Did David Stearns take a shot at the Brewers while chasing Juan Soto? Sure sounds like it

A loss in Game 6 of the NLCS to the Los Angeles Dodgers marked the end of a magical postseason run for the New York Mets — and the beginning of one of the most pivotal offseasons in the team's history. With Pete Alonso and several other contracts coming off the books, New York will head into the winter with gobs and gobs of Steve Cohen's money to spend ... just in time for a certain 26-year-old future Hall of Famer to hit the market. There are holes to fill and payroll to burn, and how team president David Stearns handles the next few weeks will go a long way to determining the franchise's future.

So it's understandable that Stearns wanted to waste no time getting a jump on things. The bidding for Juan Soto figures to be the most heated in baseball history this side of Shohei Ohtani, and every little bit of negotiating counts. But still, the way Stearns went about delivering that message during his year-end press conference was a bit on the nose — and might have Milwaukee Brewers fans feeling a bit sore.

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David Stearns has a lot more money to play with in New York than he did with the Brewers

When asked about the Mets' offseason plan, Stearns immediately made clear that he planned on going big: "The entirety of the player universe is potentially accessible to us," he told reporters. "I envision us taking advantage of that opportunity and being aggressive in certain spaces."

In the world of executive doublespeak, statements of intent don't get much louder than that: New York intends to spend, and it intends to spend a lot.

It's worth noting that Stearns couldn't help by smile as he said those words, clearly relishing the ability to pursue any player he might want for New York's roster. It's also worth noting that those "enormous opportunities" rarely presented themselves when Stearns was the president of baseball operations for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Stearns guided the Brew Crew to four straight postseason appearances from 2018-2021, but he did so in spite of significant payroll limitations imposted by the team's ownership. The "entirety of the player universe" was hardly at Stearns' and the Brewers' disposal. When Stearns announced he was stepping down at the end of his contract in Milwaukee, it didn't take long for rumors to start swirling that he'd wind up with the Mets. We've seen this movie before, from Andrew Friedman to Chaim Bloom: A wunderkind executive builds a competitor on a shoestring budget, only to eventually tire of getting a dollar worth of value out of every penny and bolting to a bigger market.

Stearns is clearly relishing his newfound financial freedom; rather than figuring out how to flip players approaching free agency into younger, cheaper assets, he now gets to put Scott Boras on the phone and offer him a blank check for his top client. You can't begrudge Stearns for taking the bag and the far more generous budget, but it's hard not to feel a little salty about how things have played out — and how smaller markets like Milwaukee can be expected to compete.