Former Mets hitting coach Eric Chavez has made his feelings about David Stearns impossible to miss, and his latest run through the EC3 Podcast only sharpened the picture. After being fired following the 2025 season, Chavez has been unusually open about his dislike of the Mets president of baseball operations, and episode 10 of the podcast dug further into what went wrong inside the organization.
One of the most talked-about moments came when Chavez brought up Juan Soto leaving the dugout to sit away from others. He didn’t use it to attack Soto.
Instead, he used it to point to a larger problem: a disconnect in leadership. When Chavez asked about it, Stearns’ response was that the younger players had to learn they weren’t Juan Soto.
To Chavez, that reflected a system where certain people were treated as having certain privileges.
That story fit the broader theme of Chavez’s comments, which kept circling back to how Stearns communicated - or didn’t. Chavez said one of his biggest frustrations was the lack of a human touch, including when he was let go by phone without a “thank you for what you did.” The picture he painted was of a leader whose style felt cold and detached, both in baseball decisions and in basic conversation.
The clash also reached into hitting philosophy. Chavez said young players were being told they needed to pull the ball in the air, while Stearns had a different view of how hitters should operate.
Whether that disagreement was rooted in a true philosophical divide or just another source of friction, it clearly mattered to Chavez. The whole thing, as he described it, came down to two people who were never really on the same page.
And that may be the real issue. Stearns’ biggest mistake, at least in Chavez’s telling, was not taking the time to get to know him when he first arrived.
Chavez had already spent the 2023 season as Buck Showalter’s bench coach before returning to the hitting coach job, and the organization had already been in position to make a change after the 2023 season. Instead, Jeremy Barnes somehow stayed on.
There was also a contrast in background that Chavez seemed to be drawing, framing it almost like a fight between “I know better than you” personalities. He was the most accomplished former big leaguer on the Mets’ coaching staff under Stearns, standing apart from the rest of the group that spent much of its career bouncing between the majors and minors or never making it at all.
Still, Chavez didn’t exactly deliver a clean takedown of Stearns. What he did do was reinforce the idea that Stearns has a very specific way he wants the Mets to play and perform, and that not everyone around him fits that mold. Baseball may not have one correct way to be played, but Chavez made clear he believes the current approach is off.
He also didn’t exactly hide his satisfaction when Soto, Francisco Lindor, and Pete Alonso won Silver Sluggers. Chavez posted “TAKE THAT IN” on Instagram, a pointed bit of bragging considering those three stars earned the awards under other hitting coaches.
Whether this feud gets another chapter is an open question. Chavez has already been the coach willing to torch the bridge, and he may have shut himself out of another major league job in the process. Still, with more than $84 million in career earnings, he doesn’t sound like a man worried about what comes next.
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