Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns met with reporters for the second straight day at the Winter Meetings in Dallas, and while he still can’t comment on the yet-to-be-made-official Juan Soto signing, he did discuss a few other topics, including the team’s starting rotation.
Here are the key takeaways from what Stearns had to say…
On Kodai Senga’s health
The 2024 season was one to forget for Kodai Senga, as he spent the majority of the year working his way back from a capsul strain in his throwing shoulder only to suffer a calf strain 5.1 innings into his lone regular season. He was able to return in the playoffs, but he clearly wasn't 100 percent ramped up.
According to Stearns, Senga is healthy and on the right path to be available come Opening Day.
He is a healthy player who is progressing through his offseason. He has not begun to throw yet, but that is not necessarily abnormal for Senga as he goes through his offseason,” Stearns said. “We still expect him to be a pitcher for us on Opening Day and be ready to go. And if that changes, if we get information that makes us question that, we’ll certainly pass it along.”
“We have to get not only the medical piece checked off, which I think we will be able to, but we also have to have a pitcher who feels really confident from where he is from a mechanical perspective to go out and compete and win games for us,” Stearns later added.
On pursuit of Roki Sasaki
Stearns confirmed that the Mets have prepared a presentation to pitch to Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki, who has officially been posted and can sign a minor league contract with any club.
While Stearns said he hasn’t met Sasaki in person so he can’t speak to his personality (Sasaki’s agent Joel Wolfe said earlier in the day that the right-hander may prefer a smaller-market team given his negative experience with the media in Japan), he knows that whoever lands him will be getting quite the talent.
“What I can comment on is he’s a really talented pitcher. Whoever gets him is going to have a very talented young pitcher going forward,” Stearns said. “We’re certainly going to give it our best shot. It’s very difficult in these processes to truly understand what a player’s preference is/. This isn’t a normal free agent recruitment process. So, we’re going to submit our presentations and our materials just like everybody else and we’ll wait for his camp’s feedback.”
When asked about Sasaki potentially not wanting to be in a market like New York, Stearns said “We have not gotten that feedback yet.”
“We highlight a variety of different things,” Stearns said of the club’s presentation to Sasaki, “the first is who we are as an organization, what we believe in, what we think maybe makes us a little bit unique compared to other teams he might be considering. We highlight the various services we can provide for a player. We highlight our familiarity with transitioning a Japanese starter to the major league schedule. We highlight our pitching apparatus, our health apparatus, our nutrition apparatus. We want him to know that we have the resources and we have the ability to make this transition as smooth as possible.”
And the question that was on everyone’s mind: Was Grimace involved in this presentation?
“That is a great question. I can’t believe I’m answering that,” Stearns said with a laugh. “I don’t believe that Grimace made an appearance in the Roki Sasaki presentation. If we don’t get the player, we now know why.”
On potentially passing the top CBT threshold
“I don’t think we’re looking at any specific number as a threshold,” said Stearns. “I think, as I’ve said before, any time you pass any of the CBT thresholds, you have to do the analysis to figure out what the cost is. And we’re going to continue to do that. At times it’s probably going to make sense for us to push through, and at times it’s not. And that’s going to be true every single year, but I am confident this year and going forward that we are going to have plenty of resources to put good teams on the field.”