Steve Cohen isn’t making a panic move, and that matters.
In a season where the Mets have already seen Carlos Mendoza depart, the owner made it clear that the rest of the baseball operation is not about to be blown up with him. On “The Show” podcast with Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman, Cohen publicly backed David Stearns and said he expects his head of baseball operations to finish out his five-year deal.
That contract runs through the end of the 2028 season, and Cohen’s message was direct: Stearns is staying.
The timing is notable because plenty of fans have spent the past year pushing for Stearns to take the hit for the team’s struggles. Cohen wasn’t interested in that line of thinking. He pushed back on the idea that Stearns should be blamed in full for the Mets’ failures, especially with the owner pointing to the 2024 club that got within two wins of the World Series in Stearns’ first year in New York.
Cohen also made clear that he still sees Stearns as part of the bigger plan. Even if he’s unhappy with where the team stands, he said he remains aligned with Stearns’ long-term vision for the organization.
There was also a reason behind why April’s disaster didn’t trigger a wave of changes. Cohen said he doesn’t want to be an “invasive owner” who steps in too heavily on baseball decisions. That fits the broader approach he’s been trying to build: stability over chaos, even when the short-term results are ugly.
And that’s really the core of this decision. Cohen doesn’t want the Mets to become a place where people are fired at the first sign of trouble. He understands what that kind of reputation can do to a job like this the next time it opens up.
That’s especially relevant with Stearns. Cohen spent nearly three years trying to pry him away from Milwaukee, where Stearns had built a strong reputation as an organization builder. Letting him go less than three years into the job, after an NLCS appearance and a near-World Series run, would have sent a loud message - and not a good one.
None of that erases the mistakes. Cohen acknowledged the club has had problems, and the biggest ones have come in the area of big league acquisitions. Still, the owner seems to believe Stearns will look hard at what hasn’t worked and adjust.
One possibility this winter is that Stearns revisits the idea of hiring a GM underneath him, something the Mets haven’t had since he took over in 2023. That would make even more sense with a pending lockout potentially freezing big league business for months.
Cohen also said he is doing a deeper dive into what has gone wrong, with input from Stearns presumably part of that process.
Mets fans may not love how Stearns has handled the past year, but Cohen is choosing the route that gives the organization the best chance to steady itself long term.
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