lineup (.806).

Late in the season, teams want to solidify certain spots. This was certainly true of the Mets last summer when Taylor played his way into the lineup more consistently than Harrison Bader. McNeil could find himself as the primary center fielder if this trend continues. Both were in the lineup against the San Francisco Giants on Friday night, with McNeil as a DH and Taylor tasked with playing a tricky center field.

“I think I am comfortable with the setup we have right now,” Stearns said. “I think Mendy is doing a great job of finding the right days for Jeff to be out there and find the right days for Tyrone to be out there. It’s two skill sets that complement each other, and so I am comfortable with that, like with the rest of the team. Certainly we’re going to explore areas of upgrades and that’s one of them.”

As far as needing another big bat in the lineup, whether that’s at center field or elsewhere, Stearns isn’t necessarily looking, but he’s open to seeing what’s out there.

“I don’t think we need to,” he said. “I think we have the offensive players who can help us score a lot of runs, who can help us turn the lineup over. We’ve talked about this a lot. I continue to maintain that, by and large, we’re taking pretty good at-bats, and by and large, I’m growing increasingly comfortable with the length of our lineup and the contributions we’re getting from the bottom half of our lineup.

“With that said, we have to figure out a way to score more runs, and I don’t think anyone out there would shy away from that.”

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