This Has MAJOR Implications For The Mets...

At the general manager meetings in Las Vegas yesterday, the biggest news didn't come from the podium. It came from the fact that the Mets have a scheduled meeting for next week with the best starting pitcher on the free agent market, Tarek Skubal, the two-time Cy Young winner. Sits down with New York in just seven days. For a team that just went 74-88 and finished last in the National League East, that is the meeting that decides the entire winter. There is just one problem, though, and that is the man who is running this meeting. You see, in three winters in charge of the Mets, the biggest contract David Stearns has ever given a pitcher is just three years and $75 million. Skubal could land a deal worth somewhere between $300 and $400 million. And in September, after undergoing by far the worst of the three seasons that David Stearns has overseen with the Mets, stood at Citi Field and said this about his prior offseason. If we look at last offseason, we missed too much. So the president of the Mets, who has never given an ace in a nine-figure deal, who needs an ace desperately, and the only true ace out there just agreed to sit down with him. It makes you wonder, is this finally the time that David Stearns will break his own rule? When Stearns was asked about the Mets rotation in September, he never said Skubal's name, but what he said was perhaps more meaningful, and that was that he delivered a promise. He said, I do think it's necessary for us to add to our rotation. Now, necessary is a big word from a guy in Stearns' who usually answers questions with a list of options. He laid out the two roads himself. You can add at the super top end. Everyone would love to do that. The other road was players, quote, with some flexibility that provide overall depth and length to the rotation as a whole. One of those roads is Skubal, and the other one is the kind of winter that the Mets just had last season. Then he told everyone how he thinks about free agency, saying, quote, There are points where you are selectively very aggressive in free agency. He even pointed out who would pay for it, an ownership group that has proven we have the capability of doing that. That is Uncle Stevie Steve Cohen, the owner who signed off on Juan Soto's $765 million contract just two short winters ago. The season Stearns was answering for went 74-88, and Carlos Mendoza was fired in the middle of it. Even the runs said they were bad, a run differential of minus 32, the fourth worst in the National League. Stearns took that on himself, saying his own decisions created the potential for, quote, almost like an uncapped downside scenario. So the word to remember of anything in that free agency quote is not aggressive. It's selectivity. Selective means one big target, and if history tells us anything, that one target has never been a pitcher for David Stearns until perhaps now. Go back through all of it, Milwaukee and New York, and Stearns has never authorized a $100 million contract for a pitcher. The closest he came is the deal he gave Sean Manaea after 2024, three years and $75 million. That was supposed to be the safe deal, short and cheap by Mets standards, for a pitcher he already knew and that frankly delivered really good results, especially in the second half of 2024. But Manaea answered with a 4.78 ERA this season, and only 19 of his 33 games were even starts. The one time the Mets did go huge for an arm under Stearns, and it did not go great. In his first winter, they offered Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 12 years and $325 million, but Yamamoto went to the Dodgers, and after that, Stearns told everyone how he really thinks about aces at these same meetings in the same city one year ago. Quote, the way to ultimately have a true ace on your staff is to develop one. To be fair to Stearns, He did, in fact, develop one. Nolan McLean posted a 3.16 ERA this year, the 8th lowest in the National League. He made 31 starts and won a gold glove on top of it. Christian Scott struck out 134 hitters in 110 innings, certainly not an ace, but another counterpart that was certainly valuable. And right now, S&Y counts those two as the only rotation locks for next year. Behind them, though, it thins out fast. Minaya is coming off that rough year we spoke about, and Kodai Senga already has multiple teams asking about a trade. Zach Thornton was solid after his call-up in July with a 3.42 ERA, and Jonah Tong posted a 4.54 ERA in 23 AAA starts, and his 12.6% walk rate says he can't be counted on just yet, but there were definitely some promising signs when he was called up to the Major League team in September. Stearns knows it. And this is why he has said the next wave is more options in our minor league system than he has had here before. Even his own plan had a long-term half. Quote, over the long term, what we need to do is develop pitchers at the top of our rotation. Over the long term is fine for a farm system, but the Mets are paying Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto to win right now. And more options also means depth, and depth is not who starts game one of a big playoff series. If you think the Mets need a real ace to pair with Nolan McCutcheon, then hit the like button on this video and subscribe for more daily Mets content. Let's make this the most liked Mets video of the month to tell David Stearns that depth is not an option for a team with a massive payroll that has all the pressure in the world to win right now. Now, development did give Stearns two very good starters, and he has a reason to want a third one now instead of later. At the trade deadline, Stearns traded nine players, and the team that was left went 27-22. He doesn't think that run was luck. He said, quote, so I do think it's real, end quote. His reason was that the young players kept performing while, quote, things were spinning sideways around them. Carson Benge is the face of that, the runner-up for NL Rookie of the Year, and frankly, he definitely should have won first place. And Benge will about to be making $1 million next year because he has not even reached arbitration. Lindor is signed through 2031 at $34.1 million a year, so every season without an ace is a season of that money spent waiting. That is the window though. Cheap young players who just proved they can win and a front office that has to win around them before they get too expensive. And the one piece a young lineup can't grow by itself is that ace. Over his last 626 regular season innings, Tarek Skubal has a 2.47 ERA. Since 2023, among qualified starters, only Blake Snell has a better ERA at 2.46. He strikes out 31% of the hitters he faces and walks fewer than 5%. In his final regular season start for the Dodgers, he struck out 10 and walked none over 7 innings. Those are the same Dodgers who took Yamamoto. away from the Mets and the Mets still sit ahead of them as the favorite on the Skubal odds board per John Heyman. That is exactly the kind of ace that David Stern says you have to grow yourself and it's available on the free agent market all it takes is Steve Cohen's money right now. John Heyman summed up the Mets case in five words, the need and the wherewithal. Skubal wants a deal Deal done before the labor runs out on December 1st, with three weeks left before everything freezes and all hell freezes over and everything goes crazy, next week's meeting could be most of the actual negotiation. There is a reason Stearns stays away from deals like this, though. Skubal is about to turn 30, and he has a history of arm trouble. Now, Stearns and Cohen went all in on Juan Soto, though I really think that was mostly... Steve Cohen himself and I think it's going to have to be a very similar pathway here to get Scooble because you're talking about a pitcher who is great but is also 30 and does admittedly have those documented arm injuries and that's not the kind of bet that David Stearns has a history of And frankly, he has a history of avoiding them, per MLB.com. Money is not really what stands in the way here. It's going to be that the Mets ran a payroll last season north of $350 million. For 2027, they already have $234.9 million signed before a single arbitration raise. Soto alone takes $51 million of that. With this owner, the price tag is the easy part, but the fight is over the years because the deal is in that range where if it runs deep into Schubel's 30s, that's the kind of pitcher that David Stearns just is not interested in spending all that much money on. Because SNY says there is a very real possibility that Cohen himself is going to have to urge Stearns to go hard after Schubel rather than Stearns asserting himself. And wanting to go after the free agent pitcher himself. Cohen has also reportedly guaranteed Stearns' job through 2028. So he can't point at the budget, and he isn't pitching to save his job. If the Mets walk out of this winter without Schubel, it will be because, well, they didn't offer enough money. And also, David Stearns maybe talked to Steve Cohen and told him, Hey, this is not really worth going towards that price tag. And if he does... Do that, and Schubel goes elsewhere. This is what Plan B will look like. In free agency, the fallbacks are Michael King and Clay Holmes, who made 31 starts for the Mets in 2025. On the trade market, the names are Drew Rasmussen and Tampa Bay, and Reid Detmers with the Los Angeles Angels. SNY adds Hunter Brown, Joe Ryan, Logan Gilbert, and George Kirby, and says the farm system the Mets restocked at the deadline is what would pay for a trade. Now, none of them would come anywhere close to $300 million, let alone $400 million, but none of those guys are also two-time Cy Young Award winners. And, by the way, first base is the other hole that's glaring on the Mets, and that one, David Stearns created all by himself. Pete Alonso is gone, and Stearns didn't dodge it in September, I guess, to his credit. He said, in this job, I don't get mulligans. Jared Young filled in with nine home runs and 342 plate appearances. And he struggled against lefties. Munetaka Murakami, the slugger Stearns passed on last winter, hit 35 for the White Sox. Second base might be open up too, after a rough year for Marcus Simeon, and that's putting it kindly. The top prospect in the system, Jefferson Rojas, plus Mitch Voit and Emilian Petry, could all be ready in the first half of 2027 per MLB.com. Stearns praised Young and Brett Baty in September, but he still expects to look outside for first base. Added up in plan B is two new starters to the rotation, an external option for first base and a rookie second baseman. Not bad, not bad at all, but those are all bridge moves, and none of them really move the needle. There's only one guy who does that on the free agent market, if we're being real honest with ourselves, and that guy is a real swing that the Mets have to take. The call is David Stearns needs to break his little rule. He needs to break a lot of rules because his tenure with the Mets has not gone well. They've missed the playoffs in two of the three seasons that he has overseen the roster. Skenables is the one selective swing if he's ever going to take one for a free agent top tier starting pitcher. Why? That would give you two locked in number one starters on a team that's coming off an embarrassing 74 win. campaign. In his own words, they missed too much last season. They cannot afford to miss again. The doubt he has to answer, for Skenables' sake, is that yes, he is turning 30, and yes, he has arm history, and yes, he will likely get a contract that takes him into his late 30s. Now, There is a clock on all of this, so the Mets are going to need to pony up the money now and decide. The meeting is next week. The labor deal runs out December 1st, and we have to watch whether an offer goes in before it, and hint hint, there will be. So would you give Skenables $300 million? Would you give him $400 million if that's what it takes? Or would you take Michael King, Clay Holmes, and alternative options for a lot less? Let me know in the comments, guys. And as always, like, subscribe for all your daily Mets updates. And as always, everybody, let's go Mets.