David Stearns makes big statement by opting for small contracts before trade deadline

David Stearns’ 304th day as Mets president of baseball operations also marked the first day of the club’s trade deadline — and the day he found a way to summarize the essence of the Mets in one easy-to-digest passage.

“I think the plan at the beginning of the season was to compete and make the playoffs,” Stearns said less than an hour after Tuesday’s trade deadline. “That was the plan and it remains the plan. And I think where we are now — it doesn’t matter how we got here. We’ve gotten to a place where we’re a playoff-caliber team.”

The Mets — also known as the anti-Occam’s Razor team — did indeed take a very roundabout, typically Mets route to the best-case trade deadline scenario most people were predicting on Opening Day.

They started off with a 22-33 record, which pretty much packed bags for impending free agents like Pete Alonso, Sean Manaea and Luis Severino. But they have the best record in MLB (35-18) since then, which was enough to propel the Mets into the thick of the NL’s mediocre wild-card race (they’re a half-game behind the third-place wild card, but only one game behind the top wild card, the Braves, and 2 1/2 games ahead of the ninth-place Pirates) and convince Stearns to keep adding to the margins.

That approach seemed unconvincing last winter, when Stearns added 31 players who combined to generate 3.4 WAR, according to Baseball-Reference, last season. But it seemed appropriate this month, when Stearns acquired starting pitcher Paul Blackburn, relievers Matt Gage, Phil Maton, Alex Young, Ryne Stanek, Huascar Brazoban, Tyler Zuber and outfielder Jesse Winker, parting with only cash and four minor league players. The eight new Mets combined to generate 3.2 WAR for their former clubs (and just 1.1 for players other than Winker).

The Mets’ trade deadline moves were similar in scope to those made by Billy Eppler in 2022. However, the Mets had 103 wins and a three-game lead over the Braves in the NL East when the deadline arrived, making the acquisitions of Philip Diehl, Tyler Naquin, Michael Perez, Darin Ruf and Daniel Vogelbach seem unimpressive.

And, well, they were disappointing. The quintet generated negative 0.2 WAR the rest of the season. None of the five players are on a major league roster today, and Eppler spent the trade deadline as a panelist on SNY’s “Baseball Night In New York.”

These moves could end up having similar impact, or lack thereof. But without making a big splash, Stearns acknowledged who the Mets are and offered another reminder that this really is a new era in the front office.

The Mets are unlikely to return to their pre-June form, but they are starting to prove that the two-month streak was unsustainable. Tonight’s loss to the Twins marks the eighth time the Mets have scored three points or fewer in eight of their 14 games since the All-Star break, a span in which a starting pitcher has recorded an out after the sixth inning only once.

There isn’t much the Mets can do to radically turn around a team that has 85 or 86 wins under its belt — which, of course, might be enough to get into the watered-down playoffs.

“I think teams that have a clear advantage in their division can focus more specifically on what the October version of their team looks like,” Stearns said.

The 2022 Phillies and 2023 Diamondbacks are emblematic of average teams warming up at the right time. But those teams had the type of starting pitching that could carry a team through a few short series. The Mets, who likely lost Christian Scott and Kodai Senga for the season last week, could trade prospects for a potentially transformative ace like Jack Flaherty, Tarik Skubal or Blake Snell.

Previous regimes could do it. Yesterday marked 20 years since the Mets acquired Victor Zambrano and Kris Benson in separate trades despite being 7 1/2 games out of the only wild-card spot.

The Zambrano deal cost the Mets top prospect, Scott Kazmir, who is the last Mets prospect to win 100 major league games. Imagine how important he would have been to a 2006-08 team that flirted with a championship but ended up with nothing but heartbreak.

If the Mets are serious about building a long-term contender from within — and there’s no guarantee that such a process will go smoothly or come close to completion — then adding solid talent and hoping that one of the new acquisitions has the month-long potential of Reed Garrett is the only way to possibly win now and in the future.

The irony, of course, is that the Wilpons were masters at trying to juggle short-term and long-term goals, hoping to play meaningful games in September. It never worked out that way. But these are new times and a new era for the Mets, who now find themselves in a position as familiar as it is unique.