David Stearns calls Mets a 'playoff-caliber team'

David Stearns has been on the job for less than five months as he begins his first spring training as Mets’ president of baseball operations. And after taking over a 75-win team that fell short of lofty expectations, he believes the roster he constructed this offseason has a chance to play meaningful baseball deep into the season.

“We are a playoff-caliber team,” Stearns told the New York Post’s Jon Heyman.

“I think it’s a talented group, and I think it was a talented group last year,” he told Heyman. “And I think the players certainly feel the results on the field last year were not indicative of the talent in the clubhouse.”

When Heyman mentioned the postseason prognostications – the Pecota standings projection on Saturday gave the Mets a 49.1 percent to make the postseason, Fangraphs was at 30.6 percent – Stearns said, "That's OK."

“I’m not going to get into internal projection systems," he said. "But I’ll tell you, I feel good about our team."

And this tracks with some of the president of baseball ops’ comments at the start of spring training earlier this week.

"I would stay consistent with what I said previously, which is we expect to be a good team," Stearns said on Feb. 12. "We expect to compete for a playoff spot and have exciting baseball at Citi Field in September and October.

"Success can be defined in a lot of different ways, but certainly our expectations going into the season is that we're gonna have a quality team that wins games and is a competitive, playoff-caliber team."

This offseason the Mets have strengthened the rotation, added outfield depth, and – in addition to getting closer Edwin Diaz back from a knee injury – reinforced the bullpen.

And, with scores of players still unattached at the start of spring training, Stearns did say this week that “conversations are going to continue” in that department.

“There are some [offseasons] I've experienced that do go deep into spring training and there are some that seem to wrap up at the new year,” Stearns said on Thursday. “And clearly, probably for a variety of reasons, were in one of these that is continuing through spring training and there are a lot of players available.

“There's still conversations going around the industry and I expect that to continue."