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Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns addressed the media on Monday afternoon, less than 24 hours after seeing his team lose to the Miami Marlins on the final day of the regular season, capping off a collapse that kept his club out of the postseason.

Stearns hit on a wide array of topics, including the possibility of shaking of the team's position player core, as well as Pete Alonso's looming free agency.

While the Mets’ starting rotation is very much in flux, many of the starting position players remain under contract heading into next season, outside of Alonso and role players like Starling Marte, Jesse Winker, and Cedric Mullins.

Still, Stearns said the Mets will need to be “open-minded” when it comes to the core group of position players in order to build a team that “fits together better.”

“I think we’re going to have to be open-minded on our position player grouping so that we can improve our run prevention,” Stearns said. “Does that mean there are robust changes? I don’t know. Does that mean people could be playing different positions? Maybe. Does it mean we ask people to play different roles? Maybe.

“A day after a season ends, I’m certainly not going to commit to what things look like in spring training or Opening Day, but I’ll say it again, our run prevention this year was not good enough, and that’s pitching and defense. They go hand-in-hand, and we need to improve in both.”

He later added: “I come at this like we need to create a better roster that fits together better. I think our players worked their tails off. I think they came to the park with the right attitude every single day, and it didn’t work, so I need to take a long, hard look at our roster.”

As for Alonso, who said on Sunday that he will indeed opt out of his contract and become a free agent at the end of the season, Stearns gave an answer that he also said many times around this point in the calendar last year.

“Pete is a great Met. He had a fantastic year,” Stearns said of Alonso, who became the club's all-time home run king this season after re-signing. “I said this last year and it worked out – I’d love to have Pete back and we’ll see where the offseason goes.”

Stearns also said that when it comes to Alonso, or any impending free agent, the player’s entire fit, on and off the field, are taken into account.

“Whenever we’re talking about departing free agents or players who were with us who are then free agents, it’s always the wholistic package of what that players brings to an organization,” Stearns said. “It’s what he means to the team on the field, it’s what that player means to the community, what that player means to the fanbase. That is always part of the decision-making process, and I imagine it will be again this offseason.”

With the Mets falling short and missing the playoffs after such high expectations for the 2025 season, many would like to point the blame at Carlos Mendoza.

President of baseball operations David Stearns is not one of them and expressed his belief in Mendoza's ability to lead New York on Monday, confirming that he will return as manager of the club for the 2026 season.

"Yeah, Carlos is coming back next year," Stearns made clear.

Mendoza helped the Mets to an 89-73 record during the 2024 season, knocking off the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Wild Card Series and the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL Division Series, before falling to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in six games in the NL Championship Series.

Stearns acknowledged the 2025 season was a completely different story. The Mets had the best record in baseball on June 12 at 45-24, but due to poor pitching, lack of clutch hitting, defensive issues, and injuries, the team went 38-55 from June 13 on, the fifth-worst record in the bigs over that span and finished outside of the postseason with an 83-79 record. Mendoza is now 172-152 over two seasons.

Despite the second-half downfall, Stearns is still very much confident in Mendoza as manager and personally took the blame for a number of the 2025 team's issues, including pitching.

"I believe Carlos has all the same traits and assets that I believed in when we hired him two years ago," Stearns said. "I think over the course of his tenure here, he has demonstrated that.

"We had a tough year this year, there's no question. We are all disappointed, we are all frustrated. Mendy, as much or more than anyone else. But I still believe he's a very good manager and I think he's going to demonstrate that."

As for the rest of the coaching staff, Stearns said everyone under Mendoza will be evaluated. SNY MLB Insider Andy Martino reported Sunday night that it can be expected for there to be "notable and perhaps widespread changes to the coaching staff" this offseason.

"We're going to go through an evaluation of our entire coaching staff and we'll do that over the course of the coming days to a week, and then we'll make our decisions there," Stearns said.

He added: "We're going to certainly sit down and look at everything, including our coaching staff. It's normal after any season to do a coaching staff evaluation. When you come off a season like this, it's certainly going to be a little more intense."

Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns was blunt, forthcoming, and reflective on Monday, speaking at Citi Field a day after New York's season ended in abject failure at the hands of the Marlins in Miami.

"I'm the architect of the team," Stearns said at the beginning of his news conference. "I'm responsible for it."

And while taking responsibility, a lot of focus was spent on the Mets' failure to prevent runs, which was a two-pronged issue caused by the pitching and defense. Stearns also touched on the offense, but much more of his time was spent alluding to what went wrong with the starting rotation -- and how to fix things.

"From a roster construction perspective, on the run-prevention side of the ball, we didn't do a good enough job of fortifying our team when we had injuries midseason," Stearns said. "Clearly, that was a point in our season where on the run-prevention side of things we went from a very good team to a team that wasn't good enough to maintain a sizable lead -- not only in the division, but in the playoff chase. 

"Our defense wasn't good enough, and that certainly contributed to our pitching challenges. And then offensively, we had a number of players who had really good years. But we failed to score the runs that we needed to score despite those really good years. You add all that up, and you get to a team that underachieved greatly. We know that. I certainly know that. And we're gonna work really hard to fix that going forward, learn from this, and do a heck of a lot better."

After storming out of the gates to a 45-24 record in mid-June, things turned for the Mets.

Before getting injured, Griffin Canning and Tylor Megill had started to regress badly. Kodai Senga also suffered an injury, compounding the rotation issue since Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas were still out while rehabbing injuries suffered in spring training.

Faced with a rotation that was in disarray, the Mets were in a tough spot.

In the weeks after the injuries hit, New York utilized a handful of bullpen games and gave starts to pitchers like Paul Blackburn (they lost all four of his starts in June) and Blade Tidwell.

They also decided to not call Nolan McLean up at that point, even though he was performing in largely dominant fashion for Triple-A Syracuse.

While Stearns said the team should've done more over the summer to address the issue, he did not regret not adding to the rotation at the trade deadline.

"I think holistically as I look at our pitching staff, we needed to do more over the course of the season," Stearns said. "That is very clear. What we were faced at at the deadline? I think our fanbase would be perhaps even more upset if we had made some of those moves. But the entirety of our run-prevention unit was not good enough this year."

Above, Stearns seemed to be referencing the reported prices for the starting pitchers who weren't moved, which was relatively outrageous.

Regarding how the Mets will fix the rotation for 2026 and beyond, Stearns wouldn't rule out anything and noted that adding a top starter via free agency or trade is possible. But he stressed the need to develop top of the rotation starters, which the team might have just done with McLean.

Stearns also touched on what he learned during the season, and cited a need to be more proactive and aggressive.

"I think on a number of levels there are areas where we can probably be a little bit more proactive," he said. "And I can be a little bit more proactive. I think some of these lessons we're still investigating and still fully understanding various aspects of our team. But there are clearly times in the season, times over the offseason, where I can be a little bit more proactive."

He later noted:

"We are making the best decisions we possibly can with the information we have at the moment. I made the best judgments I did -- clearly some of them didn't work out. Now we try to learn and move forward."

In addition to the struggles of the starting pitchers who were healthy, the Mets were left in a precarious spot when it came to depth. And the bullpen was impacted because the starters didn't pitch deep enough into games.

Neither issue was lost on Stearns.

"We need more innings out of our starting staff," he said. "There's no question about that. We were on the edge for the first two and a half months this year, where we were getting five-plus innings per start pretty consistently. That worked because it was happening every night. The minute you then get your 2 1/3 inning start, you get into trouble. That got us into trouble this year -- when we stopped getting the consistent five-plus inning starts, and occasionally there was the really short start. And then the next start was 5 1/3 innings. That gets you into trouble."

Stearns added:

"Yeah, we were hit by injuries. But every team is hit by injuries, and we have to be able to have sufficient pitching depth to overcome that. And clearly when we got hit by injuries in the middle of the season, we did not have the depth to overcome that."

The billionaire owner of the New York Mets apologized to fans on Monday, after the team crashed out of the 2025 MLB season without securing a spot in the playoffs, despite boasting a $340 million payroll that’s one of the league’s highest.

“I owe you an apology,” Steven Cohen, who bought the team in 2020, wrote on X on Monday. “You did your part by showing up and supporting the team. We didn’t do our part. We will do a post-mortem and figure out the obvious and less obvious reasons why the team didn’t perform up to your and my expectations.”

“I know how much time and effort you have put into this team,” he added. “The result was unacceptable.”

The club’s season ended Sunday with a 4-0 loss to the Miami Marlins, prolonging the 39-year World Series drought for the Mets.

"There are no words to describe what we’re going through," Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said after the game. "It’s pain, frustration, you name it. We came in with a lot of expectations, and here we are going home. Not only did we fall short. We didn’t even get into October. Pissed. Sad. Frustrated. You name it."

The disappointing end to the campaign comes despite a promising season where in mid-June the Mets had the best record in baseball.

“I said at one point in the year, I felt like it was the most talented team I’ve ever played on,” outfielder Brandon Nimmo told MLB.com after the loss in Miami. “And we weren’t able to make the playoffs. That’s obviously coming up short and a failure in my mind.”

However, that momentum fell apart, as the Mets suffered three different seven-game losing streaks and saw stars including Kodai Senga, Griffin Canning, and Tylor Megill pick up injuries.

While the team had the second-best offense in the National League, commentators also pointed to poor defense down the regular season stretch as a hole for the Queens-based team.

Mets fans have been eager to see Cohen’s splashy tenure at the team pay off, one that’s seen blockbuster contracts like 2021’s $341 million deal for Francisco Lindor and last year’s record-breaking $765 million bid for Juan Soto.

They got a taste of that progress last year, when the Mets made it to the 2024 National League Championship Series.

Personnel changes are expected at the Mets in the offseason, with first baseman Pete Alonso saying he will opt out of his deal and become a free agent, while closer Edwin Diaz says he’s considering doing the same.

There are reportedly no plans to fire Mendoza, though.