It happened. No going back now. Brandon Nimmo, Edwin Díaz and Pete Alonso are gone. David Stearns with his actions has shown he 1) did not want to keep a dubious Mets core together; 2) was worried particularly about that core aging together on long contracts (along with Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto); and 3) wants to be better defensively.

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The Nimmo-for-Marcus Semien trade was a tipoff. Stearns traded five years of Nimmo for three years of Semien and offense for defense. The Mets’ head of baseball operations then held his financial line in the sand on average value on Díaz and total years on Alonso, and two of the most popular/productive Mets were gone to the Dodgers and Orioles, respectively.

Stearns has insisted there are plenty of players and time to refurbish the roster. Stearns, native New Yorker, might talk up his lifelong Mets fandom and understanding your pain in enduring especially Alonso leaving. But in his icy baseball soul, Stearns sees a player in totality who can be replaced, especially when thinking about how to spread his money around not just for the coming season, but during the duration of Alonso’s five-year, $155 million pact with the Orioles.

None of what follows is something I heard the Mets are working on, but rather an exercise to try to see what life after Alonso and Co. could look like.