Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
The Mets lost one of the most important cogs of their 2021 bullpen when left-hander Aaron Loup signed with the Angels early in the offseason, and it’s the one area they really haven’t addressed to this point. I would expect the Mets to sign multiple relievers when the lockout is over from a free agent class that has seen it’s top arm in Raisel Iglesias already sign.
Top relievers from the market in Kendall Graveman, Hector Neris, and Mark Melancon have already signed as well. That means the Mets will have to dig deep into the reliever market to help a bullpen that ranked ninth in the majors with a 3.90 ERA in 2021. The strength of the 2021 bullpen –aside from Loup– was Edwin Diaz, Trevor May, and Seth Lugo.
The Mets also got some productive –though uneven– innings from the likes of Jeurys Familia, Miguel Castro, and Drew Smith. Familia is now a free agent, along with Heath Hembree and Brad Hand.
Mets likely need to find at least two quality relief arms on major league deals (with more on minors deals of course) to round out their bullpen going into the 2021 season. With that in mind, I believe the Mets should sign Collin McHugh.
Yup, that Collin McHugh, the one that the Mets traded for Eric Young Jr. back in 2013. The Mets 2008 draft pick was back on the mound in 2021 after opting out of the 2020 because of COVID-19 concerns.
The return to the mound went quite well for the 34-year-old, he posted a 1.55 ERA in 64 innings for the Rays this season pitching in a variety of different roles. He also posted a 1.8 fWAR, a very strong 6.17 strikeouts to walks ratio, and gave up only three home runs all season.
Looking at McHugh’s expected stats from Baseball Savant above you see this wasn’t some kind of fluke season either. You can look back to his 2018 season (1.99 ERA, 11.7 K/9) season with the Astros to see that McHugh has shown multiple times he can be a top notch reliever.
I think the Mets can get McHugh on reasonably good deal because he’s not a big-name and he’s also going to be 35 for most of the 2022 season. Melancon, a fairly well-known closer, got two years, $14 million coming off a good season with the Padres.
Back to the variety of different roles that the Rays used McHugh in this season. McHugh was used as an Opener on seven occasions, used to finish a game 11 times, and pitched at least two innings in 21 of his 37 outings.
As you can see from the chart above, McHugh has found continued success despite having a fastball that averaged only 91 mph in 2021. A big part of the reason why is his outstanding slider. Opponents had just a .177 average, .262 slugging percentage, and 84.2 mph exit velocity off his slider in 2021 and a .175 average off the pitch going back to 2019.
The Mets have already made it a note of signing well respected clubhouse guys this offseason, and McHugh would certainly fit into that mold as well. McHugh is also known for having his own blog and his own podcast that go through his struggles in the minor leagues and the adjustments he made with the Astros to transform him into a major league pitcher.
Getting a pitcher of McHugh’s skillset would give the Mets a ton of options in their bullpen to utilize how they see fit.
