Collin McHugh

Position: Relief pitcher
Bats/Throws: R/R
Age: 34 (6/19/1987)

Traditional Stats: 37 G (seven starts, all opening games), 6-1, 1 SV, 64 IP, 1.55 ERA, 74 K, 12 BB
Advanced Stats: 1.8 fWAR, 1.9 bWAR, 2.26 xERA, 2.12 FIP, 3.06 xFIP, 30 K%, 4.9 BB%, 256 ERA+

Rundown

Ah, our old friend Collin McHugh.

Way back in 2013, the Mets dealt McHugh to the Colorado Rockies after a dozen appearances with the team for Eric Young Jr. The team was trying to make a push for the playoffs way back then, and they got a guy who’d play nearly 200 games for the Mets over a year-and-a-half for a guy the Rockies designated for assignment after four starts.

But then McHugh met the now-lauded pitching machine of the Houston Astros.

The Mets’ 2008 draft pick transformed his career in Houston. He totaled 12.2 fWAR over six seasons, spending the first half of his career with the Astros as a starter and transitioning to a reliever role after an injury-riddled 2017. He was pretty darn effective, landing on a 3.63 ERA over 195 total appearances with the team.

In Houston, McHugh dominated with his curveball, and then he eventually developed a plus slider while with the team. While he mixed in fastballs, sinkers and cutters, his breaking pitches were his bread and butter with the team.

After reaching free agency, he signed with the Boston Red Sox, but he didn’t pitch in the 2020 season due partly to COVID and partly to an undisclosed injury to his elbow. Thus, he signed a one-year, prove-it deal with the Tampa Bay Rays for the 2021 season. He proved it.

McHugh pitched to a 1.55 ERA in 2021 over seven starts (all as an opener) and 30 relief appearances. Had he not missed about a month total due to arm fatigue and back soreness, McHugh might have been in the discussion as the best reliever in baseball. (Take a look at his insanely hot Statcast percentile chart.)

He didn’t allow a run in any of the games he opened (a total of 12 innings in seven games), and he still had a sub-2.00 ERA in his relief appearances. Most of his work came in mid-to-late relief, and 24 of his 37 appearances last season were over an inning long, as he routinely threw two or three innings. (A team like the Rays planned for that, especially with all of the bullpen games they threw.)

And that slider he developed in Houston a couple years ago? He threw it over 50 percent of the time in 2021 and essentially dropped the use of his curveball. It had the 10th-best run value among all pitchers in baseball with at least 500 sliders thrown, up there with the likes of Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer. He was essentially able to master a new breaking pitch that was just as effective as the one he mastered before.

Contract

McHugh has lived on one-year deals since reaching free agency after the 2019 season. He only made $1.8 million with the Rays in 2021, a steal for the organization after posting the numbers he did. (“Steal” and “Rays bullpen” typically go hand-in-hand these days.)

He’s never made more than $5.8 million in a season, and he made a total of $14.6 million over his three arbitration years. He earned that with a 3.85 ERA in 138 games (395 innings) over his final four years with the ‘Stros. (In included the fourth year–2016–as that’s what largely set the money he made in his first year of arbitration.) He made 35 starts and 85 relief appearances in the span.

There aren’t really any salary projections out there for McHugh, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him offered a couple million dollars for a one-year deal.

Recommendation

Post-lockout, the Mets’ biggest need is shoring up the bullpen, and McHugh is one of the best–if not the best–left on the market. Bring him home.

The Mets will have a handful of guys who haven’t proved recently they can pitch consistently deep into ballgames, especially as the season goes on. McHugh could piggyback the likes of Carlos Carrasco, Taijuan Walker and Tylor Megill, on nights they don’t have it. He’d also be a solid setup option in the seventh and eighth innings for the likes of deGrom and Scherzer.

Showalter has been noted to manage a bullpen extremely rest-wise well over the course of the season. (At least, Caleb Joseph, his former catcher, told me so on a podcast.) McHugh would give him a dependent utility tool in the belt for the upcoming season.