Just over a quarter of the way through the 2025 season, the Mets have few identifiable weaknesses.
The Amazin’s have consistently been at the top of the standings in the division and in the NL, coming into Wednesday’s series finale against the Pittsburgh Pirates tied with the Detroit Tigers for the most wins in baseball. The pitching staff has posted a sub-3.00 ERA, and are currently the only team who can make that claim. The offense has the fifth-best OPS and has hit the 10th-most home runs.
But it’s the job of the president of baseball operations to be discerning, and David Stearns has identified an area where he would like to see the Mets improve.
“I think we can play better defense,” Stearns said Wednesday at Citi Field. “That’s an area where we can get better, and I think the players we have are capable of playing better defense.”
While individually, the Mets have players who have made excellent defensive plays in the field, overall, the metrics available to the public don’t rate the team very high. Statcast has the Mets with -8 OAA, tied with the Colorado Rockies, and better than only the San Francisco Giants and the A’s. FanGraphs ranks the Mets at No. 17 defensively, but Fielding Bible credits the team with 13 defensive runs saved.
Though the metrics do tend to differ, Stearns is going off of the club’s own internal rankings and feedback from the coaches.
“I think we have a variety of different players who are good defenders — very good defenders in certain cases — who have made some mistakes this year,” Stearns said. “That’s going to happen, and it gets magnified in the smaller samples like we’ve had over the first six weeks of the season. But I would expect us to be a better defensive team over the next four and a half months of the season than we have been over the first month and a half.”
Tyrone Taylor (+3 OAA, +3 Run Value) is getting some well-deserved attention for his dynamic defense in center field, and Stearns thinks Brandon Nimmo (0 OAA) has played better than some of the public metrics would suggest. It’s no secret that Mark Vientos isn’t the most sure-handed third baseman (-4 OAA) and that defense isn’t Juan Soto‘s forte (-4 OAA), but Stearns doesn’t see any reason why individual players wouldn’t be able to improve as the season goes on.
This time last year, the Mets were one of the worst teams in the league at controlling the running game. They improved over the second half of the season, especially after the addition of Luis Torrens, and have continued to improve in that area. The Mets are ranked the fourth-best team behind the plate with the lowest stolen base percentage (.576).
It’s a credit to all three catchers the Mets have used this season, Torrens, Francisco Alvarez and Hayden Senger, and the pitchers, many of whom have been faster to the plate or are working toward that goal. Manager Carlos Mendoza put a heavy emphasis on limiting the running game and the plans the Mets put in place have worked.
“It was certainly a weakness early for us last year, and it was something that we got exposed with early in last year,” Stearns said. “We began to address it with some personnel changes last year, and it did become a priority, especially with our coaching staff. I think Mendy did a great job of prioritizing that with our group, not only in the off season, but in spring training, and the guys have reacted, and we’re in a pretty good spot there right now.”
While the offense as a whole has performed well, the Mets aren’t exactly crushing everything they see with runners in scoring position. The Mets have gone 7-5 in May, with three one-run losses. However, there isn’t one determination to make from this. There are several variables teams look at when it comes to hitting with runners in scoring position.
“If we’re taking competitive at bats, if we’re controlling the strike zone at those moments, regardless of what the outcome is, I tend to view that as, we’re in a good spot and we will eventually have the results we are looking for,” Stearns said. “I think for the most part, I look at our leverage at bats, whether it’s runs in scoring position with two outs, whether it’s a runner on third with less than two outs — I look at how we’ve handled those leverage counts and those leverage situations.
“I think for the most part, we’ve done a pretty good job. We haven’t always been rewarded for it, we haven’t always gotten the base hit, but for the most part, I’ve been pretty pleased with our approach in the box in leverage moments in the game.”
It’s tough to nitpick when a team is winning, especially this early in the season, but the Mets aren’t about to take their foot off the gas.
“We’re a pretty balanced team,” Stearns said. “We can always get better. We’re far from a perfect team, and there are absolute ways we can improve.”
