Mets News and Links is honored to post the latest from long time Mets Writer, David J. Rubin. Today, he talks about the recent Mets exoduses of Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo and Edwin Diaz.
After initially, getting over the great shock and disappointment of the Mets losing three of my favorite players from the team in a matter of mere days, I had to stop and reflect and try to look objectively at this situation.
First of all I would rank Pete Alonso as one of my all-time favorite players on this team, having loved him from day one of his rookie season and having added him to my permanent baseball memorabilia and baseball card collections. The loss of our all-time Homerun champion, multiple time All-Star, Home Run Derby champion, fan favorite, and truly durable power bat behind Soto in the lineup has left a gaping hole that I don’t see a readily obtainable player ready to fill that spot.
Brandon Nimmo, a fan favorite, and someone whose grit and hard work I greatly valued, was traded from his position in left field, which created a hole in both the hearts of fans and in the field.
Finally, losing our ace closer, one of the best in the game, Edwin Diaz, to the world champion Dodgers removes our chances for a truly dominant bullpen while improving perhaps the one hole left in the dominating team from Los Angeles.
Diaz, Nimmo & Diaz all looked to be locks for future Mets hall of fame inclusion, with Diaz potentially making a case for the baseball HOF as a Met and possibly having Alonso’s number eventually retired. Now the possibility of any of that happening, besides the potential for Diaz to go into the baseball Hall of Fame, have been thrown out the window.
It’s hard to imagine David Stearns growing up a Mets fan and being okay with any of these losses, but in his role as team president and de facto general manager, he has to be responsible not just for winning over the hearts and minds of fans, but more importantly, actual winning between the lines. Team officials keep reminding us that there is a lot of runway left this winter and they do not have to have their semi complete team ready to go until spring training; the counterpoint to that thinking, however, is that these moves have not only angered the fanbase greatly, but have made the decision-making for many in these difficult financial times a lot easier when it comes to giving up season tickets and multi game ticket packages. It was just last year at this time that our owner Steve Cohen (whom, by the way, I remain ever-grateful to for removing the Wilponzis forever) reached out to fans of the team and said they were going to field another amazing product and he felt that the fans did not come out in great enough numbers to the ballpark to appreciate the incredible year that we had in 2024. In response our fans came out in greater numbers resulting in the fifth highest attendance for the 2025 season and a much improved number over the prior year. [Memo to Uncle Steve — that will not be repeated for the 2026 season, especially with the way things have been going so far this winter.]
So now as I put my thoughts together in as coherent a fashion as possible, I remain torn between wanting to give David Stearns that “runway” they have to still save the winter from total destruction, versus giving in to the complete disgust & disinterest in the team that I now find myself reckoning over. Mind you, in my nearly 60 years of rabid fandom, this is perhaps the most detached and simultaneously angry that I have ever felt. Part of those feelings are derived from the broken trust that I placed in Stearns, whom I have been a staunch supporter of, and, to a lesser degree, ownership.
Can that trust be restored by simply making a bunch of disciplined and intelligent additions to the roster? I would respond that that would only restore partial trust, as the replacement of beloved, all-time favorite players has still left a lasting repugnant taste in the mouth not easily brushed away, unfortunately.
So, I guess at this point the short answer to the long question regarding my current thoughts as a Mets fan are that I am willing to give Stearns the hypothetical runway to prove that he can build an incredible team using the many resources he has as a big market president rather than maintaining a small market approach. We are all aware of the advantages of financial restraint and growing the farm system, as well as to the penalties involved for continuing to spend at the top of the market and losing draft pick spots like we just recently did, and that makes having the top rated minor league system in the game increasingly more difficult by the season. But there comes a point when we have to use that minor league capital to acquire long-term solutions for the major league team that includes trading away the right young players to acquire our long- term needs. With that philosophy, you could say it would make more sense to not trade for a Skubal who will be a free agent after the 2026 season because of the great cost and prospects it would take to acquire him versus signing him to a long-term deal in free agency. But that would mean using your incredible financial resources to make sure you don’t let that opportunity pass you by. Those incredible financial resources also means not continuing to let franchise icons walk without enough of an offer or, in the case of Alonso, any offer at all.
Please, David Stearns, restore my faith and those of my fellow fans at a time when we are in desperate need of believing in our beloved orange and blue.
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