Optimism for Mets is warranted

We can moan about the departures, but Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns built a good baseball team this offseason.

Baseball wonks are high on the Mets heading into 2026 after a 38-55 finish that completed another team collapse, costing them a playoff berth, you guessed it, on the final day of the season after boasting the best record in baseball at 45-24 on June 13.

As frustrated as Mets fans are after an offseason of seeing Pete Alonso and Edwin Diaz depart as free agents and Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil being traded, they know their team can be good this season.

For all the criticism Mets baseball boss David Stearns received this offseason, he should be commended for fielding a good team with moves such as acquiring Opening Day starter Freddy Peralta, Luis Robert Jr. and Marcus Semien to go with signing free agents Bo Bichette and Jorge Polanco. It’s easy to understand the optimism.

If all goes right, the Mets should battle it out with the Philadelphia Phillies for the NL East.

Even in the worst-case situation, the Mets should be in the playoffs as a wild-card team.

Look, there’s no doubt Pete Alonso’s numbers are going to be hard to replace, no matter how much information the spreadsheets are feeding to Stearns. But they should still be a good-hitting team with the addition of Robert, Polanco, Bichette and Semien. These quality hitters excel at situational hitting — an area where the Mets struggled badly down the stretch. They’re going to grind out every at-bat, show a real feel for getting on base and mix line drives with their power.

Stearns clearly wanted to build a more balanced lineup that doesn’t live and die by the long ball. This itself should make the Mets better.

The Mets’ president of baseball operations contemplated overhauling the roster as soon as he was hired. The opportunity came after the team imploded down the stretch, posting an 11-17 record in August and a 10-15 mark in September—and he seized it. He wasn’t kidding about not running it back.

Getting a frontline starter was an objective for the Mets, and Stearns achieved that by acquiring Peralta. As great as Nolan McLean is, it’s not fair for him to be the ace at this point in what should be a promising career. He still has ways to go to get there, such as pitching a full season. To expect Kodai Senga to be that guy is too much to ask since he can’t be relied on to be healthy. He performed so badly after he came back from the injured list that he was demoted to Triple-A Syracuse in September.

If nothing else, this roster construction makes the Mets interesting just to see how the new guys respond to a new environment, along with changing the clubhouse dynamic.

I’m not sure if there would be a reason to be excited about the Amazin’s this season, even if Alonso and Diaz were back. This team ran its course with the same roster. Stearns knew he had to do something, which was what he was hired to do in the first place.

Now, it has to all work out or else the Joe Benignos of the world will start calling out Stearns. As satisfied as Mets fans are with the baseball genius, they can turn on him fast when a slump arises or if the team disappoints again this season.

Stearns makes no apologies for doing it his way. Whether a Mets fan likes him or not, he should be commended for sticking to his convictions in how a roster should be built to win ballgames by winning with cost-effective players. He has been around the game enough to know what to do now.

The fun part starts now, after the grunt part is done.

The Amazin’s should be a good team based on the composition of this roster. The new guys, such as Polanco and Semien, know how to win based on their track record. They have young guys who can provide a spark, such as McLean, Carson Benge, Jonah Tong and others from the farm system this year. In baseball, there’s always someone who you don’t expect to have a good year.

This isn’t the most anticipated season in club history, but it may be the most interesting one — and the potential to be great should give every Mets fan real cause for optimism.