On Thursday, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen clarified that he isn’t yet thinking about a second-straight summer fire sale despite the club’s on-the-field struggles over the past week.
Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns echoed Cohen’s words ahead of New York’s 6-5 extra-innings win at the Philadelphia Phillies on Thursday.
“We’re not anywhere close to having discussions like that,” Stearns said about the club’s possible trade-deadline strategy, per Robert Sanchez of SNY. “We’re in mid-May. We’re focused every single day on trying to win baseball games. From a trade deadline strategy discussion, that’s something that we’ve got months to figure out and is not anywhere close to my thought process at this point.”
Once 12-8 on the season, the Mets fell to 19-23 ahead of Thursday’s win but easily could’ve dropped that contest amid what became a 2-5 stretch. New York’s only other victory over the past seven games came thanks to a walk-off home run.
Simply put, the Mets haven’t been good enough offensively on a consistent basis since late March. According to ESPN stats, they began Friday 19th in all of MLB with 183 runs scored and 20th with a .232 team batting average on the season. However, New York is right in the middle of a crowded wild-card playoff picture heading into the weekend.
“I think we’ve had periods where we’ve been really good and we’ve had periods where we haven’t played well enough and that leads to the record we have which is probably pretty indicative of how we’ve played over this first quarter of the season,” Stearns said about the 2024 Mets. “I think we’re a good team. I think we have a talented group that has a run in it and we probably haven’t played our best baseball yet.”
Phillip Martinez of SNY noted that first-year Mets manager Carlos Mendoza addressed his players after New York’s 10-5 loss in Philadelphia on Wednesday. SNY’s Steve Gelbs reported that some Mets veterans held a separate meeting following Wednesday’s defeat.
“We are not going to let that happen this year,” Francisco Lindor said about the Mets potentially falling apart to the point that Cohen signs off on selling veteran talents before the trade deadline.
The Mets have an opportunity to build some positive momentum when they open a three-game series at the lowly Miami Marlins (13-32) on Friday.