Laura Albanese: Although unpopular at the time, Mets' offseason moves are making sense
Former New York Mets player Darryl Strawberry and president of baseball operations David Stearns during a spring training workout, Monday Feb. 23, 2026 in Port St. Lucie, FL. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — The detonation was jarring.
It’s not that change is uncommon in baseball. Every season ushers in a new type of squad, even in those years where personnel stays largely the same. But what David Stearns did here felt different: The Mets' president of baseball operations took a scythe to the roster, and did it with no guarantee that he could fully replace what he’d shorn away.
Long-tenured Mets were long gone, and fans understandably wanted to know what they were getting in return. They had suffered enough, hadn’t they? The team with the second-highest payroll in baseball had underperformed in historic and, frankly, humiliating ways. And now they had to sit their kids down and explain exactly why their favorite player was wearing an Orioles jersey.
But all these months later, as Stearns sat down with reporters Monday, the tenor had turned decidedly optimistic. Things are trending in the right direction, he said, and early observations bear that out.
Bo Bichette and Jorge Polanco are adapting to their new positions, Freddy Peralta is a welcome clubhouse presence, prospect Carson Benge looks to be as advertised, there’s a healthy competition in right field, and Kodai Senga is a man on a mission.
But there’s a secondary benefit to all these drastic changes. The Mets team here at Clover Park feels vastly removed from the stench of its prior failures. Bichette had nothing to do with the anemic second half that sunk their chances at a playoff berth. Peralta wasn’t the pitcher that couldn’t get them past the fifth inning.
Whether there were issues in the clubhouse or not last year, it’s hard to imagine any lingering animus when Peralta is boisterously playing basketball with Francisco Alvarez in the clubhouse, or when Juan Soto is holding court with the middle relievers stationed in the back of the room, or when Francisco Lindor is joking with Marcus Semien — the visual representation of what should be a lock-down middle infield.
And that’s a pretty important part of all this — and, to Stearns’ credit — a pretty difficult trick to pull off.
Sure, spring (and spring training) is about rebirth, but baseball fans know how stubbornly failure can cling to a franchise. Though the Mets have had their moments of glory, they still haven’t won a championship in 40 years. The Cubs and Red Sox championship droughts of old were mythic in nature, and cast long, dark shadows over the teams' fans. Failure starts to become part of the genetic code — a self-fulfilling prophecy that has rational people believing their favorite team is actually, genuinely cursed.
Last year’s collapse was generationally bad, and the aftershocks had the potential to be generational, too. But as pieces fell into place, this experiment helped replace dread with curiosity. If you want proof, look at what some of the retired Mets are saying.
Darryl Strawberry, Howard Johnson and David Wright — all of whom have made appearances at camp — gave nods of approval. Strawberry praised the heft of the lineup, Johnson expressed confidence that Bichette could learn his old position, and Wright Monday noted the “energy and enthusiasm in the locker room…
“I think a big reason for the maybe higher level of energy than maybe previous seasons is that there are a lot of new faces,” Wright said. “Along with that comes [the fact that] guys want to impress their peers — you know, that good first impression. Not that in previous years there wasn’t energy, but when you put together a group of largely newer guys that are getting to know each other for the first time, I think there’s always that attitude of, ‘I want to impress my teammates early on.’ I think that leads to that kind of high level of enthusiasm and energy early in camp.”
Wright’s a good person to ask about this, too. The lifelong Met may have seen some changes during his tenure, but few as intense as these. But he’s also acutely aware of how short an athlete’s window can be. During his number retirement ceremony last season, he apologized to fans for not bringing a championship to New York.
He went to the playoffs just twice, but the second time, his only World Series, held so much promise. Certainly, the Captain, only 32 at the time, would have another shot — especially with hotshots like Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard headlining that rotation for what looked like it would be years to come.
But baseball doesn't deal in 'should have'; nothing with this many moving parts can truly be predictable. And Wright’s injury-shortened career, along with the Mets' own deficiencies, meant he never got the second shot everyone expected to come. By his own admission, it took him a long time to come to terms with it.
The lesson here is clear: In this game, you have less time than you think you do. Viewed under that lens, Stearns’ gamble now looks like the safest possible bet. He could not give up Juan Soto’s best years without a fight. He could not let the stain of 2025 set into the fabric of this team. The changes needed to be swift, and they needed to be drastic.
In doing that, he’s already registered a win: No matter what happens in 2026, it won’t be a repeat of last year’s sins. These are the New New York Mets, freed from the millstone of their past transgressions.
That alone is as good a start as you can hope for.
Notes & quotes: The Mets have yet to determine if Carson Benge, who’s having a strong spring, will make the Opening Day roster. “He’s taken very competitive at bats,” Stearns said. “He’s a tough out. I think he’s played a nice right field. He’s done what we would have expected him to do. We think he’s going to be a really good player and we’ll have a difficult decision as we get toward [the end] of camp…Francisco Lindor (hamate) is still on track to be ready for Opening Day…Brandon Waddell, who was scratched from Monday’s start with shoulder fatigue, is on the mend, manager Carlos Mendoza said.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
