The Mets didn’t have the year they wanted, but they had a very good day Tuesday, and what’s more, that should mean lots of great days to come. It’s been three years in the making, but David Stearns — the team’s new president of baseball operations, by way of the Upper East Side, Columbia prep, Harvard, MLB and most recently the Milwaukee Brewers — is worth the wait.

The words “perfect” and “perfect fit” get thrown around to the point where they’ve lost meaning, but let’s just say this: This is the right guy at a time he’s most needed.

With this momentous hire, Steve Cohen brought in a fellow who’s proven he’s able to construct a winner out of a piggy bank in baseball’s smallest market (Milwaukee is basically tied at the bottom with Cincinnati). So now Cohen’s got a guy who’s got the best chance of anyone available to make the best use of Cohen’s largesse, which dwarfs all the other 29 owners. They almost can’t lose now.

Cohen also got a guy who’s enthused about coming to New York, which is no small thing. He isn’t coming kicking and screaming like all those other small-market scaredy cats who turned him down a couple years ago. This is a guy who not only wants to come home – his mother still lives in Manhattan – but is said to be thrilled at the challenge of building a perennial winner in Flushing. 

Stearns isn’t talking to the media yet but he’s told folks around the game that he’s excited about taking over the baseball operations of the team he and his family have backed ever since he was a kid, back when Kevin Elster was his favorite player. It’s surely a bonus that he’s a New Yorker who worked at the MLB home office on Park Avenue, who interned for the Mets under Omar Minaya and who grew up going crosstown from the UES to start his schooling at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, and that he’s smart enough to have gone to Harvard (bonus points for writing sports for the Harvard Crimson). Most important, though, are the qualifications and recommendations, universally excellent and glowing.

While the resume is only as long as you’d expect from someone still only 38, he proved his abilities by building a Brewers team that qualified for the postseason four straight years (before they were generally eliminated by more stacked teams from much bigger markets). That is no easy task, considering they’d only made the playoffs that many times in the nearly half century in Brew City before Stearns arrived from Houston.

Stearns’ chances were surely enhanced by starting with an organization that was set up pretty nicely by his predecessor, Doug Melvin, who had the know-how to field a solid team himself in a small city, the eye to bring in Brandon Woodruff, Josh Hader, Devin Williams and also the guts to move baseball savant Craig Counsell from the front office to the dugout. But for seven years, he thrived in Milwaukee.

Stearns didn’t have that much experience when Brewers owner Mark Attanasio tabbed him to lead the baseball operations department at 30, but he definitely had the smarts. He also is said by employees to possess the ability to lead and the willingness to treat employees kindly, which believe me, you don’t always find at the top.

What you hear from his former workers is that he has the ability to look at things in unique ways, which was probably a necessity in a market that’s about a tenth as big as New York. You can say the Brewers’ division is easier than some, but they had to battle the perennially contending Cardinals and big-market Cubs despite having what some say is baseball’s worst TV deal.

In Milwaukee, Stearns engineered the trade for Christian Yelich, who became an MVP, drafted Corbin Burnes, who won a Cy Young, and added key pieces like Freddy Peralta for very little, building sustainable success on a shoestring. Which is exactly what the Mets seek, minus the shoestring.

The only question is why he took this season off, declining an option said to be worth $5.5 million to “consult” but mostly sit it out, and wait for the next opportunity. There are some who say he took it hard when Attanasio got upset about the reaction to the controversial Josh Hader trade that was as negative in the clubhouse as it was in the stands. We’ll probably never know for sure, but it’s also quite possible that he just thought it made little sense to stay as Brewers GM when he knew he’d be moving on after the year.

That doesn’t really matter now. What’s important is the Mets brought in a guy who fits what Cohen wanted – an analytics expert who’s a proven leader. With this hire, the Mets also gave themselves the best chance to put Cohen’s bankroll to the best use possible.