It’s been an offseason of depth pieces and low/high-risk, high-reward players for the New York Mets. They haven’t been able to land the big stars like the last few years, and they tried to sign Yoshinobu Yamamoto before he went to the Los Angeles Dodgers. New York has signed Harrison Bader, Luis Severino, and Sean Manaea, acquired Adrian Houser from Milwaukee, and brought back Adam Ottavino. On Friday, president of baseball operations David Stearns continued this trend with two more depth signings of guys who could come out of the bullpen and contribute with Shintaro Fujinami and Jake Diekman.
Per Jon Heyman of the New York Post, the Fujinami deal is one-year, $3.35 million, with $850,000 in incentives. This is a very interesting signing for the Mets because it’s not just low-risk, high reward but comes with great potential from Fujinami. He came from Japan last year and signed with the Oakland Athletics on a one-year deal. Things did not go well at all for Fujinami in Oakland. He posted an 0-4 record with an ERA of 14.40 before being moved to the bullpen. The A’s eventually traded him to Baltimore as he left the Bay Area with an ERA over 8.
With the Orioles as a reliever, things got a little better for the right-hander. While his ERA remained substantially high at 4.85, he still showed improvements from the Orioles bullpen and even saved two games. He did have a stretch in Baltimore where his ERA was 2.92, and he had 29 strikeouts in 24 2/3 innings. Fujinami is entering his second year in the big leagues and will turn 30 in April. Fujinami has upside with a lot of room to grow, and this is a good spot for him to do it with Jeremy Hefner as his pitching coach to work with him.
Fujinami is a hard thrower, and aside from Edwin Diaz, no Met pitcher consistently throws at 100 MPH. Fujinami threw 136 pitches of 100 MPH. This could be a move that pays off big for Stearns. Indeed, it has the potential to.
Per Andy Martino, the Mets agreed to a deal with Diekman. Joel Sherman of the New York Post reports it’s a one-year deal with a vesting option.
It was a tale of two teams for Diekman in 2023. He started last season out on the South Side of Chicago with the White Sox and pitched to a 7.94 ERA while giving up ten earned runs in 11 games. The Sox designated him for assignment, and the Tampa Bay Rays signed him. The Rays did what the Rays usually do. They worked their magic on Diekman and he pitched well for them the rest of the season with a 2.18 ERA in 50 games with 53 strikeouts.
Diekman will look to continue off his strong run with the Rays in Queens. Of course, this isn’t the first time the Mets have pickpocketed off the Rays when they acquired lefty Brooks Raley last year, and he had a solid 2023 for New York. Diekman joins Raley in the bullpen, and the two could form a nice duo of lefties in the back end of the pen.
