NEW YORK — The bunting still hung from the Jackie Robinson Rotunda of Citi Field on Wednesday, the “POSTSEASON” paint along each baseline fading under the sunlight of a mild late October day. The reality, that there will be no World Series games here next week, “still stings,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said. Advertisement Instead, Stearns spent Wednesday summarizing a season in which the Mets accomplished more than most anyone expected — and as a result, an offseason of raised expectations.
Despite more than a dozen major-league free agents on the roster, the Mets are as well-positioned entering the winter as they’ve been in a long time. Stearns talked about that short- and long-term outlook, tackling: Mets expect to be ‘aggressive’ in free agency After a relatively austere offseason last year, the Mets once again plan to be big players in free agency. New York has around $180 million coming off its team payroll, and Stearns said that he expects to spend “a good portion of that.
” “We’ve got financial flexibility,” he said. “It means pretty much the entirety of the player universe is potentially accessible to us. That’s an enormous opportunity.
I envision us taking advantage of that opportunity and being aggressive in certain spaces.” In Stearns’ first offseason running the team, the Mets went big-game hunting just once, for starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto , who ultimately preferred a similar offer from the Dodgers ..