David Stearns discusses Mets’ plans for Juan Soto in the field, sparking debate on whether his defense will match the team’s championship ambitions. DD
New York Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns addressed Juan Soto’s defensive struggles.
New York Mets star Juan Soto finished third in 2025 NL MVP voting after producing arguably the best offensive season of his already historic big league career during his first campaign in Queens.
Soto hit .263 with a .921 OPS, 43 home runs, 120 runs scored, 105 RBIs, and 38 stolen bases. Those are extremely impressive numbers, especially considering that the 27-year-old star struggled out of the games for the first two or so months of the season.
However, it was not a perfect individual year for Soto. As soon as his offense was, it was a career-worst season for Soto on defense. He had a -13 Fielding Run Value (which converts all of Statcast’s individual defensive metrics from different scales onto the same run-based scale), meaning that Soto cost the Mets 13 outs compared to an average MLB right fielder.
This was the worst out of every right fielder in the sport. While Soto has never been known as a good defender, he had a perfectly average 0 Fielding Run Value with the New York Yankees in 2024.
David Stearns Gets Clear About Juan Soto’s Defense
Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns has made it clear that he intends to improve his team’s defense this winter. This was shown by him saying, “Our defense wasn’t good enough, and that certainly contributed to our pitching challenges… And we’re gonna work really hard to fix that going forward, learn from this, and do a heck of a lot better,” per a September 29 article from SNY’s Danny Abriano.
“The entirety of our run-prevention unit was not good enough this year,” Stearns later added.
Soto is a key part of this improvement effort. And Stearns recently addressed Soto’s defense specifically, which was included in a November 14 article from Mike Puma of the New York Post.
Stearns noted that he believes Soto is one of the Mets players who “can perform better defensively than he did last year.” He added that he expects Soto to work hard on his defense this offseason to be better-equipped to perform in right field come 2026. Finally, Stearns mentioned that Soto has proven in the past that he can be a better defender than he showed last season.
Soto isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. However, if his defensive struggles continue in 2026, there might be some conversations to be had about potentially moving him to first base or the DH spot in New York’s lineup.
