ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.
Adrián Beltré is all but certain to be a Hall of Famer on Tuesday night, after the Baseball Writers’ Association of America reveals its ballots. His credentials — 3,166 hits, 477 home runs, a .286/.339/.480 career slash line and the third-highest WAR ever among third basemen — make it a no-brainer. Over a career that spanned three decades with four different teams, Beltré was a four-time Silver Slugger and a five-time Gold Glover, as formidable on offense as he was dynamic on defense.
But it isn’t the accomplishments that define him. It’s how he reached them, how much fun he seemed to have along the way and how he made us feel when we watched him. It’s how he homered off a knee and made plays from the ground and glared at those who dared to rub his head. His skills were remarkable, but his vibe was unmatched.
What follows is a look through Beltré’s splendid, soon-to-be Hall of Fame career through the eyes of four of his closest observers.
Albert Pujols: On Beltré’s impact as a Dominican star
Albert Pujols crossed home plate, bypassed the St. Louis Cardinals teammates who waited to embrace him and darted straight to the Dodger Stadium backstop. Pujols had just become the first Dominican-born member of the 700-home-run club, an exceedingly short list without qualifiers, and all he wanted to do was share the moment with Adrián Beltré, the first Dominican-born player to reach 3,000 hits.
He found him in his first-row seat and high-fived him through the netting.
“I wanted to celebrate that with my countryman, Adrián Beltré — somebody I respect, somebody special to me,” Pujols said, thinking back to that night on Sept. 23, 2022. “There was nothing really planned or anything; it was just something that came out of me. That, for me — and this is how I look at it now — was like sharing with 10 million people that were watching in the Dominican Republic. That little moment with him, it reminded me of how much it meant to our country.”
Pujols had spent most of his career admiring Beltré from afar. He felt a kinship through Beltré’s willingness to play hurt and admired his ability to maintain a competitive edge while also not taking himself too seriously, a dichotomy that to Pujols felt impossible. To this day, Pujols marvels at the game-tying home run Beltré hit off Chris Carpenter in Game 5 of the 2011 World Series, buckling to a knee while turning on a breaking ball and sending it over the left-field fence. As the years went on, Pujols often wondered aloud about what it might be like to share an infield with Beltré.
But they weren’t necessarily friends. Not close ones, at least. They competed in the same league — sometimes, like in 2004, for the same MVP trophy — then later in the same division. Their ambition created a wedge that only softened when their respective careers began to wind down. Retirement brought them closer.
“The best thing that I love about Adrián is the relationship that him and I now have,” Pujols said. “I was just with him playing golf a couple of weeks ago in the Dominican Republic. I was with him in Dubai. I feel like we have built the relationship over the last two or three years, towards the end of his career, towards the end of my career, and that’s something that I love about us.”
Pujols is one of only two players, along with Hank Aaron, to reach 700 homers, 2,000 RBIs and 3,000 hits. But Beltré occupies an exclusive club of his own, among just four players to reach 400 homers and 3,000 hits while also accumulating at least five Gold Gloves, a testament to his all-around greatness.
The two stand as mythical figures on the baseball-loving island that produced them, both because of the stardom they attained and how often they gave back. Lately, Pujols and Beltre have collaborated on charitable work in the Dominican Republic, the latest of which was Beltré’s charity golf tournament to develop a baseball facility in the Dominican town of Verón.
“He does it from his heart; he doesn’t do it just to put his name in the paper,” Pujols said. “That, to me, is what makes Adrián Beltré really special.”
Both Beltré and Pujols are certain Hall of Famers, but their trajectories were drastically different.
Pujols, who won’t be eligible until 2028, surged from the onset, immediately putting together arguably the best 10-year stretch in baseball history, then faded rather aggressively in his 30s. Beltré took a while to get going, not making his first All-Star team until his age-31 season, but he was at his best throughout the second half of his career. In some ways, he aged backward.
“It should be more impressive because of the way that he has done it — late in his career, it clicked for him, and he took advantage,” Pujols said. “He recognized it, and he turned things around.”
Manny Mota: On Beltré’s ‘desire to be great’
It began with two folding chairs near a batting cage tucked within the bowels of Dodger Stadium, and similar settings in other major league ballparks across the country. This is where Manny Mota and Adrián Beltré spent most of their early afternoons in the late 1990s and early 2000s, talking about the work ahead of them before most of the other Los Angeles Dodgers had arrived.
“We talked like two friends,” said Mota, the Dodgers’ pinch-hitting legend who later spent four decades assisting their coaching staff. “Not like instructor and player, but like two friends sharing in what we were going to try to do — with the same idea, with the same purpose.”
Mota learned about Beltré shortly after the Dodgers signed him as a 15-year-old out of the Dominican Republic in 1994 (when he had famously, and illegally, falsified his birth date). He watched Beltré star at the organization’s Dominican academy in summer 1995 and was blown away by his strength and quickness. When Beltré and other prominent Dodgers minor leaguers were invited to train with the major league players in spring training the following year, late manager Tommy Lasorda put Mota in charge of him. And when Beltré reached the majors as a 19-year-old in 1998, he became Mota’s most important project.
They became almost inseparable, their relationship resembling that of a father and son, and it was those afternoon conversations, Mota said, that set the tone.
They typically centered on positivity.
“That was my responsibility as a coach — to not let him fall,” Mota, now 85, said in Spanish. “It was to lift him up. Because we’re here to instill confidence, not to destroy it.”
Beltré breezed through the lower levels of the Dodgers’ minor league system at 17 and 18 years old and became easily the sport’s youngest player when he was called up near the end of June in 1998. He had skipped Triple-A entirely, accumulating fewer than 300 plate appearances above the Class A level, and his inexperience was notable. Beltré batted .215 as a rookie, then was basically a league-average hitter in the four full seasons that followed. His defense was elite, his offensive tools were obvious, but consistency eluded him.
Mota remained his strongest advocate. He had long become convinced that Latin American players needed more seasoning than those who entered baseball’s pipeline domestically because of the disparity in resources, and so he continually preached patience to those above him. In Beltré, he noticed unrelenting positivity amid struggle.
“He handled it admirably,” Mota said. “He handled it in a great way because he recognized that he was at a level he belonged and just needed to make the necessary adjustments in order to succeed. That’s what he ultimately realized. He knew it was a process. It wasn’t easy. He was going to have his good days and his bad, but he was going to keep learning.”
Everything suddenly came together in 2004, in the run-up to free agency. Beltré hit a major league-leading 48 home runs, compiled 121 RBIs, slashed .334/.388/.629 and accumulated 9.7 fWAR, still the most by a Dodgers position player. His OPS, 1.017, was 269 points higher than his career average heading in. If not for Barry Bonds, he would’ve won the National League MVP Award.
That year, nearly two-thirds of Beltré’s home runs were hit to center and right field, the byproduct of a patient, opposite-field approach refined by new hitting coach Tim Wallach — but one he and Mota had begun honing years earlier in the backfields of the Dodgers’ Vero Beach, Florida, complex.
“His desire to be great — that, more than anything else, is what impressed me the most,” Mota said. “He was always ready to work and to receive instruction and to apply it. He was very positive. And he always gave you the best he had.”
In Seattle, it was Félix Hernández. In Boston, it was Marco Scutaro and Victor Martinez. And so in the spring of 2011, a 22-year-old Elvis Andrus turned to a soon-to-be-32-year-old Adrián Beltré and relayed some tough news: It has to be another Venezuelan who touches your head in Texas, he told him, and that person is going to be me.
“He didn’t like it very much because he hates it when people touch his head,” Andrus said in Spanish. “But like I told him, ‘The only way I like to get hit by somebody is when you hit a home run, so I’m going to keep doing it and keep being annoying so you keep hitting home runs.'”
Beltré’s ability to exude levity and tenacity simultaneously made him unlike any others before him. It was his gift to the sport — and Andrus, his shortstop partner throughout his eight-year stint with the Texas Rangers, often triggered it with those unrelenting attempts to rub the top of his head.
Beltré would playfully take swings when Andrus touched his crown as he high-fived teammates in the dugout, but he’d get legitimately mad — at times enraged — when it happened within the sanctity of a clubhouse. But Andrus’ pestering knew no limits. Once, Andrus found an opening in the middle of a meeting on the the pitcher’s mound and Beltré reacted by flinging his glove like a Little Leaguer.
“We were in Seattle,” Andrus recalled. “We were playing, and I was messing with him because that day we had a pop-up and we did what we always did, messing around, calling each other off. I caught the ball and he told me, ‘Don’t f— around. Leave my fly balls alone. Those are mine.’ And I told him, ‘Hey, I’m the shortstop. I’m in charge here.’ Then when they’re changing the pitcher and he told me, ‘We’ll see the next one,’ I touched his head with my glove and I started running. I figured he wouldn’t do anything because we’re in the middle of the field. The last thing I imagined was that he would throw his glove. Then I saw the replay and I died laughing.”
Beltré’s tenure as Andrus’ infield partner came after five sluggish years offensively in Seattle. Some of those who know him well believe the pressure to live up to a $64 million contract — signed after his spectacular 2004 season — in a new place got to him, at least initially. Many others pointed to the difficulty of being a right-handed hitter inside T-Mobile Park at that time, before the fences moved in. Beltré went on to sign a one-year deal with the Boston Red Sox in January 2010 — a development that introduced “pillow contract” into our lexicon — and finished within the top 10 in MVP voting, parlaying a dominant season into a six-year, $96 million agreement with the Rangers.
The Rangers made the deal expecting the typical regression of a power hitter in his 30s. What they got instead was a renaissance. Over a six-year stretch from 2011 to 2016, Beltré slashed .308/.358/.516 while accumulating 167 home runs, 563 RBIs and 32.4 fWAR, seventh most in the majors. He earned three All-Star selections, won two Silver Sluggers and accumulated three Gold Gloves for Rangers teams that consistently competed for championships, establishing himself as one of the greatest third basemen in baseball history.
The environment, many believe, helped him flourish. And Andrus was a driving force. The two had neighboring lockers in their first spring training together and hit it off immediately. Beltré took on the role of an older brother, and Andrus credits Beltré more than anyone else for helping him grow. Some of Beltré’s close friends point to a telling aspect of their dynamic: Andrus, a kid when they first met, had the confidence to mess with an accomplished veteran like Beltré as often as he did. To them, it speaks to the type of teammate Beltre was.
“A lot of people were scared of Adrián,” Andrus said, “but I never understood that because he was the type of person who, if you did things correctly and played hard and played to win, he was never going to have a problem with you. I never saw him have a problem with anyone who did things right and got to the field to give their heart every day to win. That’s the only thing he asked from us as teammates. And it wasn’t just that he asked for it — it’s what he gave us.”
Jon Daniels: On Beltré’s legendary pain tolerance
It was the middle of June 2015, three weeks into Adrián Beltré’s latest stint on the injured list. He was nursing a torn ligament in his left thumb, which he jammed while sliding into second base on the final night of May. A hand specialist met with Beltré; his agent, Scott Boras; and the Rangers’ medical staff in Anaheim, California, to inform him that surgery was the only path to improvement. Everybody but Beltré agreed.
“Can I make it worse?” Beltré asked.
Beltré had already received a cortisone injection that did not take. The pain was excruciating. He was told once again that an invasive surgery was the only option left. Beltré kept pressing.
“But I can’t make it any worse, right?”
Jon Daniels, the Rangers’ head of baseball operations at the time, was baffled but unsurprised. Daniels had spent four years alongside Beltré by that point and was often stunned by his willingness to play hurt. He knew where this was going. Beltré was told that, no, he could not make his thumb any worse than it already was.
“All right,” Beltré said, “I’ll play through it.”
“The rest of us in the room were like, ‘Are you serious?'” Daniels recalled. “I mean, I think he was having trouble doing basic, day-to-day functions.”
One of the two most vivid examples of Beltré’s legendary pain tolerance occurred in 2001, when a ruptured and infected appendix caused him to lose 34 pounds and forced him to arrive at spring training with an IV port stuck in his arm and a colostomy bag tucked into his pants. He played anyway. The other took place in 2009, when one of his testicles swelled to the size of a grapefruit because of a ninth-inning grounder that took a bad hop. Beltré singled and scored the winning run five innings later, missed the next 18 games, came back and still refused to wear an athletic cup.
But Daniels, now a senior advisor with the Tampa Bay Rays, can rattle off a handful of other, similarly impressive instances from personal experience. Like when Beltré spent a night in the hospital with abdominal blockage in 2012, then batted cleanup the following day. Or when he returned from a hamstring strain twice as fast as even the most optimistic projections in 2017. Or when he OPS’d .836 while playing with a battered thumb over the final three-plus months of the aforementioned 2015 season, pushing the Rangers into the playoffs.
The ensuing postseason began with a phone call from Rangers athletic trainer Kevin Harmon. Beltré, Harmon told Daniels, had thrown out his back and could hardly move. He was angling to play in Game 1 of the American League Division Series, but Harmon didn’t think it was possible.
Beltré was inserted into the No. 3 spot of the lineup, but he could barely rotate his hips or swing his bat while attempting to loosen his muscles in the on-deck circle. He drew a four-pitch walk in the top of the first, then attempted to play defense for two half-innings. When he came to bat again in the third, he drove an 0-1 sinker from David Price up the middle for a two-out RBI single. Had Toronto Blue Jays center fielder Kevin Pillar noticed how slowly Beltré made his way up the line, Daniels said, he might have thrown him out at first base. Beltré was subbed out for the next half-inning and missed the next two games, but he returned for Game 4.
“There was a little healthy fear of Adrián throughout the organization,” Daniels said. “I remember the couple times this guy was hurt and he had to go on the IL you were like, ‘All right, who’s going to tell him?’ It was kind of funny. If he agreed to go on the IL, you knew it was bad. Because typically he was like, ‘No, f— that, I’ll be fine.’ I mean, he’d literally just walk out of my office like, ‘No, I’m not going on. See you later.’ And you’re like, ‘I thought I was the guy in charge here.'”
Beltré made such a habit of toughing out injuries he became a master at playing through them. In some ways, injuries actually might have made him better. Beltré spent the last five months of his breakout 2004 season playing through two bone spurs in one of his ankles, a development some believe might have forced him to be more patient and make better use of his hands in the batter’s box. His elite arm strength allowed him to make difficult throws without doing too much work with his lower half, a blessing given the assortment of leg issues that plagued him. Early on, when throwing errors were a problem, having less mobility in his legs actually helped his accuracy.
Beltré played in 2,933 regular-season games in a career that spanned 21 years, more than all but 14 people in major league history.
He willed his way through an inordinate amount of them.
“I think it was this mix of competitiveness, pride and responsibility,” Daniels said. “It was just like, ‘If I can go, I’m going to do it. I want to be there for my teammates. I want to win.’ All the right reasons. He never vocalized that, so I don’t want to put words in his mouth. But that was always my sense.”
Jeff Legwold covers the Denver Broncos at ESPN. He has covered the Broncos for more than 20 years and also assists with NFL draft coverage, joining ESPN in 2013. He has been a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Board of Selectors since 1999, too. Jeff previously covered the Pittsburgh Steelers, Buffalo Bills and Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans at previous stops prior to ESPN.
BOULDER, Colo. — For the horde of NFL talent evaluators and some bleachers full of fans, Colorado coach Deion Sanders said Friday that they all got to see the top two players available in this year’s NFL draft.
Quarterback Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter were among the 16 Colorado players who took part in the school’s showcase event for scouts, coaches and personnel executives from every NFL team. And Deion Sanders said the two marquee players confirmed what he has known for a long time.
“It’s tremendous,” Sanders said. “… They should be going 1-2 [in the draft], that’s the way I feel about it. They are the two best players in this draft. … The surest bets in this draft are those two young men, and I didn’t stutter or stammer when I said that.”
Neither Shedeur Sanders nor Hunter took part in most of the position drills or physical testing, but Sanders had a throwing session for just under an hour and Hunter was one of the wide receivers who participated. Neither player worked out at the scouting combine earlier this year, so it was the first time Sanders had thrown in such a setting since the end of the season. He showed some full seven-step drops and play-action from the shotgun and under center.
“I think I did pretty good, to my expectations,” said Sanders, who set the career FBS accuracy mark in his two years at Colorado (71.8%) to go with his 4,134 passing yards and 37 touchdowns last season. “I know I did the best in college football right now, for sure.”
Asked after the throwing session whether he believed he was the best quarterback in the draft, Sanders said: “I feel like I’m the No. 1 quarterback, and that’s what I know. But at the end of the day, I’m not stuck on that because it’s about the situation, so whatever situation, whatever franchise believes in me, I’m excited to go. … I’m comfortable in any situation.”
Players Hunter, who did not speak to the media after the workout, and Sanders met with the Cleveland Browns contingent, including team co-owner Jimmy Haslam, on Thursday night in Boulder.
“They got me really full,” Sanders said. “I definitely needed to go to the sauna after that. … It was a good vibe.”
Said Deion Sanders said: “[I] spoke to the owner, truly delightful. He was engaging. … I think one of those guys is going to be there [at No. 2].”
Hunter, the No. 1 player on Mel Kiper Jr.’s Big Board, did not do any defensive drills Friday, but he ran a full assortment of routes.
Colorado safety Shilo Sanders, Shedeur’s brother, offered plenty of encouragement, shouting commentary and clapping after each throw, including “not a lot of quarterbacks can make that throw” after one deep completion.
The highly attended event — by NFL representatives as well as fans packing small bleachers — had a festive atmosphere. Deion Sanders named it the “We Ain’t Hard 2 Find Showcase,” complete with a large lighted “The Showcase” sign next to the drills.
Hunter, who has said he wants to play offense and defense in the NFL, won the Chuck Bednarik (top defensive player) and Fred Biletnikoff (top receiver) awards in addition to the Heisman. He said whether he will primarily be a wide receiver or a cornerback in the NFL depends “on the team that picks me.”
On Friday, Deion Sanders said “ain’t nobody like Travis.”
Hunter had 96 catches for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns as a receiver last season to go with 35 tackles, 11 pass breakups and 4 interceptions at cornerback. In the Buffaloes’ regular-season finale against Oklahoma State, he became the only FBS player in the past 25 years with three scrimmage touchdowns on offense and an interception in the same game, according to ESPN Research.
He played 1,380 total snaps in Colorado’s 12 regular-season games: 670 on offense, 686 on defense and 24 on special teams. He played 1,007 total snaps in 2023.
Shilo Sanders, who hoped to show teams more speed than expected, ran a 4.52 40-yard dash after he measured in at 5-foot-11⅞, 196 pounds. He did not participate in the jumps or bench press that opened the workout, citing a right shoulder injury.
With all NFL eyes on the Colorado campus to see Shedeur Sanders throw, one player who made the most of it was wide receiver Will Sheppard. Sheppard, who measured 6-2¼, 196 pounds, ran the 40 in 4.56 and 4.54 to go with a 40½-inch vertical jump and a 10-foot-11 broad jump.
Henderson has been sidelined with a right intercostal strain and missed the first seven games of the big league campaign.
The 23-year-old Henderson will lead off and play shortstop against the host Royals.
Henderson was injured during a spring training game Feb. 27. He was fourth in American League MVP voting last season when he batted .281 and racked up career bests of 37 homers and 92 RBIs.
Henderson completed a five-game rehab stint at Triple-A Norfolk on Wednesday. He batted .263 (5-for-19) with two homers and four RBIs and played four games at shortstop and one as the designated hitter. He did commit three errors.
“I think everybody’s looking forward to having Gunnar back on the team,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said Thursday. “The rehab went really, really well. I talked to him a couple days ago, he feels great swinging the bat. The timing came, especially the last few days. He just had to get out there and get some reps defensively and get some games in, and it all went well.”
Baltimore optioned outfielder Dylan Carlson to Triple-A Norfolk to open up a roster spot. The 26-year-old was 0-for-4 with a run and RBI in two games this season.
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
When New York Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns attempted to assemble the best possible roster for the 2025 season this winter, the top priority was signing outfielder Juan Soto. Next was the need to replenish the starting rotation and bolster the bullpen. Then, days before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training, the lineup received one final significant reinforcement when first baseman Pete Alonso re-signed.
Acquiring a player with a singing career on the side didn’t make the cut.
“No, that is not on the list,” Stearns said with a smile.
Stearns’ decision not to re-sign Jose Iglesias, the infielder behind the mic for the viral 2024 Mets anthem “OMG,” was attributed to creating more roster flexibility. But it also hammered home a reality: The scrappy 2024 Mets, authors of a magical summer in Queens, are a thing of the past. The 2025 Mets, who will report to Citi Field for their home opener Friday, have much of the same core but also some prominent new faces — and the new, outsized expectations that come with falling two wins short of the World Series, then signing Soto to the richest contract in professional sports history.
But there’s a question surrounding this year’s team that you can’t put a price tag on: Can these Mets rekindle the magic — the vibes, the memes, the feel-good underdog story — that seemed to come out of nowhere to help carry them to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series last season?
“Last year the culture was created,” Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said. “It’s a matter of continuing it.”
For all the success Stearns has engineered — his small-market Milwaukee Brewers teams reached the postseason five times in eight seasons after he became the youngest general manager in history in 2015 — the 40-year-old Harvard grad, like the rest of his front office peers knows there’s no precise recipe for clubhouse chemistry. There is no culture projection system. No Vibes Above Replacement.
“Culture is very important,” Stearns said last weekend in the visiting dugout at Daikin Park before his club completed an opening-weekend series against the Houston Astros. “Culture is also very difficult to predict.”
Still, it seems the Mets’ 2024 season will be all but impossible to recreate.
There was Grimace, the purple McDonald’s blob who spontaneously became the franchise’s unofficial mascot after throwing out a first pitch in June. “OMG,” performed under Iglesias’ stage name, Candelita, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Latin Digital Songs chart, before a remix featuring Pitbull was released in October. Citi Field became a karaoke bar whenever Lindor stepped into the batter’s box with The Temptations’ “My Girl” as his walk-up song. Alonso unveiled a lucky pumpkin in October. They were gimmicks that might have felt forced if they hadn’t felt so right.
“I don’t know if what we did last year could be replicated because it was such a chaos-filled group,” Mets reliever Ryne Stanek said. “I don’t know if that’s replicable because there’s just too many things going on. I don’t know if that’s a sustainable model. But I think the expectation of winning is really important. I think establishing what we did last year and coming into this year where people are like, ‘Oh, no, that’s what we’re expecting to do,’ makes it different. It’s always a different vibe whenever you feel like you’re the hunter versus being the hunted.”
For the first two months last season, the Mets were terrible hunters. Lindor was relentlessly booed at Citi Field during another slow start. The bullpen got crushed. The losses piled up. The Mets began the season 0-5 and sunk to rock bottom on May 29 when reliever Jorge Lopez threw his glove into the stands during a 10-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers that dropped the team to 22-33.
That night, the Mets held a players-only meeting. From there, perhaps coincidentally, everything changed. The Mets won the next day, and 67 of their final 107 games.
This year, to avoid an early malaise and to better incorporate new faces like Soto and Opening Day starter Clay Holmes, players made it a point to hold meetings during spring training to lay a strong foundation.
“At the end of the day, we know who we are and that’s the beauty of our club,” Alonso said. “Not just who we are talent-wise, but who each individual is as a man and a personality. For us, our major, major strength is our collective identity as a unit.”
Organizationally, the Mets are attempting a dual-track makeover: Becoming perennial World Series contenders while not taking themselves too seriously.
The commemorative purple Grimace seat installed at Citi Field in September — Section 302, Row 6, Seat 12 in right field — remains there as part of a two-year contract. Last week, the franchise announced it will feature a New York-city themed “Five Borough” race at every home game — with a different mascot competing to represent each borough. For a third straight season, USA Today readers voted Citi Field — home of the rainbow cookie egg roll, among many other innovative treats — as having the best ballpark food in baseball.
In the clubhouse, their identity is evolving.
“I’m very much in the camp that you can’t force things,” Mets starter Sean Manaea said. “I mean, you can, but you don’t really end up with good results. And if you wait for things to happen organically, then sometimes it can take too long. So, there’s like a nudging of sorts. It’s like, ‘Let’s kind of come up with something, but not force it.’ So there’s a fine balance there and you just got to wait and see what happens.”
Stearns believes it starts with what the Mets can control: bringing positive energy every day and fostering a family atmosphere. It’s hard to quantify, but vibes undoubtedly helped fuel the Mets’ 2024 success. It’ll be a tough act to follow.
“It’s fluid,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “I like where guys are at as far as the team chemistry goes and things like that and the connections and the relationships. But it’ll continue to take some time. And winning helps, clearly.”