David Stearns ‘wouldn’t rule out anything’ in regards to Mets’ trade deadline plans

Just a few weeks ago, the Mets appeared to be buried in the dumps of the National League Wild Card race and they looked destined to be one of the biggest sellers again heading into this year’s trade deadline.

However, after holding a players-only meeting to close out that brutally tough stretch, things quickly took a turn for the better as they have posted the best record in baseball since the calendar flipped to June.

After kicking off the week with a two-game sweep of the Yankees in the Subway Series, New York finds itself back at the .500 mark and square in the thick of things in the wide-open Wild Card race.

While the perception around their deadline plans has quickly changed, president of baseball operation David Stearns told reporters on Friday that they’re still evaluating things and all options are on the table.

“I don’t think I’d rule out anything at this point,” he said. “We still have time before we have to make those decisions, but clearly our team performance has improved quite considerably over the past few weeks.

“We’re playing much closer to the level of baseball and the consistency that we envisioned throughout the course of the season and now we have to continue it. Everyone in the room understands that, we’ve given ourselves an opportunity and we have to continue to run with it.”

Though Stearns wouldn’t commit one way or the other, he did say that he could see a scenario in which they end up buying, and if that’s the case he expects to have plenty of flexibility when it comes to the payroll.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I think that Steve [Cohen] has shown repeatedly over the years that he’s committed to investing in the resources for the team whatever we need to compete and certainly I think that we’ll continue to do so.”

As far as the group they have on hand now, Stearns certainly likes what he’s been seeing from them of late, and he credited the recent turnaround to the offense finally starting to figure things out at the plate.

“We’ve had some of our better players now get hot all together at the same time, and when you do that it lengthens your lineup, it allows you to score runs in bunches, and that’s what we’ve been able to do,” he said.