With Juan Soto’s signing still not yet official, Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns would not comment about the reported mega-deal that will see the superstar land in Queens.
Of course, Stearns’s avoidance of speaking about the 15-year, $765 million signing that shook baseball on Sunday didn’t apply to first baseman Pete Alonso’s free agency.
“We’d love to bring Pete back,” Stearns said from the MLB Winter Meetings in Dallas on Monday. “Pete’s been a great Met, he’s had some enormous hits for us and we’ll see where that goes.”
And even with the large outlying of capital to sign Soto out there, but not confirmed by the Mets officially, Stearns indicated there is room in the budget to re-sign Alonso.
“I think our ownership has consistently demonstrated that there’s going to be resources when we need them,” he said. “There is the ability for us to make baseball moves when we think that they’re there to improve the team. And we’re gonna continue to pursue a wide variety of areas to continue to improve our team.”
When speaking about the offseason plans in general, Stearns said the club still has “a lot of work to do.”
“We’ve got a lot of conversations ongoing, free agency and trade,” he said. “I think this has the potential for the industry to be a pretty active Winter Meetings and that’s a good thing.
“We’re having a lot of conversations, we’ll see where it goes. But, look, we’ve got a lot of offseason left. We’ve got a chance to continue to make this team better and that’s where our priority is.”
Stearns added that the Mets are in the process of “checking some of the boxes that we came into the offseason wanting to check” and they are going to “continue to do that.”
“I think really we have the ability to add to all segments of our team and it’s just finding the right deal and the right player,” he continued. “We can continue to add to our pitching staff and we still have places in our position player grouping where we think some additions can make sense as well.”
Who is on first?
While Mark Vientos made himself a regular at third base last season, there is the possibility the soon-to-be 25-year-old would make a switch to first if Alonso were to sign elsewhere.
“Mark did a tremendous job for us at third, we’re very comfortable with him there and certainly as of now we see him as our third baseman,” Stearns said when asked about that possibility.
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