Steve Cohen won’t have to search far to find the person who caused his team’s unimaginable collapse when he wakes up on September 29 and questions why the Mets have no more games scheduled. His president of baseball operations, David Stearns, is the only one.
After leading the low-earning Milwaukee Brewers to four straight playoff visits from 2018–2021, Stearns was praised as an analytical genius when he was pulled away from the team by Cohen in October 2023. The Brewers, who have the 20th-highest payroll in baseball with $113 million, are having the best record in baseball two years after he left Milwaukee. Meanwhile, the Mets, who have a major league-high payroll of $339 million, are in the middle of an epic collapse, having lost 13 of their last 16 games before this weekend’s series against the Mariners. As the starters extended a run of 66 starts in which only one of them pitched past the sixth inning, their overworked bullpen blew nine leads in six games over that time. Their starters continue to play the fewest innings in baseball during this time.
Cohen needs to go back to last winter, immediately after he gave Stearns his $765 million right fielder, Juan Soto, and expected him to fill in the gaps for a squad that could contend for the World Series, if he is upset about how this could have happened. The issue was that starting pitching is always the most crucial component of a winning team. The addition of Soto put a tremendous strain on Stearns’ payroll, so he tried to fill the starting rotation around Kodai Senga and David Peterson as cheaply as possible. He signed Clay Holmes, Frankie Montas, and Griffin Canning to short-term, relatively cheap contracts with the intention of turning Holmes from a closer to a starter. Additionally, because his analytics assistants weren’t impressed with soft throwers, he let Jose Quintana, one of his most dependable starters from the previous season, depart as a free agent.
Stearns made a significant risk that hasn’t paid off. Montas pitched himself out of the rotation because he has been terrible. In July, Canning tore his Achilles, and Holmes, who had never pitched more than 70 innings in a season, had been hit hard in two of his previous three outings, seemingly hitting the wall. To be fair, though, Stearns knew that he had three of baseball’s top-rated pitching prospects in Nolan McLean, Brandon Sproat, and Jonah Tong, all of whom were close to major league delivery, so he passed on long-term big money deals for established frontline free agent starters like Max Fried, Blake Snell, Corbin Burnes, Jack Flaherty, et al.
Though it’s possible that one or two of them ought to have arrived at Citi Field by now, Stearns has been spoiling them in the lower leagues until he finally called McLean to pitch on Saturday. McLean was lifted after four innings and threw just 74 pitches in his final Triple A start before to his recall last week! In what way does this prepare a child to enter a rotation that is in dire need of innings-eaters? The same was true with Tong, who pitched just 72 pitches in five innings before to being promoted from Double-A to Triple-A.
According to a former Stearns associate with Brewers, David’s issue is that he is locked on analytics and follows the analytics creed at all times. This is particularly true when it comes to the practice of avoiding a third appearance of these starters in the starting lineup. At the major league level, it’s one thing to follow the numbers if you want to, but why do all these teams do it in the minor levels when winning games should come first and producing good starters should come first?
We have a whole new breed of five-inning starts because these kids can’t get out of trouble on their own.
Tom Seaver once told me about the impact analytics had on starting pitching, and I can still clearly recall it. These children are not to fault. Today’s general managers won’t allow them leave the corral, even though they want to compete! It is the pinnacle of pitching misconduct.
Stearns was forced to make three trades for three more relievers, all in their walk years, before the deadline due to the innings crisis with his starting pitchers, but as of Friday, none of them had made a difference. Most observers believed that Stearns overpaid for Tyler Rogers, the submarining set-up man from the Giants, by giving up hard-throwing swingman Jose Butto and former top outfield prospect Drew Gilbert, especially for an unsigned player. Several scouts informed me that Ryan Helsley, the Cardinals closer who was also acquired to set up Edwin Diaz, lacked the type of pressure-proof composition needed to pitch in New York, and thus far, that has turned out to be the case.
The former Stearns partner went on to say that David rarely conferred with his scouts in Milwaukee when it came to closing transactions. In New York, I imagine it’s the same. David runs everything through the analytics manifesto.
The future at Citi Field is still quite bright, even though Cohen and his supporters would be devastated if they didn’t make the playoffs this year. With five-tool center fielder Jett Williams and last year’s No. 1 draft pick Carson Benge, the Mets have two of baseball’s best outfield prospects who could be in the starting lineup on Opening Day. McLean, Sproat, and Tong may also be included in the rotation next season. After 70–80 pitches, you wonder if they will ever release the young pitchers from the corral or if they will continue to train them to start searching for the manager.
Fans of the Yankees and Mets will likely find this to be of little comfort, but the strongly fancied Dodgers, with their similarly huge payroll of over $300 million, are playing just as poorly and don’t look like the team that won the World Series the previous season. The Dodgers led the National League West by nine games on July 3 with a 56-32 record. On the eve of this weekend’s pivotal three-game series against the resurgent Padres in second place, they have since dropped to second place after going 12-21. The Dodgers have suffered more injuries than anything else. Thirteen different pitchers have been placed on the disabled list thus far, including three closers Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates, and Evan Phillips. Their only bullpen addition from the trade deadline, reliever Brock Stewart, recorded a hold in one scoreless inning against the Blue Jays last Tuesday before being placed on the injured list due to shoulder soreness. Hal Steinbrenner may at least pay attention to the media’s and fans’ (both local and visiting) cries to reduce the loud, constant noise coming from the center field scoreboard operations if he is going to stick to his decision to not fire anyone while the Yankees are losing the playoffs. The Yankee Stadium din has been the subject of more emails and texts lately than the Yankees’ ongoing careless play. Hal, I know it’s not a fun time at the ballpark, but if you can’t control your scoreboard operations staff, at least give up complimentary earplugs to the fans as soon as they arrive.
