Living the Dream Job: What It's Like to Run Your Childhood Team, with David Stearns

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

I think that the Met fans need to calm down because they will get it done.

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You know, it's funny.

I was thinking, like, so we were, we were freshmen when Facebook,

when thefacebook.com launched.

Do you remember like...

Oh, yeah.

I thought it was going to

like die in two weeks.

I actually, I remember sitting in Annenberg, our freshman dining hall, which is the closest thing to like Hogwarts that actually exists.

So I remember sitting there and reading an article in the Crimson.

Yep.

And I forget what the exact dollar amount was, but some VC had offered Mark a couple million bucks.

This was our freshman year.

And I remember thinking like, and he turned it down.

I remember thinking like, what's he doing?

And obviously, obviously he knew what he was doing.

So good scouting by you.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm probably good that I went into this career and not another one.

But I think all the time about how if you were to become one day, just hypothetically speaking, the president of baseball operations for your childhood favorite team, it would help to not have smartphones around in college.

Like we just missed

the iPhone era, dawn of social media, but like no actual like smartphones around.

That's true.

Yeah, I guess that's right.

Some kids have Blackberries, right?

Yeah.

I had a Motorola razor at one point, which is all my way of saying that last night because I am an investigative journalist.

Okay.

My wife yells at me for being a hoarder.

And so I found an old laptop that I forgot I had.

And I found a picture that I want to show you.

Oh, boy.

What's this from?

You tell me if you remember what this is.

So the guy I'm showing my laptop to, the guy I've tricked into visiting our studio here today as America turns to pitchers and and catchers is David Stearns.

A guy who is now at age 39, the president of baseball operations for the historically despondent team that David grew up rooting for, which now happens to be one of the most fascinating teams in all of sports.

The New York Mets.

David recently signed outfielder Juan Soto away from the Yankees, my childhood team, by signing Soto to the richest contract in the history of sports, a 15-year, $765 million deal, a truly surreal dynamic that we'll discuss.

But I first encountered David Stearns more than 20 years ago now, when we were freshmen covering sports for the college paper, which this picture that I'm showing him here, which you can see on our YouTube channel, can confirm.

So that is in the Crimson Sports Cube, and it looks like after a night where we've enjoyed ourselves.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I found this photo to try and embarrass you and mostly just realize that I look like I have, I think I may have literally not had alcohol before until this evening.

Yeah, you look like you're struggling there a little bit.

Yeah.

In the picture, I am hanging onto the table, the edge of a table for dear life as my eyes are fluttering into unconsciousness.

David, on the other hand, is mostly just calmly grinning.

He looks even-keeled.

And we are wearing blazers and medals, by the way, and not at all looking like ass.

Not at all, because of that.

But that night, we were getting initiated as official staffers on the college paper.

And while David now, here in New York City, is the subject of intense coverage, the columns he wrote as a hard-hitting journalist, they remain a part of Crimson lore to this day.

Oh, I'm sure.

Yeah.

I mean, that's not an exaggeration.

Well, I remember writing one column that I think my first column, having grown up in New York City, reading New York City columnists

my entire life, I'm not sure I quite grasped what collegiate journalism might be like.

But yeah, I think I wrote a column talking about

the lackluster play of the men's hockey team.

That's right.

And I don't think they appreciated that.

No.

So this story has been like leaked out in like baseball circles, but I was around for when this happened.

You wrote a column advocating for Harvard students to go check out the women's ice hockey team.

And you did it by saying, I'll just quote it briefly here.

For all you hockey fans who have watched the Crimson Men play sleep-inducing hockey this year, they're more effective than NyQuill on their way to a 10-13 and two record, what will likely be an early departure from postseason play.

Have you thought that maybe you're just heading over to Bright Hockey Center at the wrong time?

Maybe it's time to watch, you know, know, that other team.

In the lore of the newspaper, you go to practice because you show up.

A columnist, a journalist always shows up after they kill someone in print.

You show up, and how close do the pucks get to your head?

To their credit.

They wanted me to know that they had read it and

didn't necessarily appreciate it.

That was our freshman year, right?

Yeah, it was February 20th, 2004.

Yeah.

Our freshman spring.

I think I was probably a little bit

more tame on the remainder of the articles and columns that I wrote during my short-lived journalistic career.

Yeah.

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So the other photo I have to show you is this one.

Do you remember this?

Oh, that's in Barcelona.

That's right.

That's in Barcelona.

That's right.

Yeah.

What year was that was sophomore year?

Sophomore year.

And in this photo, I am perched beneath this cat, the statue of this cat.

You're wearing, you know, normal people clothes.

I'm wearing this cap.

And I looked and remembered what cap I was wearing, and I just laughed to myself.

What are you wearing?

The emblem, the NY.

Was that a Yankee cap?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, wow.

And I bring this up just to say, like, if you had told us, oh, by the way, in 20 years, you're going to be the general manager of the New York Mets.

What would you have said at that moment in your life?

Yeah, of course I would have said there's no,

there's no chance.

I think when you're that age, in college, your ambitions are, or at least mine were much smaller, right?

Like you're trying to figure out how you're going to get through the next semester or what social event you're trying to go to or what club you're trying to join.

You know, I knew I wanted to work in baseball and that had you told me at that point in 20 years you'll be working in baseball, I would have said, yeah, that sounds pretty good and that makes sense.

The thought that I could one day be running the team I grew up passionately rooting for would have seemed absurd to me.

Nuts.

Crazy.

Yeah, crazy.

The biggest compliment I can pay you as a guy who grew up rooting for the Yankees and was unhinged about it.

I remember putting a Yankee cap on the John Harvard statue.

Me and Gabe Velez, another one of your roommates, stood on the thing, draped a Bernie Williams jersey over the statue.

But I say all of that to say that the biggest compliment I can pay you you is that for the first time in my life as a Yankee fan, I am jealous of the Mets.

That is nice to hear.

I will take that compliment.

It's not a lie.

I will take that compliment.

It's not an exaggeration.

It's a remarkable thing that you've been doing.

We're in a fun spot.

And I think what I am

most excited about where we are as an organization is we're able to simultaneously embrace who we are.

We're not the Yankees, but we are also now at the point where we are striving for consistent on-field excellence, and we believe that's achievable.

I wanted to set the psychological context though for what you're really saying.

Okay.

Because the responsibility you have is kind of unique in sports when it comes to like the particular combination of inherited dramas and

so close heartbreakers and that little brother complex of like, look, the Mets were never supposed to actually compete with the Yankees and all of the money and all of the history that the Yankees have had.

The Mets, for people who don't know, right?

69 and 86, two World Series.

We were born in 85.

Yep.

So you don't have a psychological memory of the good times in terms of that.

In the 80s, this was a Mets town.

So for people of sort of exactly our generation and maybe a little younger, yes, there could be that notion that, oh, the Mets

aren't meant to compete.

That was my childhood.

Mostly laughing at you.

I understand that.

I think for people who were born in the 70s or perhaps a little earlier,

they grew up at a time where the Mets were the team in New York.

And of course, part of the story of that 86 team and the late 80s teams is that as good as they were,

they couldn't sustain it.

Right.

And so that is truly the quest of where we are now is

create the type of organization that can sustain top-level success in a way that really throughout the history of the Mets, we haven't done it yet.

What's the saddest that you felt growing up as a Mets fan?

Is there a particular game, a moment?

Yeah, I mean, Kenny Rogers ball four.

So walk us up to this.

So

this was a crazy game.

This is the 1999 NLCS.

Mets go down 3-0 in the series, win an incredible game 4.

John Olarud gets two RBI single up the middle off of John Rocker in the eighth inning to put the Mets ahead.

Mets win game four down 3-1.

They win game five on the famous Robin Ventura Grand Slam single in the rain.

A drag to wake, back to Georgia.

Gone, a grand slam.

So now all of a sudden there's this momentum.

And Mets fans feel the hope that we often feel.

Go to Atlanta

and immediately fall down.

I want to say 5-0 in that game.

Like it was either 5 or 6-0, and then just claw back and claw back, tie the game.

I think at one point took the lead late in the game, but couldn't hold it.

And then, you know, extra innings, bases load.

I think there were two, if I'm remembering this correctly, like there were two pitchers available left in the pen.

And it was Kenny Rogers or Octavio Dotel.

And went with Kenny Rogers

and

loaded the bases and then ultimately walked in the winning run.

The 3-2 pitch.

Bring on the Yankees.

Well, if this close, Andrew Jones would have swung at it, but this is not close.

This is ball for ball game over.

That may have been the roughest moment of my Met fandom.

What is particularly sad about that is the Mets had acquired Kenny Rogers at the deadline that year, and he was awesome for them.

Like, there's no way the Mets make the playoffs without Kenny Rogers down the stretch there.

And then that is unfortunately his Mets' legacy.

That one image that we just saw is unfortunately the legacy.

Right.

The whole thing people should understand if they're not familiar with the psychology of a Met fan is that you guys show up to school the next day.

That's the fact that it is very, yes, we show up to school the next day, take the medicine,

and then look longingly towards next year,

because that's the gift and the curse of the Mets fan.

Yes.

When it comes to like the Mets and money, right?

To like hone in on that for a second.

I just want to speedrun through some of this.

Like the Yankees always had more money.

The Mets, the Willpons, I mean, I will say this, you don't have to, but like infamously, the Wilpons, Bernie Madoff, billion-dollar clawback lawsuit, reduced med payrolls in the years after that, after Madoff gets arrested in 08.

It's a fraught history just when it comes to like, how are we going to pay to keep up?

And at the same time, this is the team that inspired you, all of this, to like get into baseball in the first place.

And you don't start at, you know, a glamorous spot.

I remember that you interned with the Brooklyn Cyclones, right?

Yeah, I interned with the Brooklyn Cyclones.

That was my first job in professional baseball.

What does that entail?

Everything.

So if you're a minor league baseball intern, you are doing everything and anything.

So that

was,

you know, power washing bathrooms after the game,

pulling tarp.

Yeah, you also got exposure to player development at a level that I would never get exposure at again, because as I grew in my career, it was tough for me to get that type of true on-the-ground observation, see what players had to go through at that level.

It's not easy.

And so, I think back to that, not only for sort of the crazy stuff that I did, but also just the education I got on what the minor leagues are really like and how players grow and develop as they go through their baseball journey.

Right.

The kind of sicko that you have to be, though, to be like, I just spent a summer in part power washing these bathrooms, and I

love this.

Yeah, I don't, I, you look

at 1130 at night, power washing a bathroom in Coney Island.

I'm not sure I'm thinking to myself, like, this is the dream.

Um,

but I looked forward to coming back to work the next day.

I, I feel like at one point, I heard about you like getting in the mascot costume.

Oh, yeah.

They have the hot dog race, the Coney Island Nathan's hot dog race.

And I would run as one of the hot dogs.

How were you?

How was your foot speed?

How was it?

Probably not.

So not great.

I mean, if you've ever been in any of these costumes, like they're, they're much heavier than they think and they off they often are hot and smell terrible so i don't think i was a particularly effective hot dog racer and i'm sure i cost some people some money that summer

i mean so many kids right now like your job is the dream job

you know that post moneyball generation of it's kids playing fantasy baseball it's kids doing all of this stuff video games they are learning

Okay, I'm not going to be a player, but this is actually what I want to do.

This is my fantasy.

So in terms of like how you actually climbed the ladder from the hot dog suit, what did you do?

My career was not linear.

It took me

four internships to finally get a full-time job.

When we graduated college together, I had no idea what I was doing.

I remember that like you, it wasn't like, oh, Dave's on the fast track.

No, I did not have a job.

I did not have an internship.

In fact, I've been turned down for multiple internships that I had applied to in baseball that summer.

How do you apply for these jobs, though?

Just like practically speaking, what do you do?

Yeah.

So at that point, you send out letters.

Like literally send out letters to anyone and everyone in baseball.

Now it's all done online.

How many letters are you sending?

I sent hundreds.

I mean, hundreds.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

I mean,

I couldn't tell you exactly how many, but so there's this book called the Baseball America Directory.

It lists everyone who's in baseball.

And then I just wrote letters.

And eventually, a couple of people got back to me.

Do you remember fondly?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I got my, so after the summer in Brooklyn, I then interned for the Pittsburgh Pirates for two summers.

And the reason I got that is because a guy named John Mercurio, who at the time was their director of baseball operations, got back to me.

I had sent him a letter.

He handed it off to someone else who gave me a call.

and ultimately hired me as a, as an intern.

And from there, that's kind of like,

you know, just just someone eventually in Pittsburgh recommended me for a job at the Arizona Fall League.

And then I applied for an internship at the Mets.

And then someone there at the Mets recommended me for a job at the commissioner's office.

And that's how I got my first full-time job.

Right.

Right.

Working on the collective bargaining agreement.

Yeah.

So I, yes, I ultimately advanced to the commissioner's office and was able to work on the CBA in 2011.

Again, for people who don't know, like the CBA is the legal text that governs the sport and contracts and the rules and all of it.

And at what point are you getting a sense like, oh, wait a minute, I'm finding a niche here.

I am the guy who can do blank.

Like, what is the blank?

What was my niche?

My niche was kind of like, I worked hard and because I was kind of always around,

they gave me more work.

Well, there's something about the smart kid who went to a fancy school who's willing to like power wash shit literally and figuratively.

I just remember like watching you from afar climb the ladder in a very, again, unglamorous way.

And then you coming on the other side being like, seemingly my perspective, having not actually talked to you about this before,

is

you have this developed and acute sense of

money flowing inside of this economy.

I think I understand the economics of our game because I've seen it from a variety of different angles.

I've seen it from the

side of the commissioner's office and the macro level.

I've seen it from small markets.

I've seen it from very large markets.

I've seen it through clubs who have gone through very dramatic rebuilds.

I do think I understand the economics of the game from a variety of different perspectives and

can try to view it from different lenses when I need to.

In terms of how that informs roster construction and what I actually am paid to do now, I think it depends on where you are and the resources you have at your disposal and

the type of market you're in.

So at this point, just to get the Moneyball part of it in, because that's sort of like a shorthand, but like Moneyball is published in 03.

Had you read the book by this point?

Oh, yeah.

I read it.

I read it while we were still in high school.

To the extent there was like a light bulb moment for me is when Theo got hired by the Red Sox.

You see someone with a background, a non-professional playing background.

Yale grad.

Yale grad.

He didn't have an advanced degree in statistics.

So that's part of the reason why I'm painting this picture.

It's because you were not like a computer science PhD math guy.

No.

But like Theo Epstein, you found, again, a niche that I'm trying to just sort of crystallize.

Yeah, I think that there are so many elements and so many different sources of information

that we have to account for in these positions.

And so to the extent that I found a niche, and I think it's probably a similar niche that CEOs find or presidents of companies find in other industries as well, is you have to be able to manage information.

There are a lot of inputs.

There are a lot of inputs, and you probably have to, over time, develop a philosophy as to which inputs you're going to invest in, which inputs are the most important when time is of the essence.

So this skill set is developed as you go and become the assistant GM of the Astros.

That's 2012, 2015, by the way, just for the record.

Gone before scandal.

Yeah, I was there for a lot of bad baseball.

We lost a lot of bad bait.

We lost a lot of baseball.

And you considered banging on trash cans when you were there because it would have helped.

No, that was not.

That was not a topic of discussion while I was there.

But your reputation, truly, in the front office there, in all seriousness, is growing to the point where you become the youngest GM hired in baseball at the time, 2015.

And you get to the Brewers.

And these are two small market franchises.

Again, measured by TV revenue, Milwaukee, Houston, not as much TV money as, say, New York.

And at that point, when you're developing what your sources that you trust are.

Can you give me a sense of like what that means?

And whether even more helpfully, maybe, how much variance is there across the league in terms of what people trust?

That is a great question.

And because I don't have access to the other 29 clubs,

I can't explicitly tell you.

What I can tell you is like, you know,

I've worked for a number of general managers in my career.

So even as an intern with the Mets, Omar Minaya, intern with the Pirates, Dave Littlefield, Chris Antonetti with the Guardians, Jeff Luno with the Astros.

This would have been the greatest gift of my career is working for so many different people.

That's a lot.

All of them led in very different ways, valued different sources of information, had very different decision-making structures.

Whenever I went from team to team, I was always pretty amazed by how different it was.

And so that taught me there's no one way to do this.

There's no one, you got to be good at this or you have to look at that.

Look, I do think we are all seeking the most predictive information possible, but that process starts so far before you actually get to the guys with fancy math degrees or the ladies with fancy math degrees who are actually creating the models.

It starts like, what are you investing in?

What are you collecting?

What technologies are you going to take a flyer on that maybe five years from now are going to give your organization a competitive advantage?

And I think all the people I worked for looked at those questions very differently and probably helped inform how I look at it now.

Yeah.

When you look back at Milwaukee, though, and again, you oversee what is arguably, I think, the most successful stretch for that franchise.

It's four straight playoff berths, 2018 to 2021.

For third straight year, the Brewers are playoff bound.

How would you describe what you implemented there that made you think to yourself, I'm onto something.

I'm getting a sense of what I want to do.

So I think.

I may have read the room pretty well.

And so I went in there understanding where the organization was from a talent perspective, understanding that with that talent presently in the organization, the distribution of talent between the major league level and the minor league levels, you weren't going to get to consistent competitiveness at that time.

So you needed some form of reset.

I also understand that the ownership group there, led by Mark Adanasio, are incredibly competitive.

And going through some sort of prolonged reboot like the Astros had done or like the Cubs were doing at that time

was not a recipe for success there.

There was not going to be an appetite for a five to seven year bad baseball draft at the top and slowly build up.

So

I knew we were going to have to take some risks.

I didn't know exactly where those risks were going to occur.

You know, the first thing you do in those situations is you get the payroll down to get the business a little bit more sustainable, which we did.

And then

the risks that we began to take was we built up the farm system pretty quickly, first by trading veterans, which is a fairly conventional tactic.

But then once we did,

we probably pivoted towards adding to the team at a much earlier phase than people had done previously.

So, you know, the best example of that is we traded four top 100 prospects in the game for Christian Yalich coming off of the 2017 season.

That is very unusual to do in a small market.

Milwaukee is a small market.

Right.

You're trading cost control talent.

Yep.

Four of them.

For an established major league who was on a, who was on a club-friendly contract, who had a lot of indicators that we really liked.

But that is something that really had not been done.

We made some other more minor moves where we were trading future value for more present value at a stage in the organization when I think a lot of people were scratching their heads as to why are they doing it.

And I think we made a bet that we could identify, and it was a risk.

It was definitely a a risk.

Were you nervous making the risk?

No, you can't get nervous making decisions in these jobs.

That I've never known you or even seen you freak out in any way.

Yeah.

It's like it's comically, you're comically even killed, dating back to 20 years ago, I would say.

Yeah, I think for better or worse,

I don't get rattled too easily.

Like, I think that's

in this job, an asset.

How important is it to have that numbness

to

uh what would panic other people like the heart rate monitor thing right of like but truly like when i think about because theo epstein i don't think of as emotional in that way either i'm thinking about like what goes into this scouting report of you that actually ends up being meaningful

look i i think making in general in a leadership position making unemotional decisions is helpful there i do think there is a there is an element of emotion and certainly an element of authenticity that is essential for leading an organization and leading groups of people.

But once you get to the decision-making process, like trying to stay as factual, objective, and unemotional, I think over and over again has proven leads to better decisions than the opposite.

But I say this to say that that's not a universal trait among people who do the job of executive in sports across all of these facets.

So that that's that's true.

I'm sort of running through my head head of people who have done this for a long time across sports.

And I would say most of the people who are running through my head probably have an element of consistency to them.

Sure.

Um, the one that made it that far.

Yeah, but not all.

I can think of some executives who, who have had very established careers in professional sports who are a little bit more fiery.

Yeah.

And by the way, for in my business, God bless them.

Yeah, that's that's exactly.

It's great.

It's great to have someone who's like, let me tell you what the f I feel like right now.

Like if I were trying to be,

you know, fiery and bombastic, like that, that would be incredibly fake.

That's, that's not, that's not who I am.

Right.

That is, and again, I guess I'm here to just fact check that correct.

Like, it's just, it's the way you've been as far as I've known you, even when pucks were flying at your head.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

But, but the point being that 2022 comes around, you step down from that role in Milwaukee.

And simultaneous to this timeline, I just want to get the details right here.

November 2020, Steve Cohn, who is, again, for those unacquainted, one of of the hundred richest people in the world.

He's a hedge fund manager, multi-billionaire.

He acquires officially majority ownership of his childhood team and yours.

Yep, and his wife's.

And his wife's

Alex Cohn.

Yeah, yeah.

Big Mets fan growing up.

Right.

Good afternoon.

I went to my first Mets game with my dad at the old polo grounds.

Years later, my friends and I used to sit in the upper deck at Shea Stadium.

That makes today a dream come true.

Not just for me, but for my wife, Alex, and my whole family.

So here you have these people who have felt, in a real sense, how important this team is to them and to New York and

quadrants of it, precincts of it.

They buy from the Will Ponds $2.42 billion, and he is the richest owner in baseball.

And now, taking us to fall 2023 after two seasons, he hires you.

Yeah.

Do you remember the day you signed your contract?

Yeah, I do.

I mean, I remember both the day and exactly where I was when we agreed to terms.

I remember exactly where I was when I clicked the mouse

on the docky side.

And where were you when this was happening?

How vivid is this memory?

I mean, it's very vivid.

So the day I agreed to terms, I was actually in a hotel room in another city

because another club was recruiting me.

And so

you were an in-demand prospect.

Well,

I don't know about that, but it's true.

I was an experienced executive and there were a couple of jobs that were open.

And so I talked to a couple different teams.

And then when I, when I clicked the mouse and DocuSign, my house in Milwaukee had like a converted attic that we had turned into an office.

And so I was just sitting up there.

By yourself.

By myself.

And I was like, all right, here it is.

And so I just, I clicked it.

It's not quite the cinematic climax,

but it feels completely appropriate that you calmly said, oh, it's time to live my childhood dream now.

Click.

We're reminded all of the time that sports is a different sort of a business.

Yeah, no question.

These are institutions that have civic feeling to them, emotional stakes, ancestral pressures.

And New York, I mean, look,

the whole thing about New York, right?

Because I, again, I grew up living it, watching it, mythologizing it, admittedly.

But like, it is different.

Sure.

How would you characterize what actually is different about operating in New York?

So paradoxically, I'm much more anonymous here, which is wonderful.

Yeah, you take the subway.

Yeah.

You know, in Milwaukee, because it's a much smaller town,

you know, there are fewer diversions in Milwaukee.

The brewers are maybe slightly more central to the culture of Milwaukee than any sports team is to the culture of New York, just because we have so many different attractions here in New York.

So

I'm pretty much completely anonymous in my day-to-day life when I'm not at the ballpark, which is wonderful.

But I think to have this opportunity at this point in my career to

really embrace the bigness of that

and everything that comes with it is what I wanted to do and has been a lot of fun for me.

To me, it's always felt like it tests people.

Like the spotlight is actually hotter.

Some people melt.

Other people are cool enough to just sort of enjoy what they can.

And again, a sort of funhouse mirror sort of way.

It's all strange, but you know, I've been listening to talk radio, dipping back into it just to be like,

it is absurd.

It's just like I'm hearing the guy I wrote sports with in college.

Like they're debating you all of the time.

I am a huge, huge Meth fan.

I'm diehard.

Me and my son, my wife, wife, we go across the country to see them, you know.

Um, I have more faith in this, in this, uh, this ownership and sterns than I've ever had in my entire adult life.

Uh, I think that the Meth fans need to calm down because they will get it done.

Um you're a character now.

Um, as much as you're anonymous, you're also very, very by name this person.

Yeah.

And, you know, if you're not able to handle that, hard, hard job to have.

The way I handle that aspect of the job is i just ignore it i mean i i i am not on social media um i do not listen to talk radio i i am grateful that talk radio exists in this town because it it provokes the passion of our fan base um did you listen as a kid to talk to oh yeah absolutely

oh every afternoon i listen to talk you're avoiding your childhood self as well yeah and if at some point i'm not doing this job and still living in this town i will listen to it again you were a hard-hitting columnist yeah exactly Who listened to talk radio, and now you're the guy who's like, I can't.

Yeah, because I don't think that's going to make me better at my job.

What did you grow up listening to, though?

Mike and the Mad Dog.

Mike and the Mad Dog.

Sports Radio 66, WFAN.

You know, Steve Summers.

Yep.

You know, when I was growing up, Gary Cohen, Bob Murphy, Ed Coleman were the three primary Mets radio broadcasters.

We listened to those guys a ton.

So, you know, I would listen to the fan.

Yeah.

As did we all.

Yeah, of course.

Of course.

It was central to the sports culture of New York.

So you've made this choice to be, again, very logically cloistered

away from all of that stuff.

Which brings me to more famously, there was Grimace.

Yep.

When Grimace showed up to throw the first pitch, did you have a sense that something historic was happening?

Fans, please direct your attention to the pitcher's mound.

All right, Grimitz.

It's your pitch.

Even after this whole thing, when people started talking about Grimace, I had no idea what they were talking about.

You didn't know who Grimace was.

I had no idea who Grimace was.

The McDonald's.

You didn't.

Nope.

You were watching the fan, totally oblivious to Grimmets.

Well, was Grimace a thing when we were growing up?

Yes, Grimace was a thing.

I did not know that.

Grimace had to be explained to me.

I liked how you know Steve Summers, but not Grimace.

Yeah, that tells you.

It tells you all you need to know, probably.

And then because I'm not on social media, I didn't understand what was happening with the Grimmace Phenomenon and the Mets.

And so that also had to be explained to me.

And so I'm going to jump in here to also explain what was happening with the Grimms Phenomenon and the Mets to you.

dear listener, just in case.

Because this part of the story starts on the morning of June 12th, 2024.

Back when the New York Mets were bad.

bad.

Under 500, 70 and a half games back in the division, that kind of bad.

But that night, throwing the first pitch for the Mets before their game against the Marlins was a visitor, a certain visitor from McDonald.

Yeah, it was an education for me.

How would you describe what Grimace is now

that he has been explained to you?

I mean, a purple, furry McDonald's mascot that threw out a first pitch of the Mets game.

I just like how the GM who raced in a hot dog mascot costume just had no idea.

No, no, yeah, no, no.

Just a real betrayal of her kind.

No, no, no idea.

And yet, David Stearns' Mets proceeded to win that game that night.

And the next.

And the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, ultimately winning seven games in a row, becoming a real thing online.

Whereas the extremely offline David Stearns had no idea, which is just funny, right?

Like the guy running the team was too busy tinkering with the roster, making baseball decisions under the radar adjustments to realize a phenomenon in his own building.

But the Mets record, when you look back at it, was 28 and 37 before Grimace.

After Grimace, they were 61 and 36, the single best record in baseball.

And you guys had, I mean, I just had to look this up.

You guys had 11 walk-offs, the most in baseball that season.

And my jealousy is sparked because you guys become truly, by the time it's the postseason, you become the best TV show in America.

Did it feel like that to you?

It actually did.

It was nuts.

It was the, you know, I experienced it, obviously, in the ballpark every night.

And

I think for a period there, and this is now the expectation we need to live up to as an organization, but like for a period, we were the best sports experience in America.

Yes.

Like, I think September and October at City Field with what we had going and the energy there.

Oh, I mean, to get into the postseason.

And then continue to move through the postseason, the

energy and atmosphere at Citi Field

was as good or better as anything I've experienced.

Jealousy-inducing.

And Lindor gets under one to center field.

Harris going back.

Back near the wall.

And it's out of here.

Lynn Sanity again.

Francisco Lindor flips the script with a two-run homer and the Mets go in front.

Eight to seven.

Oh, wow.

I mean, Lindor, the Francisco Lindor homer to make the playoffs.

Yep.

Pete Alonzo in the ninth to

beat the Brewers in the wild card round.

And then, yeah, it's the Grand Slam in the division.

Yeah, I mean, that is

anyone who was at that game, game four versus Philly at City Field,

would say that was like the best sports moment they witnessed in person because just the explosion of the stadium.

The 2-1.

Lindor towards right center field.

This one is back.

It is gone.

Grand Slim.

And the door puts the Mets on top.

The biggest swing of the season for New York.

It was the first time the Mets had ever celebrated any sort of clinch at Citi Field.

The Mets had never clinched a playoff appearance, had never clinched a postseason win at City Field.

So that was the first celebration in Citi Fields history.

I think all that coming together made that a really unique night.

The fact that it kept on happening yeah like they did it again like again you it was it was it was serialized only now do i realize that you interned for a team

that was right next to a literal wooden roller coaster yep but it felt like a wooden roller coaster it was like oh this can't possibly stay on the tracks and you guys took it to the nlcs and i'll say while like being a part of it there was almost no question it was going to stay on the tracks

we were legitimately good.

We were the best team in baseball from whatever date you just gave until the end of the regular season.

And we played a lot of good teams in that stretch.

So all of sort of the under-the-surface metrics back that up.

We were the best team in baseball during that stretch.

And we played like it and it felt like it.

Yeah, that's admittedly me projecting as a Yankee fan.

How are they doing this?

So there was one moment, speaking of that celebration at City Field.

Oh, boy.

And I just want to show it on my computer here because it's this incredibly cinematically ecstatic celebration in the locker room in the clubhouse.

And I spy you.

And so everybody's spraying.

They have scuba gear.

And I'm like, ah, there's Dave.

Your hands are in your pockets, just like on the outer ring

as everybody is losing their mind.

And you're like smiling, but like not freaking out in any way.

Yeah, as we've covered before,

I don't freak out a lot.

I will say, like, I enjoy those celebrations.

Were you tempted to get into the scrum with the players, or do you?

Well, they generally get me into the scrum at some point.

But

I'll stand to the side

for a little while.

But in all earnestness, like, what's it like being the cool team in New York?

Is there a just this feels surreal, like off-field experience you've had now that the Mets

are this way?

So I think that the surreal experiences I've had have more involved the Mets and being around the Mets and just the experiences and the relationships I've been able to build.

My first couple of weeks on the job, I'm reaching out to

various Mets alumni, introducing myself and trying to build connections with past great players.

There's sort of no bigger figure than Daryl Strawberry in that.

And so I had breakfast with Daryl Strawberry and forging a relationship with Daryl Strawberry.

And he sends you a text message and he signs it with a strawberry emoji,

which is so incredible.

Or just being able to

forge a little bit of a relationship and get to know David Wright a little bit.

And

these truly great Mets who have contributed a lot to the organization and are genuinely excited for what we're doing right now and take pride in what we're doing and are proud to be associated with that.

And that, that for me is really cool.

Like David Wright and Daryl Strawberry and Keith Hernandez and John Franco and all these guys are proud to be associated

with like what we're doing and what I'm helping create.

that is surreal.

That that group of humans

thinks what we're doing is really cool.

Yeah, you've just described a lucid dream.

Yeah.

Which brings us to like the

biggest,

priciest new member of

the group that you signed.

I mean, when it comes to surreal, like the most surreal headline I saw involving you was when you took Juan Soto from the Yankees.

15 years, $765 million.

Unthinkable, I imagine, when you're operating a small market team.

For people who don't know Juan Soto, people are like, wait a minute, why is he worth that?

Who is this guy?

How do you explain the richest contract in the history of sports?

Players very rarely get to free agency at such a young age.

So Juan's going to play at 26 this year.

Most players get to free agency as they're approaching 30.

And so players are generally open for competitive bidding at a point in which they may have already peaked as a performer.

Here.

We had a situation where we have a player who's had as good a start to his major league career as arguably any hitter in the history of baseball, becomes freely available for competitive bidding as he's entering his peak years and has proven that he performs at an extraordinarily high level on the biggest stages.

This is a player who's played in multiple World Series, won a World Series, performed well in our market, which isn't always a given.

And so you add all these things up, and we knew this was going to break all sorts of records.

And as an organization, as we evaluated this,

it's tough to foresee another

identically

situated free agency emerging in the next, let's say, seven to 10 years.

And so you had one shot at this type of investment.

And we put our best foot forward.

And fortunately, we got it.

It feels like you've become acquainted with spending as it might relate to those next seven to 10 years.

Like this is the time to

make the biggest signing in sports history.

Yeah.

Look, regardless of, of how deep

an organization's pockets are, you can't do multiple of these.

In terms of these generational type of contracts,

you probably have one shot to shoot.

And we felt that this was the right

person to take that shot.

It's like Ted Williams, Juan Soto.

There aren't a lot of comparisons.

And when you start having to go back 80 to 100 years to find the closest comparisons,

I think that kind of tells you all you need to know about what this guy has done to this point in his career.

And meanwhile, your whole thing, and I want to quote my friend Jeff Passon here, just in terms of the compliment he paid you in writing.

Perhaps the best in the business at finding value around the edges to compliment a team of stars.

That is the compliment.

That's how we crystallize what you've learned over your

climbing the ladder.

It's interesting.

It's, I imagine, tense at times to balance.

Like, well, we can spend, but my rational brain is telling me that that is an overpay.

And so, just in terms of how you do that, again, Pete Alonso is the most recent example, but even just generally, like the premise of you're the guy who mastered small market baseball, and now you're the guy who gets to outspend literally the Yankees.

Money is an advantage in this game.

And, and no salary cap?

There's no salary cap.

There are pretty substantial penalties, luxury tax penalties, which we incur at a very high level.

And Steve has since his ownership tenure began.

And so money and resources are an advantage, but they are only an advantage to the point where you actually spend them wisely and don't actually freeze your roster in ways that are unproductive.

So the advantage that small market teams have is that they can't make the big mistake.

You can't go out and sign normally the seven, eight, 10 year high dollar deal because you cannot afford it.

It's not part of your business model.

And so you have this constant roster flexibility and the constant ability to

evaluate your roster in real time.

It's much easier to make changes on rosters that are a little bit more flexible.

And so I think what the best organizations do in bigger markets and what we are striving to do is have the right balance, invest at a very high level in players that we think can perform at a very high level for a long period of time.

And then also leave ourselves the type of roster flexibility to continue to evaluate our team and make changes and updates

when we can.

Part of what I was entering this conversation expecting was like, but there is your heart and your head, right?

There's like, ah, I want to do this.

We have the resources.

And it just feels like the heart you have so under control.

Yeah, so this gets to the question I got, like the fan versus executive side of me.

And I, I, I, that at times, frankly, maybe is a little bit tougher to

control or balance.

Does young David Sterns met fan listening to sports talk radio?

Does he weigh in in your head?

Sure.

And at times, the younger version of me, the 16-year version of me, probably thinks I'm doing a shitty job.

So, so I can't blame a fan when they think I should be doing better.

So look, I'm still a fan of other teams, right?

And so I know what it is to be a fan.

I also know what it is to sit in this seat and have to make really impactful decisions that impact organizations and people's lives for long, long periods of time.

And we need to do that as responsibly and carefully as possible.

And so for those decisions, I'm trying to put the fan version of myself to the side.

What I found out today, I suppose, at the end here is that, yeah, it is true what I learned 20 years ago.

You're also just not going to flinch if something unexpected happens to be heading your way.

No,

that's been the way I've always been.

I've always been pretty even keeled.

I think I have developed an understanding that very few things in life are truly worth getting riled up about.

And, you know, generally the decisions on a baseball team, while very important, very impactful, are not among them.

At least when I'm sitting in this seat.

Now, when I'm watching the Knicks, I was going to say when I'm watching

your other psychosis,

when I'm watching the Knicks, I can get riled up about that.

So that's very different.

That is a different therapy session.

Yes, that's exactly right.

David Stearns, president of Baseball Ops for your New York Mets.

An insane thing that

we got to do catching up.

Absolutely.

Appreciate it.

It was fun.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark Media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.