In baseball it is clear at the end goal for all 30 teams is to win a championship. Teams will fight to the better end and prove themselves worthy to be able to fight the last week in October to become the last man standing. We have entered an era in baseball where it’s become glorified in rambunctious spendings, seemingly lost touch with the means baseball.

Of course, every team wants to build the best championship caliber team that they can. You can see the effect running the trade market and buying out free agency has on teams chances of getting a World Series. It is always hard to lower out the truth as it means to improve your team. However, the pinnacle of success is not underline with signing players who are at the top of the class. Success is not truly for players and kill your farm system. Success is fixing all the holes in your lineup at the lowest cost possible with the hope of contending for next season.

David Stearns is taking this approach this season with the Mets with the signing of RHP Luis Severino who after having a disaster last season with the Yankees in 2023 signed a one year deal with the Mets for $15million. Utility shortstop and other handful of bullpen pieces is how Sterns is setting up a mediocre offseason for the first year as president of Mets operations. Cohen is taking a different approach than how he has before with going aggressive at the top free agents. As seen in the past, players do not prefer to play for the Mets so rather sign the top line big names Stearns believes it is important to have a balanced organization and that doesn’t mean giving an 8 year contract to a 30 year would solve those issues.

These need to be minimized with internal roster and minor league construction. People are very critical of the work Stearns is doing in the background believing he isn’t trying enough to reach the proven talent or being too cheap. Let time tell and give us an accurate prediction of how 2024 will go once our roster is finalized. The Mets are looking for a breakout season after a minuscule 70 win season derailed all hopes of playoffs last year. People need to realize without complaining the reason Stearns was hired, he was brought here to revitalize this team and revamp the organization to provide a steady presence of capable minor league developed pitchers. The Mets really haven’t seen one of their own pitchers develop since Jacob Degrom and Noah Syndergaard split the mound every 5 days in 2014. The Mets luckily have a lot of pitchers waiting to arrive in Triple AAA and double AA, with the likes off Christian Scott, Blade Tidwell and Dominic Hamel there is a lot of upside in who these players will become in a 5 year period.

Stearns is here to replicate the success he brought in Milwaukee but at a wider spending spree. But the idea of home grown talent needs to be especially highlighted within Meta pitching department. Spending money should only be at the luxury of all the other pieces working together, spending money is never indicative of success, it only builds off the success you’ve had in the past. Spending money on a bunch of players takes no thought process, its just mindless spending like a drunken sailor as Cohen put it. Look at AJ Preller and the Padres, they haven’t been to the playoffs consecutively doing Prellers tenure as GM/president. Signing and trading for an abundance of all stars like Blake Snell, Yu Darvish, Trent Grisham, Josh Hader and Juan Soto definitely broke News headlines but failed to reach an impression past the offseason as none of these moves truly panned out for the teams success. Now these players all experienced some sort of success for themselves in 2023 but nothing as a team. That is why they failed to reach the playoffs even though they had such a great time, the lowest staff ERA and top 5 in many counting stats for batting. The team was not good besides their stats they didn’t play well! Stearns is doing his job to strategize and lower the Mets payroll while also staying competitive.