The weakest part of the 2024 Mets
MLB Trade Rumors had a two-part series, broken down by league, where they examine how each team addressed what was their weakest part in 2024. Here’s the entirety of what was said about the Mets:
Mets (Bullpen, 0.0 bWAR): Only the Blue Jays and Rockies received less from their bullpens than the Mets in 2024, which perhaps reflects New York’s high-risk and high-reward approach to the relief corps. The Mets had the highest reliever strikeout rate (27.7%) in baseball, but also the third-worst walk rate (10.7%), evening things out to a 4.03 bullpen ERA that ranked 17th of 30 teams. President of baseball operations David Stearns has a long history of finding unheralded relievers that deliver good performances, which could be why the Mets’ bullpen moves have thus far been mostly restricted to adding a bunch of pitchers on minor league contracts. Finding a gem or two within that group would help immensely, but signing a more clear-cut candidate for high-leverage innings would help immensely, particularly if that reliever is left-handed.
Source: Mark Polishuk, MLBTR.com
In a way, this is akin to listening to national broadcasters cover a game. They can’t possibly know the ins and outs of all 30 teams, so they latch on to some point, which may or may not be true, and then amplify it to ridiculous lengths. In this case about the bullpen, what Polishuk writes is true. But it lacks subtlety and a real understanding of what went on.
Was the Mets’ bullpen a sore spot in 2024? Yes, yes it was. But it’s also a case of where while the Mets had a generally healthy year, the injuries seemed to center around the bullpen. How would the final numbers have looked if Reed Garrett, Dedniel Núñez, Brooks Raley, Drew Smith and Sean Reid-Foley had avoided the IL and combined for 300 IP, rather than the 138.2 IP that they did?
Last year, the Mets had something like an imperfect storm, where they started out with several relievers who were not good, combined with good relievers getting hurt and their initial replacements being mostly terrible.
In all 12 of the 28 relief pitchers they used last year had an ERA north of 5.00 for the season. And two of the “good” relievers were position players, while none of the “bad” relievers were. Those 12 relievers combined for 90 ER in 120 IP for a 6.75 ERA. Meanwhile, 10 of those 12 pitchers are no longer in the organization and the other two will be in the minors, with one of them not even on the 40-man roster.
There are always going to be relievers who put up lousy numbers. Hopefully, the 2025 Mets won’t have 12 of them combine for 120 innings. That was 22% of the innings thrown by the pen last year.
At the end of the year, the Mets were still without the majority of the relievers they would have preferred to have in the pen. But they also were no longer trotting out guys like Ty Adcock, Matt Festa and Yohan Ramírez. In the final two months of the season, the Mets’ pen was ninth in the majors with a 2.3 fWAR. It wasn’t anything close to the problem it had been in the beginning and middle of the year.
Polishuk’s final sentence is correct but it would be correct for every single team in the league. There’s not any club whose pen wouldn’t be markedly better if you added Tanner Scott’s 1.75 ERA over 72 IP from a season ago. It would be great if the Mets signed Scott and if that were to happen, you’d find me leading the cheers. But it’s not very likely to occur, given that the Mets already have a closer firmly entrenched, making the club a less-than-desirable landing place, from Scott’s point of view.
You can make a much-better argument that the weakest part of the 2024 Mets was the slugging they got from their lefty batters. In the final two months of the year, they ranked 25th in the majors with a .371 mark and over the entire season, they were 28th with a .358 SLG.
And whaddya know – they addressed that by signing Juan Soto and his lifetime .532 slugging, including last year’s .569 mark.
When you get to the end of the season and 89 wins and a deep playoff run, it seems that while their pen was disappointing, they were just six wins behind the Phillies, four behind the Brewers, and nine behind the Dodgers for the best record in the NL. So despite a great shuffling of relief pitchers, they ended up pretty strong. Of course it was helpful that some of their starters managed to go deeper into the games, and maybe that was a Stearns' decision to help out the number of innings the relievers would have to pitch in. If they had simply gone .500 in the month of May instead of .321 they would have challenged the Phillies for the division. They lost three of four to the Phillies in May and two of three to the Braves. Still think that for the right amount of money, Tanner Scott will pitch wherever they would need him to pitch. After all, it should be about getting the ring for all these multi-millionaires.
I think the Mets should be going after at least one high end reliever. Diaz has been nothing if not inconsistent in his time with the team and while I have confidence in him, I’d love to see some insurance. Even better than that would be to go away from the traditional 9th inning only closer and use Diaz and any other top reliever in high leverage situations, regardless of whether it is a save situation. Mendoza seemed to do that at times last year and I think that could be a selling point to someone like Scott. Hopefully players (and their agents) see things from a more modern standpoint and realize that piling up saves is not the main focus as it once seemed to be.