David Stearns’ first trade deadline as the Mets’ president of baseball operations was all about balance.
He considered the needs of a playoff-hopeful present roster without mortgaging the future.
He acquired players whom he hopes can help for the remainder of the regular season and also play a role in the postseason.
And he determined his team would buy, not sell, after it bounced back from a rough start with a sustained summer surge.
It added up to the Mets making measured trades for lefty-hitting outfielder Jesse Winker, right-hander starter Paul Blackburn and four relievers — but no blockbusters.
“The plan coming into the season was to compete and make the playoffs,” Stearns said Tuesday at Citi Field, about a half hour after the 6 p.m. deadline passed.
“That remains the plan, so I think where we are right now, it doesn’t really matter how we got here. We got to a place where we are a playoff-caliber team. We believe we’re a playoff-caliber team, and we did what we thought was the right thing to do.”
In late May, the Mets seemed destined to become sellers for a second consecutive year after falling a season-worst 11 games below .500. Pete Alonso, Jose Quintana, Luis Severino, Harrison Bader, J.D. Martinez and are all impending free agents, with the latter three signing one-year deals last offseason.
But the Mets have been among baseball’s best teams for two months now, winning 34 of their last 51 games before the deadline.
“It probably just built towards [being buyers] as we continued to play better and climbed up the standings and got indications from our team that we believe we’re a playoff-caliber team,” Stearns said Tuesday.
When the deadline struck, the Mets, at 56-50, were tied with the San Diego Padres for the second National League Wild Card position and only a half-game behind the Atlanta Braves for the top spot.
But while the Padres traded a haul for Marlins closer Tanner Scott and the Braves reunited with power-hitting Jorge Soler through a deal with the Giants, the Mets made six lower-key moves, none of which cost more than their No. 17 prospect.
“There was some pretty aggressive pricing this year, but that’s to be expected and we certainly anticipated that going into this thing,” Stearns said. “We have a situation where there are a lot of teams that were trying to add, and teams, for various reasons, that were reluctant to sell. That’s a pretty clear dynamic that was going to yield the type of deadline that we had.”
Indeed, 19 of the 30 MLB teams found themselves within four games of a playoff spot when the deadline hit. Only one of them, the small-market Tampa Bay Rays, decided to sell.
Trade rumors swirled around frontline starters such as Detroit’s Tarik Skubal, the White Sox’s Garrett Crochet and San Francisco’s Blake Snell, but all three stayed put.
Last week, the Mets lost their ace, Kodai Senga, to a high-grade calf strain that is expected to end his regular season.
“You’re never going to replace a pitcher like Senga at the deadline, so I think we just tried to figure out how best to fortify our team around it, and it meant both in the rotation and the bullpen to ensure that we had enough arms and some flexibility in various roles,” Stearns said.
Blackburn, a 2022 All-Star with a 4.41 in nine starts with the Oakland A’s this season, now slots into the Mets’ rotation, while recently added relievers Phil Maton, Ryne Stanek, Huascar Brazoban and Tyler Zuber will aim to help shorten games.
They still lack a proven left-handed reliever, however, after losing Brooks Raley to season-ending elbow surgery and designating Jake Diekman for assignment.
Winker, meanwhile, added a needed lefty bat with experience in both corner outfield spots. He started Monday and Tuesday in right field — where starter Starling Marte remains out indefinitely with a bone bruise in his right knee — and batted fifth, between righty hitters Pete Alonso and Mark Vientos.
Asked Tuesday how much constructing a roster for a short playoff series factored into his decision-making, Stearns acknowledged, “It’s certainly part of the dialogue.”
“To be honest, it’s easier to do that when you’re perhaps where the [MLB-best] Phillies are right now than where we are right now,” Stearns said.
“I think teams that have a significant lead in their division can more concretely focus on what that October version of the team is going to look like, but it’s a balance we’re striking as well and trying to set up our team for success not only during the remainder of the regular season but also in the postseason.”
After being traded to Texas last July, Max Scherzer suggested then-Mets general manager Billy Eppler intimated the team’s focus had shifted to 2025-26.
But the Mets are in the mix right now, and they hope their reinforcements can help them down the stretch.
“There are always players you pursue that you would have liked to acquire,” Stearns said. “There are always conversations you have that you try to steer in a particular direction, but we’re happy with the work that went into this. We’re happy with our process, and we’re pleased we were able to add some talent to this team.”
