How Has The Mets’ Front Office Grown Under David Stearns?

Tim Britton of the Athletic recently released an article analyzing the New York Mets’ front office and the organizations struggles. In his article he noted how three years in this still is not fully David Stearn’s front office. A large number of senior staff predate him.

In the article, Britton wrote, “First, owing to the executive churn that preceded Stearns, the Mets’ front office is a mishmash of hires from several different regimes. Until last week, the Mets had three assistant general managers — Eduardo Brizuela, Ben Zauzmer, and Jonathan Strangio — and each had been hired by a different lead executive. That kind of patchwork hierarchy has long filtered down throughout the organization.”

There are many reasons to keep hires from past front office administrations. The first is that they may have been great hires. Britton mentions how Stearns was right to keep Eric Jagers. For others there may not have been better alternatives available and willing to come to the Mets. Britton also mentioned the front office churn that plagues the Mets; it is possible some of this was a directive by the owner Steve Cohen himself. Some of the people retained he may have even had hand in hiring himself.

Whatever the reasons, it is interesting to see what departments have been overhauled the most by David Stearns, and which have the most holdovers. For this exercise we took a look at 80 individuals from the Mets’ front office directory, limiting to the assistant director level and up, logged when they were hired, and who promoted them into their current position.

Areas David Stearns Has Overhauled the Most

Player Development

Player Development has seen the most change under president of baseball operations David Stearns. Before making him the major-league manager, Stearns hired Andy Green before the 2024 season to run player development in a vice president role. It would make sense that roughly half of the senior staff positions are held by individuals hired during the Stearns’ era. In practice we have seen developmental breakouts from players including Nolan McLean, A.J. Ewing, Carson Benge, Jonah Tong and Zac Thornton. Even players that largely developed under past front offices like Francisco Alvarez and Brett Baty have shown improvements over the last three years, especially after spending time in the minor leagues.

Amateur and International Scouting

The amateur scouting side is interesting. Kris Gross has overseen scouting as a whole since David Stearns hired him in 2023. Gross was recently promoted to the role of assistant general manger. The director of amateur scouting, Drew Toussaint, has been with the Mets since Sandy Alderson hired him in 2012. He has since been promoted multiple times, most recently to this position by Billy Eppler. About a third of the scouts have been brought in during Stearns tenure, but the bulk of scouts come from former general managers Sandy Alderson and Brodie Van Wagenen. The areas covered by the scouts Stearns brought in do cover some of the biggest areas players are drafted from including the Tri-State Area and Florida. Amateur scouting involves evaluating players in high school and college, largely focusing on players for the amateur draft.

International scouting has also grown under David Stearns since the hiring of James Kang as the Director and Laiky Uribe as the Assistant Director. This team already got to make a splash with Wandy Asigen, though their work likely will not be felt for a couple more years with how international signings work.

Strategy and Analytics

The strategy and analytics departments are roughly an even split between Stearns and Eppler with a good chunk of the department coming from Sandy Alderson’s two terms. That said, the higher level staff of this department were Stearns hires. Overall, the majority of the leads of this department were hired in the Steve Cohen era. That said, there are still some hold overs from before Cohen. For example, Jack Bredeson began as an associate for research and development in 2020 when Brodie Van Wagenen was the general manager and has been promoted five times since, most recently in 2025 into a director role.

On the consultant side, Stearns brought in Derek Falvey, former president of baseball operations of the Twins, as a senior advisor and J.D. Martinez as a special assistant. Billy Eppler had previously brought Carlos Beltran back into the organization but David Stearns promoted him into a special assistant role.

Business Operations

The business operations side is another area that Stearns had a big hand in changing, hiring Lewis Sherr as the president of business operations. The goal of this department is to increase revenue and partnership growth across the organization. Even with Steve Cohen’s wallet, this is an important part of the organizational strategy for long term success.

Areas That Have More Continuity

Pro Scouting and Player Personnel

While amateur scouting has seen a large influx of new talent into the department, the individuals with pro scout titles skew heavily to the first Sandy Alderson era. A caveat here is that many organizations now have individuals doing the jobs pro scouts do but under different job titles. Player personnel tends to have a lot of responsibility cross over with traditional pro scouting roles as well as internal development. The player personnel department meanwhile skews more towards Billy Eppler hires, with Nate Horowitz, who Eppler hired in 2022, serving as the senior director.

Pro scouting and the departments that work alongside it are responsible for evaluating players to acquire via free agency or trade. This is an area the Mets have had mixed success in over the last two seasons. Like every successful team the Mets utilize various models to assist in their decision-making process.

Tim Britton touched on this writing, “One executive familiar with Stearns said he relies on a model about as much as any other modern head of baseball operations.” But models are only as good as the information and data that is fed into it and this is something Britton mentioned writing, “[One] executive pointed to a few of Stearns’ deals that proved to be head-scratchers, such as the contracts for Frankie Montas and Sean Manaea ahead of the 2025 season. “He was clearly reading from a bad book,” the executive said. “And he at least deserves some criticism for not realizing he had a bad book.””

Steve Cohen over the past few months has reiterated his belief that the Mets have strong processes and are looking at areas they need to improve. This side of their front office has seen less high level changes since at least Billy Eppler left the organization and as Cohen discusses the front office requiring new voices, this could be an important area to do so.

Assistant General Managers

The assistant general manager tier, Stearns right-hand men, are very much a mix. Eduardo Brizuela and Kris Gross were both brought in by David Stearns. Ben Zauzmer was brought in by Sandy Alderson in 2021 and later promoted by Billy Eppler. Billy Eppler also brought in Jonathan Strangio.

Performance Technology

The performance technology portion of the front office was overhauled by Eppler in 2023 when he brought in Ben Hansen and Mitchell Wheatley in 2023. This department works to utilize analytics and research initiatives in order to turn complex data into practical tools for the coaches and players to utilize. Mitchell Wheatley in particular has a background in biomechanical engineering, something he shares with the Mets director of hitting Jeff Albert and their pitching coach Justin Willard. While Stearns has not overhauled this department in the front office since taking over, heading into the 2026 season he helped bring in a major coaching staff whose backgrounds more closely aligned with this department.

What Can We Take Away From This?

The Mets’ front office is very much a mixture of different voices, dissenting opinions, radically different backgrounds, and has been built from various eras of the last few decades of Mets front offices. Some areas have been overhauled by Stearns, some lay largely untouched, while others have a strong mix of backgrounds. There are individuals with on-the-field experience, former players, analytical-driven individuals, and more all working together.

As the Mets look to bring new voices into the front office it will be interesting to see what areas of the front office they look to target. Are they trying to bring in more cohesion in departments that have not been modernized to the level of others? Do they want to make a smaller number of higher-profile hires like adding a general manager? Or do they choose to swap out individuals at the director level? How will the shortened offseason due to the lockout impact this? And where will they target hires from? In recent years the Mets have looked to hire from organizations like the Dodgers and Rays. Is that something we see continue?

Whatever the path they go down, a solution could be for the Mets look internally on their amateur scouting and player development success and see how that could better inform changes on the pro scouting and player personnel side. Look at what has seemed to be a strength and how it can guide an area that has arguably been a weakness.

An organization that wants to be successful should not have dissenting voices solely to say you have a dissenting voice; that other viewpoint has to have value itself. To his credit, Tim Britton wrote that multiple sources who have worked under Stearns have described him as, “open to and encouraging of all viewpoints.” But it is hard from the outside to look at this front office that seems to be a patchwork of very different philosophical eras and see how there could be true cohesion. The Mets are entering year four with Stearns in charge, and Cohen has continued to reiterate his dedication to his president of baseball operations. It is time to let Stearns build the rest of this front office in his image.