Mets have had a tough year since that Juan Soto deal, and there are plenty of holes to fill
Carlos Mendoza manager of the New York Mets makes comments during a news conference at the Major League Baseball Winter Meetings, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux) Credit: AP/John Raoux
ORLANDO, Fla.
Monday was the one-year anniversary of Juan Soto agreeing to his 15-year, $765 million contract with the Mets — the deal that supposedly changed everything but somehow put the franchise in reverse.
Soto did his usual Soto things in finishing third in the National League MVP voting, almost a replica of the final season across town with the Yankees, which helped tee up his defection from the Bronx. Meanwhile, the rest of the organization crumbled around him in 2025, leaving president of baseball operations David Stearns and manager Carlos Mendoza in a very different place Monday as they assessed the state of what is feeling like a major renovation.
A year ago, at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, both men strained to conceal their joy as the Mets waited for the deal to become official. On Monday, with Stearns addressing reporters up in the team’s suite at the Waldorf Astoria and Mendoza fulfilling his media duties downstairs at the neighboring Hilton, the vibe was considerably different.
A car crash of a season will do that, along with the erasure of Mendoza’s coaching staff and last month’s trade of Brandon Nimmo, the longest-tenured Met and former pillar of the club’s now-defunct Fab Four.
Any momentum from the seismic Soto deal, as well as the magical October run that preceded the signing, is so far gone that it almost feels like fiction. Stearns, entering Season Three of his own five-year contract, is tasked with fixing a problem nobody really saw coming. Or at least not to this extent.
There’s no surfing the Soto wave this time, and owner Steve Cohen was slapped with the hard reality that winning the offseason’s biggest prize couldn’t even guarantee beating out the Reds for a playoff berth.
As of Monday night, Stearns had yet to give any overt signals on how that might impact the team’s roster-building practices going forward, other than his run-prevention Nimmo swap for two-time Gold Glove winner Marcus Semien and signing high-leverage reliever (maybe closer?) Devin Williams to a three-year, $51 million contract.
Beyond that, Stearns expressed wariness over awarding long-term pacts, saying the Soto contract was “quite unique” and how he “wouldn’t envision that type of deal emerging for quite some time for our organization.”
Of course, there isn’t another $765 million player on the market this offseason, but it’s all relative when we’re talking about financial commitment.
Take Pete Alonso and Edwin Diaz, for example. The Mets would sign either one right this second for three years, or probably even four. But go to five and the math, to Stearns, becomes less favorable. And if we’re just talking about price tags, then it’s worth questioning how badly the Mets really want either one back no matter how much Stearns says they do.
Alonso, a Tampa native, plans to make the 90-minute drive down I-4 to Orlando this week with the purpose of visiting teams at these winter meetings, with the Red Sox and Orioles potentially at the top of that list. Stearns didn’t believe it necessary to sit down with Alonso, considering that the two sides already are plenty familiar with each other (which could be taken any number of ways).
“I’m sure we’ll be in touch,” Stearns said.
The Mets don’t seem to be in any hurry with Alonso (sound familiar?), but Stearns has a lot of boxes to check, and some of those boxes depend on whether a righty slugger with 40-homer pop is going to be occupying first base. At the moment, the industry as a whole isn’t showing much urgency to do anything, and so the Mets are locked in the conversation stage, with holes to fill and money to burn.
Stearns did hint, however, that trades appear to be a more popular currency this offseason, something that he thinks could be attributed to more teams trying to be competitive (or perhaps stemming from cost concerns and the possibility of a new economic system emerging after a lockout next December). The Mets could go that route to find what they need in leftfield (Jarren Duran? Wilyer Abreu?) or the rotation (Freddy Peralta? Tarik Skubal?).
“I think the trade market is pretty active,” Stearns said. “I think there’s a lot of chatter. Teams in general are maybe a little more open and willing to be creative, to talk about different types of structures, to talk about need-for-need trades at the major-league level.”
Despite the sluggish pace early, however, Stearns did sound confident that the Mets will get the upgrades they want, whether via swap or by free agency. We’ve come to trust Cohen’s largesse for that.
“I think we’re probably going to make some moves that don’t grab a ton of headlines that we think are really impactful moves,” Stearns said. “And I imagine over the course of the offseason, there are also going to be moves that allow you guys to write a lot.”
Last December’s Soto deal really hammered home the fact that the Mets truly are capable of doing anything. Then again, so did the disappointing season that followed.
As of this Dec. 8, the Mets have improved their infield defense and secured a hedge in the Diaz negotiations, but Mendoza had to spend Monday defending his bullpen usage and dismissing reports of clubhouse friction.
“When you're not winning games, you've got to take a step back and reflect and make those decisions like, where can I get better?” he said. “And here we are.”
It’s also a place the Mets need to put behind them, the sooner the better.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
