After weeks of silence, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen finally addressed the media and made one thing perfectly clear: David Stearns isn’t going anywhere.
Cohen publicly backed his President of Baseball Operations, saying that Stearns will remain in charge of the organization through the remainder of his five-year contract, which runs through the 2028 season. Stearns joined the Mets in October 2023, and despite the club’s stunning collapse over the last season and a half, Cohen continues to believe he is the right person to lead the franchise.
Speaking to the New York Post, Cohen said, “David is reflective and adaptable. We’ll figure out what changes need to be made, but it won’t be David.”
That statement leaves little doubt. While many fans have called for sweeping changes throughout the organization, Cohen has made it clear that Stearns is not one of them.
When Stearns arrived in October 2023, one of his first major decisions was hiring Carlos Mendoza as manager for the 2024 season. After a disastrous start, Mendoza guided the Mets on an incredible turnaround that resulted in a postseason berth and a trip to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series before falling to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
Unfortunately, that success proved to be short-lived.
The Mets began unraveling during the second half of the 2025 season and have never recovered. While Mendoza became the face of the team’s struggles and ultimately paid with his job after a disappointing 34-47 start this season, placing all of the blame on the manager ignores the bigger picture.
Following the 2025 season, Stearns made the decision to overhaul much of the coaching staff while retaining Mendoza. Many of the replacements were viewed as more analytics-driven coaches, significantly changing the direction of the clubhouse. At the same time, Stearns dramatically reshaped the roster.
Fan favorites Pete Alonso and Edwin Díaz were allowed to leave via free agency with little apparent effort to retain them. Brandon Nimmo was traded away, and former batting champion Jeff McNeil was also moved. In their place came Marcus Semien, Bo Bichette, Luis Robert Jr., Freddy Peralta, Jorge Polanco, Devin Williams, and Luke Weaver.
On paper, many of those moves received positive reviews. Once the games started, however, the results were anything but positive.
Injuries have certainly played a significant role in the Mets’ disappointing season, preventing the club from consistently putting its best lineup on the field. However, that cannot be used as the primary excuse. Many of the players Stearns chose to build around, including several of the high-profile veterans he acquired, have lengthy injury histories that were well documented long before they arrived in New York. Injury concerns were part of the risk when the roster was constructed, making the lack of availability far less surprising than the organization would like fans to believe. If you’re going to build a roster around players with injury-prone resumes, you have to expect that some of them will miss significant time over the course of a 162-game season.
The Mets now sit at 36-51 and in last place in the National League East. While the record is disappointing, the quality of baseball has arguably been even worse. Poor fundamentals, inconsistent execution, sloppy defense, and a lack of chemistry have become the identity of a roster filled primarily with accomplished veterans mixed with a handful of young players.
That’s perhaps the most confusing part of this entire collapse.
Talent has never appeared to be the problem. Chemistry has.
Constructing a championship team requires more than simply assembling talented players with impressive statistical profiles. It requires leadership, accountability, defined roles, and a clubhouse capable of coming together over a 162-game season. Those elements have been noticeably absent throughout the Stearns era.
Instead of looking outside the organization after firing Mendoza, Stearns promoted Andy Green, who had been serving as the club’s Senior Vice President in the front office, to interim manager. Rather than bringing in an experienced field manager with a fresh voice and proven clubhouse leadership, the Mets doubled down on Stearns’ vision by elevating someone already within his circle.
To many fans, it feels less like a change and more like an extension of the same philosophy that helped create this situation.
Despite growing frustration throughout the fan base, Cohen continues to believe Stearns is the right architect to fix the problem.
The concern, however, is that this collapse didn’t happen overnight. It has been building for well over a season. Ironically, the worst stretch of baseball during Cohen’s ownership has come with the roster and coaching staff almost entirely built by Stearns. That naturally raises an important question.
Has Stearns become too reliant on analytics and roster construction models while losing sight of the human side of building a baseball team? Winning organizations balance data with chemistry, leadership, player development, and clubhouse culture. So far, the Mets have shown very little evidence of that balance.
With Cohen’s vote of confidence, Mets fans now know Stearns will almost certainly be leading baseball operations through at least 2028. Whether they agree with that decision or not, the focus now shifts to what comes next.
The trade deadline presents an opportunity to begin correcting course. If the Mets truly want to return to championship contention, difficult decisions will need to be made. A significant sell-off may be necessary, followed by an honest evaluation of every aspect of the organization, from player personnel and coaching philosophy to leadership and player development.
For now, though, Steve Cohen has made his position clear.
The fans may see the past year and a half as organizational failure.
Cohen sees a leader worth trusting.
Only time will determine whether that trust is rewarded, or remembered as the decision that prolonged one of the most disappointing chapters in recent Mets history.
