The Mets’ parking lot at Citi Field had the usual pregame rhythm Tuesday night: friends talking, food out, time to kill before first pitch. But for three Floral Park regulars - John Re, Larry Lentini and Steve Caridi - the conversation kept circling back to the same place.
The Mets’ season. And the man they believe is carrying most of the blame for it.
With the club sitting near the bottom of the NL and then falling 16-12 to the Royals, the frustration was impossible to miss. These fans in their 60s didn’t point first to the dugout or the owner. They aimed at David Stearns, the president of baseball operations, whose five-year deal runs through 2028 and who, according to owner Steve Cohen last week, will finish it.
Re made it clear he thinks that’s the wrong call.
“I think that’s wrong,” Re said. “I think he should have been fired before (Carlos) Mendoza.”
Carlos Mendoza was dismissed on June 26, when the Mets were 34-47 and 13 games under .500. Andy Green stepped in as interim manager. But in Re’s view, the manager was never the real problem.
“Stearns, in general, put together a terrible team and unfortunately Mendoza took the hit on it, was a scapegoat,” Re said. “(Stearns) signed whatever free agents were available and then wound up having guys playing out of position half the season.”
One of the biggest sore spots for the fan base was the offseason decision not to make an offer to Pete Alonso, the productive first baseman who had been a favorite in Queens before leaving for Baltimore. Lentini said that move cut straight to the heart of what the Mets lost.
“He got rid of the heart and soul of the team,” Lentini said. “You pull the heart out of a body, you’re not living.”
Lentini also said the disappointment has been building for a while, especially after what the Mets showed last year before the finish went sideways.
“I’m very disappointed,” Lentini said. “We’re not what we expected. After last year . . . even though we had a bad ending, you still felt it was going to be positive until we found out all these moves that they made and how they didn’t come to fruition.”
Caridi didn’t spare Cohen either, and he pointed to the casino project being built here.
“In a nutshell,” Caridi said, “all Cohen’s worried about is the casino, bottom line. Not worried about the fans.”
Not every fan in the lot was ready to put the owner in the crosshairs. Tom Fostvedt, a 46-year-old Huntington resident who works in wealth management, said Cohen deserves credit for spending, but not for the result.
“I’ve lost quite a bit of confidence in Stearns, and I didn’t really have a ton coming in,” Fostvedt said. “So he was always on a tight leash.
“. . . Unfortunately, Mendoza’s head had to roll because he was the guy in the dugout, but you can only do so much with what he’s put together here.”
Fostvedt said the whole thing reminded him of Daniel Snyder’s time running Washington in the NFL, when the team kept adding big names and never got anywhere.
He didn’t sound hopeful that this will turn around quickly, either.
“I don’t blame Cohen,” he said, “because he’s spending money. His job as the owner is to write the checks.
He’s not telling how to spend it. It falls on the GM.
This has been a terrible experiment that’s gone horribly wrong.”
“I give Steve Cohen the credit for taking us out of the cheap-owner business,” Fostvedt added, “putting us in the real conversation for a guy that truly believes that he wants a playoff team every year. He made a bad hire. He’s made bad hires in his business probably, and he probably cuts bait from those hires quicker than he’s done this.”
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