Compared to recent years, this winter’s MLB Hot Stove has been way more interesting in the early going. After all, the Winter Meetings included three top free agents that combined to sign for nearly $1 billion in Gerrit Cole, Anthony Rendon, and Stephen Strasburg. The New York Mets have been involved in this activity, of course, but it’s not like signing Michael Wacha and Rick Porcello to one-year “prove-it” deals is going to move the needle from a headline perspective.

For a squad that won 86 games last year and lost one of its top starters in Zack Wheeler to a divisional foe, there appeared to be plenty of work for general manager Brodie Van Wagenen to do in order to get New York back in the playoffs. They needed to at least fill a hole in the starting rotation, fortify the bullpen, and find someone to play center field. Adding Wacha and Porcello allows the front office to view the rotation side of this equation to be complete, and while they’ve been attempting to upgrade the bullpen, it doesn’t seem like an impact move is coming (with the reported situation with Dellin Betances being the best example).

We’ve heard so many things regarding this area of the roster already this offseason. The three big ones are as follows:

  • Edwin Diaz and Jeurys Familia are big parts of the unit’s overall success and will bounce back.
  • The signings of Wacha and Porcello provides depth, and having six healthy starters could mean one will head to the bullpen.
  • These acquisitions will also allow Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman to go “back” to the bullpen (although they never actually left).

Even if the Mets don’t make another move for the bullpen, though, FanGraphs’ bullpen projections currently have them among baseball’s best units in 2020:

This would be quite a big jump for a ‘pen that produced a cumulative 0.7 fWAR in 2019, which outperformed only six other big-league teams. This projection sounds familiar because after Van Wagenen traded for Diaz and signed Familia and Justin Wilson, the bullpen was expected to be a strength despite producing the third-worst cumulative fWAR in baseball during 2018 (-0.3). These additions had New York projecting to put together a 4.3 bullpen fWAR, which placed them third prior to Opening Day.

We’ve gotten many reminders over the years that projections are just that and should be taken with a grain of salt. Even when considering this 2020 projection, it’s leaning heavily on another great year for Lugo (1.2 projected fWAR) and a tremendous rebound from Diaz (1.9 projected fWAR).

The projection is nice to see, but it almost feels like the front office also saw it, have high hopes for bounce-back years from crucial contributors and are banking on that being enough. Looking across town and seeing what the New York Yankees have done with their bullpen in recent years doesn’t help, either.

Since 2015, the Yankees’ bullpen has ranked either first or second in baseball when using fWAR as the barometer (those yearly numbers are: 5.3, 6.6, 8.9, 8.8, and 7.5). This success has been partly possible because they’ve consistently made outside investments into that area of the roster via trades for free agency. Some of the acquisitions during this time include Chad Green, Tommy Kahnle, Adam Ottavino, Zack Britton, and Aroldis Chapman, according to information on Roster Resource. While potentially losing Betances via free agency feels like a loss, the Yankees already experienced life without him this past year since he tossed just 0.2 innings in 2019 and were just fine.

Even with a bullpen projection that once again has them among the top-two units in baseball, general manager Brian Cashman is still investigating potential upgrades, one of which is engaging the Milwaukee Brewers about Josh Hader.

The Yankees potentially going after Hader isn’t the frustrating part with regard to what the Mets are (or aren’t) doing. Part of it is that one day the Mets were seriously pursuing Betances, but it was then “not likely” to happen about 12 hours later. It’s also that the Los Angeles Dodgers pounced on a bounce-back candidate like Blake Treinen. It’s also that while a number of prominent free-agent relievers have already found a new home for 2020, there are still available hurlers out there that could help the Mets.

This front being put on could be a poker face in order to have leverage in any potential negotiations, but based off what we know about current ownership, the present bullpen mix may be exactly what we see when pitchers and catchers report to Port St. Lucie in February, outside of more minor-league signings.

That’s by far the most frustrating part — the Mets had one of baseball’s worst bullpens in 2019, and while they’re projected to be among the best in 2020, no impact moves appear to be on the horizon to help fortify that projection. The Yankees, on the other hand, had one of baseball’s best bullpens, and despite another favorable projection, they’re still looking for ways to make significant improvements.

A lot of things can change between now and the start of Spring Training, so we can at least hope something impactful will transpire between now and then. We’ll just need to not hold our breath during it all.