When Steve Cohen wakes up on Sept. 29 and wonders why the Mets have no more games scheduled, he won’t have to look far for the culprit responsible for his team’s unfathomable collapse. There is only one: David Stearns, his president of baseball operations.
Upon being lured away from the Milwaukee Brewers in October 2023 by Cohen, Stearns was hailed as an analytics genius after having directed the low revenue Brewers to four consecutive trips to the postseason from 2018-2021. Two years after he left Milwaukee, the Brewers, with a $113 million payroll (20th), are fashioning the best record in baseball, while Stearns’ Mets, bolstered by a major league high $339 million payroll, are in the midst of an epic freefall, 13 losses in 16 games leading up this weekend series against the Mariners. During that stretch their overworked bullpen blew nine leads in six games as the starters continued a streak of 66 starts in which only one of them pitched into the sixth inning. All the while their starters continue to account for the fewest innings in baseball.
If Cohen is consternated as to how this could have possibly happened, he needs to go back to last winter, right after he presented Stearns with his $765 million right fielder in Juan Soto and anticipated him filling in the necessary pieces for a World Series-caliber team. The problem was the most important ingredient for a championship team is always starting pitching. With his payroll severely stressed with the Soto addition, Stearns sought to go on the cheap in filling in the starting rotation around Kodai Senga and David Peterson, signing Clay Holmes, Frankie Montas and Griffin Canning to relatively inexpensive short-term contracts with the idea of also converting Holmes from a closer to a starter. In addition, he allowed Jose Quintana, one of his most reliable starters last year, to walk as a free agent because his analytics aides were not enamored with soft throwers.
It was a major gamble on Stearns’ part that hasn’t worked out. Montas has been awful and pitched himself out of the rotation. Canning tore his Achilles in July, and Holmes, who had never pitched more than 70 innings in a season has seemingly hit the wall, being hit hard in two of his last three starts. To be fair, however, in eschewing long-term big money deals for established frontline free agent starters such as Max Fried, Blake Snell, Corbin Burnes, Jack Flaherty, et al., Stearns knew that, in Nolan McLean, Brandon Sproat and Jonah Tong, he had three of the highest-rated pitching prospects in baseball all nearing major league delivery.
Conceivably one or two of them should have already been at Citi Field, but until finally summoning McLean to pitch Saturday, Stearns has been babying them in the minors. In his last start at Triple A before his recall last week, McLean was lifted after four innings and threw only 74 pitches! How is this preparing a kid to step into a rotation that is desperately in need of innings-eaters? It was the same thing with Tong who threw only 72 pitches over five innings before his rotation from Double-A to Triple-A.
“The problem with David is that he’s locked into analytics and does everything by the analytics creed,” said a former Stearns associate with Brewers. “And that’s especially true with the business of not letting these starters face the lineup a third time around. It’s one thing to follow the stats if they want to at the major league level, but why do all these teams do it in the minor leagues when winning games should come second to developing strong starters.
“These kids are never able to pitch themselves out of trouble and that’s why we have a whole new generation of five inning starters.”
I still remember what Tom Seaver once said to me about what analytics had done to the state of starting pitching. “You can’t blame these kids. They want to compete, but these general managers today won’t let them out of the corral! It’s pitcher malfeasance at the highest level.”
Meanwhile, as result of the innings crisis with his starting pitchers, Stearns was forced to make three trades at the deadline for three more relievers, all in their walk years, and as of Friday none of them had had any impact. In regard to Tyler Rogers, the submarining set-up man from the Giants, most scouts felt giving up former top outfield prospect Drew Gilbert and hard-throwing swing man Jose Butto was a bit of an overpay on Stearns’ part especially for an unsigned player. As for Ryan Helsley, the Cardinals closer also acquired to set up Edwin Diaz, more than one scout told me he did not have the kind of pressure-proof makeup required to pitch in New York — and so far that has proven true.
“When it came to making deals, David seldom consulted with his scouts in Milwaukee,” the former Stearns associate continued. “I suspect it’s the same in New York. Everything with David is run through the analytics manifesto.”
As much as not making the playoffs this year would be a devastating blow to Cohen and his fans, the future at Citi Field remains extremely bright. Besides McLean, Sproat and Tong all possibly being part of next year’s rotation, in five tool center fielder Jett Williams and last year’s No. 1 draft pick Carson Benge, the Mets boast two of the top outfield prospects in all of baseball, both of whom could be in the starting lineup come next Opening Day. You just wonder if they’ll ever let the young pitchers out of the corral or continue conditioning them to start looking for the manager after 70-80 pitches.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
This will probably come as little consolation to Yankees and Mets fans, but the heavily-favored Dodgers and their equally bloated $300-plus million payroll are playing just as badly while bearing little resemblance to the team that won the World Series last year. On July 3, the Dodgers were 56-32 and leading the National League West by nine games. Since then they’ve gone 12-21 and fell into second place on the eve of this weekend’s crucial three-game series against the surging second place Padres. More than anything the Dodgers have been decimated with injuries. They’ve so far had 13 different pitchers on the injured list including presently three closers Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates and Evan Phillips. Last Tuesday, reliever Brock Stewart, their lone bullpen acquisition at the trade deadline, recorded a hold with one scoreless inning against the Blue Jays and promptly went on the IL with shoulder inflammation. … If Hal Steinbrenner is going to remain steadfast in his refusal to fire anyone with the Yankees spiraling out of the playoffs, perhaps he’ll at least heed the pleas of the media, local and visiting, and so many longtime fans to tone down the incessant, deafening noise emanating from the center field scoreboard operations. Lately, I’ve gotten more email and text complaints about the Yankee Stadium din than I have about the Yankees’ continuing sloppy play. Trust me, it’s not a pleasant ballpark experience, Hal, but if you’re not going to rein in your scoreboard operations crew than I suggest you at least hand out free ear plugs to the fans when they enter the ballpark.
