Fan Shot by Gabriel Pariente

Last week, the New York Mets announced that Seth Lugo who transformed himself from a starter to one of the best relievers in MLB over the past two seasons would be stretched back into being a starter for the rest of the 2020 season. Due to injuries to Micheal Wacha, David Peterson and the ineffectiveness of Steven Matz the idea with this move is to improve the Mets starting rotation which has struggled this year, and to help the Mets better compete in the NL East.

However, in spite of the fact that Lugo himself has campaigned to start and in his career he has been a pretty effective starter who helped the Mets make the playoffs in 2016 this move is very short-sighted and exposes the Mets to another major issue: Closing games.

This offseason, the Mets added Dellin Betances to their bullpen which includes Justin Wilson, Edwin Diaz, Jeurys Familia, Jared Hughes, Brad Brach, etc… While Justin Wilson has been for the most part very effective, there are still a lot of red flags with Familia, Betances and Diaz each of whom are supposed to be vital parts of the Mets bullpen. Betances’ who is coming back from an Achilles injury has struggled with his velocity and has had a few outings where he seemingly has no feel for his pitches. He currently has an era of 6.00, has over 45% of batters he’s faced this year and has been quite inconsistent.

Meanwhile, Jeurys Familia who was signed to a 3-year, $39 million deal before the 2019 season has hardly looked like the same man who saved almost 100 games for the Mets from 2015-2016. In 78 appearances over the past 2 seasons, he has walked 51 batters, and has given up 45 earned runs over that span as well. This translates to Familia giving up earned runs in almost 58% in games he has entered since he came back to the Mets in 2019, and a walk rate of over 65% in games he has entered in over that span.

From 2015-16, he had a walk rate of just over 32% in games he entered, and gave up earned runs in 24.7% of games he entered during those two seasons. He has been very unreliable and is certainly not someone who people should invest too much confidence in closing games or getting big outs.

Edwin Diaz who of course the Mets acquired in the infamous Kelenic deal has also been a shell of the closer who saved 57 games for Seattle back in 2019. While he has cut back on the number of home runs he’s allowed this year, he still has had trouble locating pitches and not giving up walks. He has walked 50.6% of batters he’s faced since he became a Met in 2019, and has been extremely mediocre in high-leverage situations. The Mets simply put do not have enough lockdown options in their bullpen to mitigate the absence of Seth Lugo, and this without factoring in his own numbers over the past 2 seasons.

Lugo appeared in 61 games last year where opponents hit .192 against him, he struck out nearly 59% of the batters he faced last season and had a WHIP of 0.75. He was the team’s best weapon in the 2nd half going multiple innings shutting down the opposition and could go multiple games a week doing this. Last season, in fact in the month of July, Lugo had an ERA of 0.00 and single-handedly almost brought the Mets back from the dead into playoff contention.By making him a starter, he first needs to be stretched out which will take a minimum of perhaps 3- 4 starts which would bring us to around mid-September where the season would nearly be over.

He also can only appear in games once a week, and at most for the time being only go 3-4 innings which limits his effectiveness to the team. Lugo will be on a pitch count limit while being stretched out, but he is also pitching with a partially torn Ulnar Collateral Ligament(UCL.) Any more injury to that area would force Lugo to undergo Tommy John surgery which takes almost a year to recover from, and the more pitches Lugo throws the chance of injury increases dramatically.

While Matz has been awful and injuries to Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman’s opt-out due to Covid-19 have damaged our starting rotation, fixing 1 area by weakening another is not the model of long-term success. It is a short-sighted attempt by the organization which only serves to cause more issues to the Mets in the future, something that is a staple sadly of the Wilpons’ tenure.

The Mets could instead utilize Franklyn Kilome who they acquired in the Asdrubal Cabrera trade who in spite of control issues, has potential as a starter and try to develop him as a back-end starter. But to risk Lugo’s career and to weaken a vital aspect of the team down the stretch to attempt to eat up innings is the definition of bad management and those responsible for these decisions need to be shown the door.

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This Fan Shot was contributed by diehard Mets fan Gabriel Pariente

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