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.”

DENVER — Ryan McMahon took a one-hopper and turned it into three outs. It’s the first time he has been a part of a triple play.

The Colorado Rockies have the baseball from the fifth triple play in franchise history, just not the win as the Athletics rallied for a 7-4 victory on Saturday night.

For that, the Athletics can credit Jacob Wilson, who hit into the second-inning, 5-4-3 triple play. Wilson’s two-run double in the sixth dropped on the left-field line and gave the Athletics the lead after trailing 3-0.

“It felt, obviously, really good to be able to bounce back,” Wilson said. “That was kind of big for me.”

Here’s how the triple play unfolded: With two on, Wilson sent a chopper to McMahon and he fielded it with his momentum going toward the bag. McMahon stepped on third and quickly threw to second baseman Kyle Farmer, who tossed the ball to first baseman Michael Toglia.

One-two-three, just like that.

“Once I saw that I hit it pretty much almost right over third base, I was like, ‘All right, this is gonna to be bad,'” Wilson said. “But it’s something you’ve just got to let go. We ended up winning the game. Either way, I’m happy.”

For McMahon, this was a new experience at the hot corner.

“Never even attempted one before,” McMahon said of a triple play. “That was my first attempt.”

The previous time Colorado turned a triple play was Sept. 1, 2015, against Arizona. It was the first time the Athletics have hit into a triple play since Sean Murphy on June 20, 2021, at the New York Yankees.

Despite the triple play, the Rockies dropped their sixth straight game. The team is now 1-7, which is tied with the 2005 club for the worst mark through the opening eight games.

“We’re going to show up and play as hard as we can every single day,” McMahon said. “We’ve got a lot of guys in the locker room who care. … We’ll get our groove. We’ll get going, we’ll get the bats going, we’ll get the defense going, we’ll get the pitching going, we’ll get it all going.”

MILWAUKEE — Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona was back at American Family Field on Saturday after missing the previous game due to what he jokingly described as “intestinal turmoil.”

Francona wasn’t quite at full strength, but he felt grateful to be back in uniform.

“I don’t think I’ve been 100% since 1988,” Francona said before the Reds snapped a four-game skid with an 11-7 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers. “I feel good enough to be here. It’s not a good feeling, not being here.”

The stomach issues had left the Reds without Francona, first-base coach Collin Cowgill and a number of players Friday when Cincinnati fell 3-2 to the Brewers for its fourth consecutive loss. Bench coach Freddie Benavides filled in as manager after Francona stayed back at the team hotel.

While the Reds hadn’t said exactly which players were unavailable for Friday’s game, Francona identified one Saturday by saying that reserve outfielder Jacob Hurtubise probably was feeling the worst of anyone.

“Everybody’s here,” Francona said. “I think we’ve got some guys that probably feel like they got hit by a truck a little bit, kind of like I did, but we’re OK.”

While the Reds weren’t missing any players due to illness on Saturday, Matt McLain was scratched from the starting lineup about 45 minutes before the first pitch due to tightness in his left hamstring.

“We might not play him tomorrow just to be probably a little bit like a worrywart,” Francona said after Saturday’s game. “I want him to be able to play and not try to have to go 85 or 90%. I don’t think that’s fair to him. He’s willing to do it. I don’t think that’s right. So we might stay away from him tomorrow again. We’ll see.”

Francona was happy to watch a game in person after having all kinds of trouble tuning in to the action Friday. Francona listened to a radio broadcast and got frustrated that the audio was so far behind the play-by-play action on apps.

“I listened on my phone and followed along because that was the only way I could get it,” Francona said. “I thought I had the baseball package on my phone, but it wasn’t letting me do it. I did the best I could.”

He probably didn’t like what he heard for much of the night.

The Reds went hitless for the first 6⅔ innings but ended a 35-inning scoreless streak by getting two runs in the eighth. Cincinnati’s scoreless streak was its longest since 1946, when the Reds failed to produce a run for 37 consecutive innings.