Mets Morning News: The Stearns front office takes shape

Meet the Mets

David Stearns made two major hires for his front office yesterday, bringing on former Cubs bench coach Andy Green for a senior role in player development and longtime Astros scouting director Kris Gross to oversee their amateur scouting department.

These moves will hopefully help the Mets to improve the collaboration process between scouting and player development, drawing upon Gross’ strong reputation during his time with the Astros.

David Stearns has been a busy man. In addition to filling out his front office, he has now cleared 16 players from the Mets’ big league roster in the past six weeks.

Willie Randolph should be Carlos Mendoza’s bench coach, writes David Lennon of Newsday.

Around the National League East

The Mets aren’t the only ones purging lots of players from their 40-man roster. The Braves have done the same, trading seven players and non-tendering seven others. This means more moves are likely coming for Atlanta, reports Ken Rosenthal in The Athletic.

The Good Phight continued their season review series with Josh Harrison, who did not turn out to be a good signing for the Phillies.

The Nationals held auditions for the 2024 Racing Presidents on Saturday morning at the Washington Nationals Philanthropies Youth Baseball Academy. Candidates had to complete two timed 40-yard dashes, two longer footraces, and demonstrate their best dance moves and victory poses.

Around Major League Baseball

The Yankees are “extremely interested” in Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who is expected to be posted tomorrow, reports Jon Heyman in The New York Post. Heyman also reports that compared to Yamamoto, the Yankees “aren’t as optimistic Ohtani will seriously consider New York.”

The Mets are among seven teams MLB.com predicts could bounce back to win it all in 2024.

In the aftermath of the Brewers non-tendering Brandon Woodruff, his likely destination is a high-revenue team willing to entertain greater risk, writes Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.

Michael Baumann of FanGraphs took a look at the impact shortening the pitch clock by two seconds with runners on base will likely have.

Patrick Dubuque of Baseball Prospectus continued his series applying modern analytics to transactions from 30 years ago. Among those transactions in November of 1993? The trade that sent Pedro Martinez to the Expos in exchange for Delino DeShields, which does not look very good in hindsight.

Baseball Prospectus published their list of White Sox top prospects.

Yesterday at Amazin’ Avenue

Steve Sypa reviewed all the minor league players at the catching position who were released over the course of the 2023 season.

This Date in Mets History

On November 19, 1979, the Mets’ board of directors announced its intention to sell the team. It marked the first time the team was up for sale in franchise history and eventually the bid from Nelson Doubleday Jr. and Fred Wilpon was accepted.