Dissecting Eric Chavez's comments on the Mets and David Stearns
Meanwhile the Mets lost again, this time a 2-1 defeat in their series opener in Toronto
What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️
The Mets dropped the first game of their series in Toronto by the score of 2-1 (box)
LHP Sean Manaea started for the Mets and pitched well, going 5.2 innings while allowing just two earned runs on three hits and a pair of walks
Francisco Lindor hit his first home run since returning from the injured list, a 7th inning solo shot against Trey Yesavage
Juan Soto and Francisco Álvarez each contributed a double in the loss
Righties Austin Warren and Joey Gerber combined to toss 2.1 innings of scoreless relief
Injury Updates 🩺
OF Luis Robert (herniated disc) Will begin a rehab assignment with Triple-A Syracuse today
INF Marcus Semien has been diagnosed with a grade 3 hip flexor strain - he is expected to miss a minimum of 4-6 weeks
Roster Moves 📰
RHP Tobias Myers optioned to Triple-A Syracuse
RHP Joey Gerber recalled from Triple-A Syracuse
Play of the Game ☹️
This game got off to an absolutely comically bad start for the Mets. After failing to score in the first inning for their 10th consecutive game, Sean Manaea took the mound in the bottom of the first, facing George Springer leading off for Toronto.
Springer lined a ball into left field that Juan Soto charged hard on but was never going to catch. Instead of playing it on a hop for a single, however, Soto allowed the ball to skip over his glove and roll to the fence. A.J. Ewing came racing over from center field to try to help out, but he then dropped the ball after his attempt to pick it up. The comedy of errors led to a little league home run for Springer to start the game.
The Just Mets Podcast 🎙️
On the latest edition of the Just Mets Podcast, Rich and Andrew recap another disappointing week, Carlos Mendoza’s dismissal, and a bleak preview of the week ahead against the Blue Jays and Braves.
SUBSCRIBE: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Down on the Farm 🌾
All Mets minor league affiliates were off on Monday
Today’s Game 🗓
Match-up: Mets (35-50) vs. Blue Jays (40-45)
Where: Rogers Centre - Toronto, Ontario
Starters: RHP Nolan McLean (4-5, 4.03 ERA) vs. RHP Kevin Gausman (4-6, 4.36 ERA)
When: 7:07 PM EDT
Where to Watch: SNY
Eric Chavez’ opened up a can of worms on David Stearns and the Mets ✍️
The Mets lost to the Blue Jays on Monday in the opener of their three-game set north of the border, but that was not the most noteworthy thing in Mets land on Monday, although George Springer’s Little League home run at the expense of Juan Soto and AJ Ewing in the first inning on Monday was at least entertaining, if not terribly aggravating.
Late Sunday night, former Mets hitting instructor and bench coach Eric Chávez released what he dubbed an ‘emergency episode’ of his popular podcast “The EC3 Pod”.
The motivation for doing so was to respond to the Mets’ decision to fire his friend and former colleague, Carlos Mendoza, and for the next nearly 45 minutes, he delivered a scathing review of the job David Stearns has done since taking over as New York’s President of Baseball Operations.
Chávez initially served as the Mets’ hitting instructor under Buck Showalter, and for all intents and purposes, did a nice job in that role at the time. He has always been open about having an interest in managing at the big-league level at some point, and in his last year in New York, the Mets promoted him to be his bench coach, which was obviously a step towards that goal.
When Showalter departed following the 2023 campaign and was replaced by Mendoza, the Mets’ new manager wanted to keep Chávez on the staff he was assembling.
And here’s where the first noteworthy tidbit about Stearns came in.
With a rookie manager, it made sense for the team’s new front office regime to want an experienced former manager as his bench coach, so it’s no surprise that John Gibbons was hired to fill that role. Chávez was to go back to a job he was obviously comfortable with as the hitting instructor. But not before being rubbed the wrong way by his new boss.
According to Chávez, one of his first conversations with Stearns involved Stearns telling him that in order for it to work with him remaining on the staff, he was going to have to take a small pay cut from the year prior. However, after just signing his own $10 million per year contract, and working for the richest owner in professional sports, asking one of your established coaches to take a pay cut in one of his first moves with a new organization didn’t sit well with Chávez.
But, a much greater issue came later.
During the 2025 season, Chávez indicated that young Mets players informed him that the minor league coaches were telling players that the only way to reach the big leagues was to pull the ball in the air and hit home runs.
This was particularly concerning for Chávez, who stated he never once tried to hit a home run, and especially as a teacher, preferred to focus on swing mechanics and path to the ball, and that if you do things the right way and hit the ball well, it’s going to go. But the fundamentals have to be correct.
He went on to pen an email to the organization’s entire hitting staff. Shortly afterwards, he was called into Stearns’ office to discuss its contents. Chávez voiced his concerns. Stearns told him he disagreed. Meeting over.
The biggest highlight of the show, though, came when Chávez got into the early days of Juan Soto’s Mets tenure.
We all remember the way Soto struggled a bit as he was getting acclimated to Queens a season ago. Chávez revealed that between innings, Soto would often go inside and sit on a coach by the indoor hitting cage.
The way Chávez presented it was not in a way that was overly negative towards Soto. It genuinely sounded as though he was somebody that didn’t know his new teammates well enough yet, and after an at-bat preferred to take a couple of minutes of quiet to himself to either watch his at-bat on a tablet or decompress before going back out.
Either way though, Chávez indicated he brought it up to Stearns that it was not an overwhelmingly positive example for the younger players, and the response was that “The younger players need to learn that they’re not Juan Soto.”
Okay then.
Chávez said it did not surprise him at all when Stearns called him to say the team was going to go in a different direction with the hitting coach position. But he revealed that the conversation was incredibly short, and at no point did Stearns issue even semantics like “Thank you“, or “we wish you well”.
My instant reaction to the entire episode was that really nothing over the top surprised me. I think we have all generated our own negative opinions about Stearns and the way he is operating atop this organization’s front office. If we can filter out Chávez’s clear dissatisfaction for being fired, it’s clear that at the very least, Stearns operates very, very transactionally without any emotion or attachment to his decisions. That was evident with his dealings with Chávez as much as it was evident in his decisions to part ways with the likes of Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil, and Brandon Nimmo last winter.
And that is a part of any boss’s job too. Good bosses are able to separate their personal feelings from what they feel is best for their organization, whether Chávez agrees or not. And, if Chávez wants to work in baseball again, he needs to understand that in a lot of cases, field staff, front office executives, and the like usually end up getting let go in the end for one reason or another. He comes off as bitter and spiteful for losing his job with the Mets, and even if his position is justifiable and even remotely understandable, it’s probably not a position he should be expressing in public, especially in this industry which, if history is any indicator, doesn’t respond kindly to prospective candidates like this.
Now, unfortunately for Stearns, he has yet to fully grasp what is best for this organization, as indicated by the club’s record in two out of his first three full seasons here, which makes every decision and the way Stearns has allegedly handled in-house items (which, to be fair, shouldn’t be discussed in public) leading up to today open for harsh criticism.
And in reality, outside of 3-4 good months in 2024, it’s all been generally bad.
It was particularly satisfying for me as a fan when Chávez consistently chastised the term ‘run prevention,’ at one point saying, “He’s talking about pitching and defense. Stop acting like you’re smarter than us”.
Coming into play on Tuesday, by the way, the Mets have -17 outs above average (25th in MLB), 21 defensive runs saved (8th), and have a -14 fielding run value (25th). So, so much for run prevention. And this is where it’s fair to criticize Stearns and the front office. Call it a promise undelivered upon, call it a complete misread on how to solve this problem they promoted as being a culprit to their failure in 2025, call it whatever you want. But this is a metric among many metrics by which to hold Stearns and company accountable.
Now, it’s safe to say there is way more than meets the eye here. Ownership is well aware of the day-to-day ongoings with the front office, and so on and so forth. Is what Chávez is alleging here a fireable offense for Stearns? No, but the buck certainly stops with Stearns and his front office with respect to the team’s performance and his organizational building, and that is the part that ultimately matters. Sure, the way they handle individual circumstances - such as the one with Soto and I am sure the many other unique circumstances like this that exist up and down the ladder - can impact organizational building.
But even if ownership is dissatisfied with Stearns’ performance to date, they’re only halfway through the lucrative five-year agreement they signed Stearns to run the Mets, and he was their white whale for years before they finally signed him, so it seems unlikely Steve Cohen would actually pull the plug this early.
But one thing is for sure: if he did, it would be met with a lot of support from his team’s diehard fans.
Around the League 🚩
Former Mets farmhand Endy Rodriguez hit a home run and drove in four in the Pirates wild 11-7 victory in Philadelphia
RHP Casey Mize fired seven scoreless one hit innings while punching out 10 in the Tigers 7-3 win over the Yankees
Jake Burger and Justin Foscue each drove in a pair of runs in Texas’ 6-3 road win in Cleveland