On Tuesday night, Brodie Van Wagenen spoke to reporters at the GM Meetings about the state of the team and said something that probably made a lot of Mets fans queasy just thinking about.
“We’re putting a lot of value and importance on [Jeurys Familia and Edwin Diaz] bouncing back,” Van Wagenen said. “There’s no question about it.”
“We think our bullpen performance can be dramatically better than it was last year, with the exact same personnel,” Van Wagenen added.
As everyone knows, the Mets bullpen was one of biggest reasons the team failed to reach the postseason last year, ranking 25th in all of baseball in bullpen ERA (4.95). Diaz and Familia were particularly disappointing both having an ERA north of 5.00.
Now, before we get carried away about this series of quotes from Van Wagenen, general managers are always posturing at this point in the offseason.
They will always say something that sounds a little overly optimistic about their current inventory since they don’t want to be seen as diminishing their current talent on the roster.
Furthermore, Andy Martino of SNY reported over the last few days that the Mets are interested in Dellin Betances. So, Van Wagenen still probably sees bullpen improvement as a priority this offseason.
That being said, the mere idea of going into next season basically banking on Diaz and Familia figuring things out and becoming top-of-the-line relievers again is scary.
If they simply do that and sign maybe a low-level reliever or two, they would basically be putting their season on the line for the two of them. We already saw what happened the last time they went with these two as key relievers.
If the Mets could sign two proven relievers this offseason, the team could go into next season hoping for at least a league-average bullpen and if Diaz and/or Familia do manage to rebound in 2020, then they could even potentially have a top-tier bullpen.
My bet would be that they at least add one established reliever this offseason because the Mets could ruin their 2020 season by simply ignoring this issue right now.
