For David Stearns, there’s a silver lining to the Mets’ June swoon.
A slump provides “added information” about a team’s shortcomings, which can be valuable as the front office gears up for the season’s stretch run, the Mets’ president of baseball operations said Tuesday at Citi Field.
“Any time you go through a stretch, it forces you to evaluate the team,” Stearns said before the Mets faced the Atlanta Braves. “Take it in as information, add that to what we already know and help us plot forward. Does it expose any singular spot? I don’t think so right now. But it does add to our information about our team.”
Stearns’ comments came a day after the Mets suffered their ninth loss in 10 games, a stretch in which they scored only 3.0 runs per game and their starting pitchers averaged just 4.2 innings per outing.
The trade deadline is about five weeks away, though Stearns said it’s too early to tell whether this year will feature a buyer’s or seller’s market.
After Monday night’s 3-2 loss to the Braves, manager Carlos Mendoza cited the Mets’ lack of production from the bottom of the order — a sentiment Stearns seconded.
“This is a team game, so it’s really tough to rely on three or four or even five guys to carry the load every single night,” Stearns said. “We know that, to be a really good offensive team … we need one through nine contributing more nights than not.”
The Mets optioned struggling third-year catcher Francisco Alvarez to Triple-A Syracuse this week, while Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil, Brett Baty, Ronny Mauricio, Luis Torrens and Tyrone Taylor each posted a sub-.600 OPS over the 10 games before Tuesday’s.
Stearns sees room for internal improvement, including with the approaching returns of third baseman Mark Vientos from a hamstring strain and designated hitter Jesse Winker from an oblique strain.
“We have some players who are getting healthy who I think will help there,” Stearns said. “I also think the players who have struggled in our lineup over the last month largely are better offensive players than we’ve seen so far, and they themselves have demonstrated that over periods of the season.”
That’s why Stearns isn’t sweating the slump.
He knows that teams — even good ones — are prone to rough patches over the course of the 162-game gauntlet that is an MLB season.
Even with their recent struggles, the Mets entered Tuesday with a 46-33 record and were 1.5 games behind the division-leading Philadelphia Phillies in the National League East.
“We’re learning about our team,” Stearns said. “We saw a lot of really good things through the first two-plus months of the season, and now we’re seeing the flipside of that. I still think we have a really good team. I think we’re certainly much better than we’ve played over the last 10 days, 12 days.”
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