David Stearns finally got asked the question every Mets fan has been yelling at their television since April, and he answered it straight. That is exactly why it went over so badly.
“I think that’s a very fair question,” the Mets president of baseball operations said Monday. “The truth is in this job, I don’t get mulligans.” He followed with the part that actually stings: “I also recognize Pete had a tremendous year. And the totality of our production at first base wasn’t good enough.”
Fans heard a shrug. Given how 2026 went, that reaction is fair.
Alonso Went To Baltimore And Made History
Pete Alonso signed a five-year, $155 million deal with the Orioles in December 2025. At 31, he then led the American League with 43 home runs and 113 RBIs while hitting .267 with an .885 OPS across 161 games.
That RBI crown made him the first player in MLB history to lead both the National League and the American League in RBIs, after his 131 in the NL back in 2022. He also hit career home run No. 300 on September 15. The Orioles finished 79-82 and missed October, so Alonso’s season was mostly a personal triumph, but the production was real and it was enormous.
Meanwhile, Mets first basemen combined for 18 homers, 77 RBIs and a .667 OPS. That is a crater where a middle-of-the-order bat used to be.
The Mets Did Not Just Miss. They Collapsed.
New York finished 74-88, last in the NL East for the first time in 23 years and their worst season since 2017. They did it while carrying an opening-day payroll around $358 million, among the largest in the sport.
A 12-game losing streak in April buried them before the weather warmed up, and they never climbed out. Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor both dealt with calf injuries that wrecked the middle of the lineup. Plenty of that is bad luck, and Stearns cannot be blamed for hamstrings and calves.
What he can be blamed for is the plan. Stearns bet that run prevention would carry a roster that let its best power hitter walk, and he admitted Monday that the bet failed. “I think I’ll retire the phrase ‘run prevention,'” he said. “I don’t know that that one worked particularly well.”
So Does Stearns Deserve The Heat?
Yes. Not because letting Alonso go was automatically wrong, because a five-year commitment to a first baseman entering his thirties is a real risk and Baltimore may regret years four and five.
He deserves it because there was no backup plan. If you are going to pass on 40-homer power, you replace it. The Mets never replaced it, and then watched a lineup with a $358 million price tag get outscored by teams spending a third of what they spent.
The “mulligans” line is a fine sentiment in a vacuum. In a season where the richest roster in the National League East finished last, it reads like a man describing accountability rather than accepting it.
Stearns is a smart executive with a real track record, and one brutal year should not end his run in Queens. But he owns this one, and the fans yelling about it are not being unreasonable. They watched their team pay superstar money for a last-place finish while the guy they let leave won an RBI title in another league.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.