Stearns, Cohen, Freddy Peralta, Tobias Myers,and the Mets Hedge Fund Approach to Building a Winner

There are two truths in life:

The sun rises in the east.

Mets fandom much like today's political climate is a house divided, with the dividing line usually running straight through Thanksgiving dinner.

I know this because I run KinersKorner.com, a digital family room where Mets fans gather daily to agree on one thing that everyone else is wrong.

Which brings us to David Stearns.

Let me preface this by saying I have been a believer in David Stearns’ long-term vision for this franchise. That doesn’t mean blind faith. It means I understand what he’s trying to do, even when it makes my stomach feel like it did during the bottom of the tenth in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

This early offseason had been unsettling. Not in a “the Wilpons are selling the team for spare parts” way, but in a “why does it feel like the furniture is being quietly removed from the living room” way.

The early departures hit hard.

Pete Alonso the Polar Bear, the Home Run Derby king, the walking Citi Field fireworks display gone to the Birds via free agency.

Edwin Díaz trumpets, knee buckles, and ninth-inning chaos ,also gone to the new evil empire. Note to Mets in game production crew, maybe if Edwin comes into a game at Citi next year replace his walk up music to Darth Vader's theme song "The Imperial March"

Then came the trades. Brandon Nimmo, the guy who ran into outfield walls like they owed him money. Jeff McNeil, the human batting title and emotional thermostat. Traded.

These weren’t just roster moves. These were emotional support Mets.

Social media reacted exactly as expected: panic, anger, denial, bargaining, and at least one fan suggesting we bring back Rey Ordóñez “just for vibes.”

And yet, quietly, methodically, Stearns went to work.

Early signings came in Devin Williams, Luke Weaver, Jorge Polanco , moves we detailed here on the Korner, the kind that don’t trend on X but absolutely matter in October. The trade for Marcus Semien, which felt like someone finally trading in their 1970's pinto for a reliable car that won't burst into flames on the Cross Island Parkway.

Solid. Sensible. Not sexy.

And then the last 48 hours happened.

This is where it became clear: David Stearns isn’t playing checkers. He’s playing 3D chess while the rest of us are arguing over whose turn it is.

The signing of Bo Bichette.

The trade for Luis Robert Jr.

The deal bringing Freddy Peralta into the rotation.

These moves weren’t reactions. They were reveals.

This was the moment in Columbo when he is about to walk out the door but calmly walks back in and explains that all the clues were there the whole time, and you realize you should have paid more attention to the second scene.

Stearns didn’t panic after losing stars. He reallocated value.

He moved on early from sentimentality, understanding something Mets fans struggle with that yesterday’s heroes don’t always fit tomorrow’s blueprint. (Raise your hand if you really think that if the Mets resigned Jose Iglesias the Mets would have made the playoffs last year. If your hand is raised all I can say is OMG !) What he’s building isn’t a nostalgia act or a back-page headline generator. It’s a roster designed to be more athletic, more flexible, and more sustainable.

And this is where I want to lean in hard on the 3D chess idea — with the full admission that I might be overreaching. But the moves of the last week don’t exist in isolation. They create ripple effects. And once you start tracing those ripples, things get very interesting, very fast.

Which brings me back to 10th-grade Physical Science with Mr. Filigenzi, who taught us about the ripple effect a situation in which one event produces effects that spread outward and create further effects. At the time, I assumed this knowledge would only be useful if I ever dropped a rock into a pond. Turns out, it also applies perfectly to Major League Baseball front offices and whatever it is David Stearns has been quietly cooking up the last few days.

In this case, let’s call it the Mother Tucker Effect.

David Stearns clearly had multiple pathways mapped out for roster construction. One of those pathways included Kyle Tucker, who signed with The Team Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken. That door slammed shut. So Stearns didn’t panic he simply chose a different path.

One that ran straight through Bo Bichette, who liked what he saw in the Big Apple a whole lot more than what he saw in the City of Brotherly Love. That choice opened up the HOV lane, and with Bo riding shotgun, Stearns merged smoothly and hit the gas.

Next stop: Chicago.

The trade with the White Sox brought in Luis Robert Jr., a player who, when healthy and motivated, is an absolute game-changer. We’ve already written about him in detail here on the Korner, but the short version is this: there aren’t many players in baseball who can change a game with one swing, one catch, or one sprint around the bases. Robert can do all three when "HEALTHY".

And then came the 3D checkmate.

Stearns went back to a familiar trade partner — the Milwaukee Brewers — and acquired Freddy Peralta. This wasn’t random. This was comfort food.

Peralta was one of David Stearns’ early success stories as Brewers GM, acquired on December 9, 2015, when Stearns traded Adam Lind to Seattle for a skinny minor leaguer named Freddy Peralta, along with a couple of lottery tickets. How did that work out?

Oh yeah. Pretty well.

And if you want a deeper example of Stearns seeing what others missed, look no further than Tobias Myers. Four organizations passed on him in a five-year span. Drafted by Baltimore. Traded to Tampa Bay. Dealt again to Cleveland. Bought, waived, claimed, released. Baseball’s version of a rental car.

Then Stearns signed him in Milwaukee in November of 2022 and said, “No, I think this guy can pitch.”

The numbers say he was right.

This is the pattern. Stearns doesn’t just acquire talent he identifies value where others see clutter. He trusts his evaluations even when the rest of the room is rolling its eyes.

Let’s start with the simplest possible translation:

Freddy Peralta is really, really good at making hitters miss the baseball.

Over eight major league seasons, Peralta owns a 3.59 ERA, a 117 ERA+, and nearly 1,200 strikeouts in just over 900 innings. That’s not just good — that’s David Stearns good. That’s the kind of pitcher Stearns has been collecting since his Milwaukee days like a man who knows exactly what he’s looking for and refuses to shop without a list.

Peralta’s career 162-game average looks like this:

13 wins, 170 innings, 210 strikeouts, a 3.59 ERA, and a WHIP hovering around 1.13.

In Mets terms, that’s not an ace carved into Mount Rushmore — but it is a rock-solid, top-of-the-rotation stabilizer, the kind of pitcher who prevents those five-game losing streaks that feel like existential crises.

And 2025? That wasn’t just good — that was a statement.

Seventeen wins. A 2.70 ERA. A 154 ERA+. Cy Young votes. All while taking the ball 33 times and throwing nearly 177 innings. Availability matters. Durability matters. And Peralta has quietly become the guy who answers the bell.

Now let’s talk about how he does it.

Peralta attacks hitters with a four-pitch mix built around a high-velocity four-seamer that sits just under 95 mph, paired with one of the better changeups in the league. His whiff rate is elite. His strikeout rate sits north of 28 percent. His expected batting average allowed in 2025 was .206 — meaning hitters were essentially flailing at suggestions of pitches.

Statcast loves him. Baseball Savant paints him bright red across the board in whiff percentage, hard-hit suppression, and overall pitching value. Hitters chase. They miss. They walk back to the dugout shaking their heads like they just tried to swat a fly with a pool noodle.

But — and this is important — Peralta is not perfect.

He gives up home runs. Always has. His fly-ball tendencies mean that when hitters do square him up, the ball occasionally leaves the yard with authority. His walk rate isn’t pristine either. This is not a pitch-to-contact innings sponge who lives at the knees and lets his defense do the work.

There’s also this, which shouldn’t be ignored: Citi Field is a far more forgiving environment than American Family Field. Milwaukee’s park has long been friendlier to right-handed power, while Citi Field tends to turn a handful of those warning-track souvenirs into loud outs and annoyed jogs back to the dugout.

For a pitcher like Peralta — a high-whiff, fly-ball-leaning right-hander — that matters. Not every home run problem is a pitcher problem. Sometimes it’s a zip code issue. A change of address alone should help bring that home run number down a notch, or at the very least reduce the damage when hitters do manage to elevate.

Freddy Peralta lives in the strike zone like a man who believes deeply in himself.

That’s both the strength and the risk.

The encouraging part? His hard-hit percentage allowed in 2025 was actually excellent, and opponents didn’t barrel him up nearly as much as you’d expect from a fly-ball pitcher. He limits damage better than the home run totals suggest, which is exactly the kind of nuance Stearns has built entire careers on exploiting.

This is where the Stearns connection matters.

David Stearns knows Freddy Peralta. Not theoretically. Not from spreadsheets alone. He knows him because he helped create him — acquiring Peralta in 2015, developing him, sticking with him through early volatility, and watching him grow into a frontline starter.

That history matters. It tells you this wasn’t a panic trade or a “we need innings” move. This was Stearns going back to a familiar chess piece and placing it exactly where it fits.

Peralta isn’t here to be Tom Seaver. He’s here to be reliable, dominant in stretches, frustrating to opponents, and very hard to plan against. He gives the Mets strikeouts. He gives them innings. He gives them a chance to win every fifth day — which, in Mets history, has often been considered a luxury item.

The Freddy Peralta headline is deserved, but the second pitcher in this deal — Tobias Myers — is where David Stearns’ DNA really starts to show.

Myers doesn’t come with fanfare. He doesn’t light up radar guns or trend on Mets Twitter. What he does is something far rarer in Queens: he throws strikes, takes the ball when asked, and gives you honest innings.

As a rookie, Myers was used primarily as a starter, taking the ball 25 times and logging 138 innings with a 3.00 ERA. That alone would make him useful. But last season, Milwaukee changed the script. Myers transitioned into a hybrid role, starting just six of his 22 appearances, spending the rest of the year working out of the bullpen as a long man, swing arm, and emergency starter.

And here’s the key: he didn’t just survive the role change — he adapted.

This is where the David Stearns philosophy really comes into focus. He’s never been especially interested in traditional job titles. Starter. Reliever. Setup man. Closer. Those are labels, not laws.

If that mindset sounds familiar, it’s because it echoes the old 1960s Cubs and their famously unconventional College of Coaches where the four coaches rotated as managers a well-intentioned experiment that tried to rethink how baseball roles were defined. That version didn’t work, but the instinct behind it mattered: challenge the assumption that there’s only one way to build a team.

Stearns does that today in a far more practical way. We’ve already seen it with what I like to call the Mets’ College of Shortstops — an infield built entirely of natural shortstops.

That same thinking applies to pitching roles, which is why a player like Tobias Myers fits so cleanly into Stearns’ universe. Myers isn’t boxed into “starter” or “reliever.” He’s a pitcher who can thrive in both worlds — a spot starter, a long man, a bridge when things go sideways. He succeeds precisely because he doesn’t need a rigid definition to be effective. It’s the role José Buttó performed so effectively before being shipped off to San Francisco — only Myers brings more starting experience and a slightly deeper arsenal.

Stearns colors outside the lines. Myers gives him the crayons.

Statistically, Myers fits the Stearns mold as well. He limits barrels. He suppresses home runs. He walks fewer hitters than league average. He doesn’t overpower you, but he out-thinks you, mixing speeds and eye levels with a six-pitch arsenal that keeps hitters from sitting comfortably on anything.

Is he an ace? No. Is he flashy? Also no.

Is he exactly the kind of arm a serious front office values in April, July, and especially September? Absolutely.

Four teams passed on Tobias Myers in five years. David Stearns didn’t. The numbers say he was right then, and the role flexibility says he’s right again now.

This trade wasn’t just about acquiring a frontline starter in Freddy Peralta. It was about layers, adaptability, and insurance — three things Mets fans have spent decades wishing for and rarely receiving.

This is the part where Mets fans reach for the antacids, because David Stearns didn’t pay for Freddy Peralta and Tobias Myers with spare parts. He paid with assets.

Real ones.

Brandon Sproat was one of the arms I was excited to see.(then again I am still waiting for Generation K to dominate) He was a legitimate pitching prospect with size, velocity, and a six-pitch mix that made pitching coaches start using words like “intriguing” and “projectable,” which in baseball is the equivalent of “this could make me look very smart someday.”

A second-round pick out of Florida, Sproat moved quickly through the system. In the minors, he posted a 3.83 ERA with nearly a strikeout per inning. At Double-A Binghamton in 2024, he was flat-out dominant — a 2.45 ERA, a WHIP under 0.90, and more than 11 strikeouts per nine. That’s not hype. That’s performance.

But Sproat also came with risk. The command could wander. The margin for error was thin. In his brief major league look, the stuff played, but the consistency didn’t always follow. He’s a pitcher who still needs refinement, innings, and patience.

And patience is expensive when you’re trying to win now.

Then there’s Jett Williams, the kind of prospect Mets fans adore. Although I did not see a lot of him, to be honest I didn't think his game would translate to the majors. Undersized. Athletic. Switch-hitter. Fast. Smart. The spark plug. But to be he was the Temu version of Jose Altuve. Trading him hurts because players like that always feel like they’re going to beat the odds.

And maybe he will, I just didn't think the hype matched what I saw.

But here’s where the Steve Cohen part of this story matters.

Cohen didn’t build a fortune by clinging emotionally to future value. He did it by trading futures turning what might be valuable tomorrow into something useful today. That’s exactly what David Stearns just did.

Prospects are baseball futures. They represent potential, upside, and uncertainty. Stearns looked at Sproat and Williams and decided to cash them in not recklessly, but strategically for a frontline starter in his prime and a versatile major league arm who can help immediately.

It’s not that Stearns doesn’t believe in prospects. It’s that he understands timing.

The Mets’ system already has redundancy, particularly in the infield, which gave him flexibility. When you create surplus, you create leverage. And leverage lets you trade from strength rather than desperation.

That doesn’t mean Sproat won’t become a solid major leaguer or that Williams won’t turn into a fan favorite elsewhere. It means Stearns decided their future value was better spent in the present.

In hedge-fund terms, he sold futures to lock in production.

Whether this pays off or blows up spectacularly is something we won’t know for a while. But make no mistake — this wasn’t gambling. This was a calculated hedge, executed by a front office that knows exactly who signs the checks and how those checks were earned.

In Queens, hope is nice.

But performance pays the bills.