Friday catch-all thread (12/26/25)
Please use this thread all week to discuss any Mets-specific topic you wish.
With the departure of four veterans here in the offseason, David Peterson is now the longest-tenured Met. Peterson made his MLB debut in the 2020 season and went 6-2 with a 3.44 ERA in the Covid-shortened year. Since then, he’s alternated seasons with ERAs in the threes, with seasons with an ERA a run or more higher than that.
In a way, it’s hard to know what to make of Peterson. Lifetime, he’s got a 4.12 ERA and a 98 ERA+ in 622.2 IP. Maybe that’s what he is - a league average starter. And that’s certainly not a terrible thing, especially with a player who you didn’t give a large free agent contract to in order to get on the team.
Counting his signing bonus, the Mets have paid less than $20 million to Peterson and he’s returned $67.9 million in FG Dollar Values. He’s been a good draft pick. Still, it’s hard to shake the notion that he should have been even better. Injuries have played a part, without a doubt.
We’ve seen an extended stretch of Peterson being an excellent pitcher. From the start of his injury-delayed 2024 season thru his first 21 starts in 2025, Peterson put up the following numbers:
42 G, 248 IP, 2.87 ERA, 3.51 FIP
That’s a terrific SP, the type of guy we all want the Mets to add to the 2026 team. In the past five years, there have been only 45 pitchers to hurl at least 170 IP with a sub-3.00 ERA.
What if Peterson has a season like that in 2026, his final year before he becomes a free agent? He’d have to get a deal at least as good as the 3/$75 with opt outs that Michael King just signed. How many years would David Stearns be willing to go to retain him? If Peterson was this good and the Mets were not in the playoff hunt - would they shop him at the trade deadline?
It’s not a huge stretch to see Peterson being this good. Nor is it completely unrealistic to see him with an ERA around 4.50 for the season. We never know what’s going to happen. It’s just that with Peterson, there seems to be a big swing built in to his potential outcomes.
I equate Peterson to Daniel Murphy, in that we get tired of waiting for him to figure it out and once he does, he still gives us room for angst. Last year, as good as he was, he should have come out of the rotation in August but fought to stay in it to accumulate innings due to his never having more than 125 before. That coverup may have cost Hefner his job, but, anyway….
So, Peterson figures it out late in his Mets tenure but the organization has seen too much and lets him go. He then becomes Ian Snell for someone else.
Been reading some rumors about Valdez. I am a bit skittish about him. He regressed a bitvlast season. Does he continue to decline or does he bounce back?