With the annual GM Meetings underway in San Antonio, the 2024 MLB offseason is officially here, and there’s no doubting that the Mets will be major players.
But while the club certainly has the resources and will be linked to major free agent names like Juan Soto, it’s important to not forget that the Mets are also building a farm system that has some top-end talent that is either about to, or already has, made it to the majors.
David Stearns was asked on Tuesday about a few of those position player prospects, namely Brett Baty, Ronny Mauricio, Luisangel Acuña, and Jett Williams.
“If all of them are healthy and playing well, it’s a great conundrum to have,” Stearns said of having high-level prospects who can all play similar positions. “Look, having multiple young players who have the type of talent that those guys have, who can all play multiple positions, if that’s where we are come spring training, that’s a very enviable position to be in.
He later added: “All three of those players (Baty, Acuña, Mauricio) have played at the big league level and all three of those players, at various points, have succeeded at the big league level. The one thing I’ll say is regardless of what offseason we’re going to have, regardless of where we are from an organizational perspective, we have to allow young players to play. This is going to be true every single year for us. We were able to see that this year with Mark [Vientos] coming up and really establishing himself. And if we allow ourselves to have those opportunities in future years as well, we’re going to get rewarded for it.”
Here are some other tidbits from what Stearns had to say on Tuesday...
On Acuña coming up and performing well at the end of the season
“I think any time you’re able to make an impression at the major league level it’s a good thing, and he obviously performed at a very important time of the season for us," Stearns said. “We also understand it was a couple of weeks, and I think we have a significant amount of performance history on all of those guys to fall back.”
On Baty’s up-and-down season
“I don’t think I’d close the door on anything,” Stearns said on Baty playing other positions besides third moving forward. “We learned a lot about Brett this year. One, we learned that he’s able to take a punch and go down and keep working, and I think we also learned that he’s able to play multiple positions. He picked up second base pretty quickly, to the point where we were considering adding him to a postseason roster with the potential of playing some second base. That’s pretty significant. His ability to do that leads me to believe that, if we ask him to, he’s going to be able to play additional positions.”
On Mauricio’s recovery from a torn ACL
“I do think he’s actually had a really good week, so we’re moving in the right direction there,” Stearns said, “but he has not resumed baseball activities.”
Stearns did say that he didn’t have a good answer why Mauricio’s rehab process has taken a bit longer than originally thought, saying that tests during the year showed more inflammation than the team thought would be present.
That being said, things are now moving in the right direction.
“Just the progression of his rehab, the knee is making progress. He’s getting more aggressive with some of his non-baseball activities, and all of those are positives,” said Stearns.
On Williams’ development
“ I think Jett still has some things to accomplish in the minor leagues, so we’ll let him continue on with his development, and we’ll go from there,” said Stearns.
He added: “I think he can play a quality center field. He’s a great athlete, and I think whatever we ask of Jett he’s going to be able to accomplish.
“I think he has the ability to play all three (positions) up the middle at a high level, and where he ultimately plays is probably going to be dictated by roster need.”