Mets Owner Says ‘Too Much Risk’ During Offseason Led to Team’s Struggles

However you break it down, the 2026 New York Mets season has been an utter disaster. The team had the highest payroll in all of Major League Baseball at nearly $320 million, yet it found itself in last place in the National League East. It also has claimed the third-worst record in the Senior Circuit, and the sixth-worst record in MLB.

The team started the year in Queens with significant progress on paper, after a splashy offseason that’s usually the norm for New York’s other team in the Yankees. The Mets went all-in during the offseason, making huge trades and big-name free agent additions.

But nearly every single one of them has failed to live up to expectations.

With New York having less than 0.1 percent chance of making the postseason, the team’s owner, Steve Cohen, was in a reflective mood on Wednesday, looking backwards instead of ahead to another October without the Mets participating in it.

In a media session, Cohen was asked what went wrong. And while he didn’t throw his general manager, David Stearns, under the bus, Cohen did make it clear that Stearns rolled the dice a bit too often with the offseason acquisitions.

“David is smart. He knows what he is doing,” Cohen said of Stearns. “He is very adaptable. He has learned from mistakes. That’s what I want to eliminate.

“There was too much risk when you think about all the changes that were made. Whenever there are significant changes, sometimes, it takes a while to integrate. Those are the things that I’m looking at and where we could be better.”

Stearns’s first big move of the offseason was trading the team’s longest tenured player, Brandon Nimmo, to the Texas Rangers and acquiring Marcus Semien in return. Outfielder Nimmo has been productive in Texas, while Semien has supplied none of the production that made him a three-time 3rd-place MVP finisher in his career. The veteran infielder now has the lowest batting average, slugging percentage, and OPS of his 14-year career, while having his worst defensive season ever.

The team also added hitters Bo Bichette, Luis Robert Jr., and Jorge Polanco in separate deals, with all three greatly underperforming compared to their career numbers. Additionally, both Robert and Polanco have missed over 70 games due to injury, and even holdover stars Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor have missed significant time due to injuries.

“When you add new players, coaching staff, and players with an injured history, you add risk upon risk,” Cohen stated. “It doesn’t mean it has to turn out bad; it just means you have dispersion of results and maybe the possibility of an undesirable result. It’s more of a possibility because of the risk you are taking.”

It’s not just the new Mets batters who have underdelivered. The same goes for the new arms brought onto the team. The Mets traded one of their top prospects for two-time All-Star Freddy Peralta, who led the NL in wins last season with the Milwaukee Brewers.

But Peralta has been nothing like the pitcher the Brewers sent to the mound, posting a 4.99 ERA for the Mets, compared to a 2.70 mark last season, before being sent to the Tampa Bay Rays at the trade deadline.

Devin Williams, who was a former Brewers teammate of Peralta and is a two-time All-Star himself, has been a weak spot in an otherwise strong bullpen for New York. Williams has a 4.66 ERA after having a 1.83 mark in six seasons in Milwaukee.

During his media session, Cohen mentioned adding a new coaching staff, which he said wasn’t actually planned. The Mets retained manager Carlos Mendoza from last season, but he only lasted half of the season before being fired following 81 games.

Mendoza went 34-47 as skipper and had the team on a six-game losing streak before losing his job. He was replaced on an interim basis by Andy Green, who formerly served under Cohen as the team’s Senior Vice President for Player Development. This is the one move—also unplanned—that actually paid off as New York is over .500 under Green, though still out of the postseason picture.

Considering how New York’s season has gone, it should be another busy offseason for the team once the regular season comes to a close. It doesn’t make much sense to run it back with a team that has so drastically underperformed, and assuming that Green reverts to his previous role with a new manager taking over, a new person in charge often leads to a roster overhaul.

The Mets were two playoff wins away from making the 2024 World Series. Now, they’re headed to two straight seasons without a playoff appearance, and on pace for their highest number of losses in a season since 2017.