Photo by Ed Delany, MMO
Assuming the baseball season will start at some point, we can surely count on the NL East being one of the more tightly-contested divisions in the league. To get a better sense as to where the Mets’ roster stands, we will be offering positional breakdowns and rankings of each team in the division.
Today, we’ll be taking a closer look at each team’s bullpen. As unpredictable as they tend to be, it’s the teams that have the least trouble shutting the door late in games that tend to have the most success over the course of a season.
Fortunately for Mets fans, the front office seems to have gotten the memo when it re-signed Brad Brach and brought along Dellin Betances last winter. Just like the division in the bigger picture, however, the bullpens aren’t too far apart from one another, at least not towards the top. Starting from the bottom…
5. Philadelphia Phillies
Hector Neris had a much-needed bounce-back campaign in 2019, and Seranthony Dominguez, when healthy, is a perfect complement at the top of the depth chart. Ranger Suarez could be an intriguing option to work multiple innings.
Go any further down the list, however, and you start to worry for the Phillies.
Specialists Jose Alvarez and Adam Morgan will have to adapt to pitching to more than one or two left-handed hitters per game. It seems unrealistic that either Tommy Hunter or David Robertson makes an impact, if any at all, until much later in the season.
Philadelphia is evidently hoping to get something out of their minor-league signings, but between Anthony Swarzak, Francisco Liriano, Bud Norris, Blake Parker, Drew Storen, and Deolis Guerra, it looks like they’ll need to get way more out of both their offense and starting rotation.
4. Miami Marlins
The Marlins don’t have any one reliever who jumps off the page, but sometimes it’s those kinds of bullpens that wind up surprising you the most.
Yimi Garcia has the spin-rates code cracked, and Adam Conley – the same pitcher who gained six miles per hour on his fastball in one offseason – can surely bounce back from his rough 2019. The Fish also have one of the game’s more flexible relievers in Ryne Stanek, who at one time stood front-and-center in the Tampa Bay Rays’ opener movement. Young flamethrower Elieser Hernandez could potentially thrive in the long-relief role set out for him.
Beneath the wild cards, however, it’s simply an assortment of fillers: their closer, Brandon Kintzler, will turn 36 in August. Hopefully, Marlins fans can get a glimpse of the switch-pitcher Pat Venditte once or twice. It’s sort of a black hole after that.
3. Washington Nationals
Continuing in their initiative to move on from a categorically bad first-half bullpen, the Nationals were quick to re-sign Daniel Hudson, and added longtime Astros setup man Will Harris for good measure.
All told, that duo working beneath Sean Doolittle could be a problem for opposing hitters. The remaining bunch of arms, however, is a mixed bag. Wander Suero and Tanner Rainey both took steps forward in mid-relief roles, but Roenis Elias and Hunter Strickland also took steps back, and major ones, at that.
General manager Mike Rizzo did his due diligence seeking out depth options like David Hernandez and Javy Guerra, but if enough relievers beneath their big three struggle, the Nationals are going to find themselves looking at reinforcements for a second consecutive summer.
2. Atlanta Braves
The Braves project to have the seventh-best bullpen in the majors, according to FanGraphs – just two spots behind the Mets. One would expect an improved standing after signing Will Smith, the best reliever among this last class of free agents, but Atlanta’s slowly built a fairly credible group of arms in the last few years.
Mark Melancon and Chris Martin quietly shoved after coming over in the trade deadline (1.83 and 1.65 FIPs, respectively, in nearly 40 combined innings). Luke Jackson and Sean Newcomb have also come into their own as reliable firemen, and you can never go wrong having Darren O’Day at the ready.
The one caveat of the pen’s trajectory is the development (or, potentially, the lack thereof) of their younger pitchers. Some combination of A.J. Minter, Touki Toussaint, and Chad Sobotka will need to pull their weight better than they did in 2019. This is where having one of the more promising crops of young minor-league arms comes in handy.
Relying on repeat performances from aging contact pitchers could have unfortunate consequences, but the Braves still seem to have sufficient plans to address whatever they may run into.
1. New York Mets
The Mets’ relief corps has arguably the highest ceiling among the bullpens in the NL East. Seth Lugo is easily the best late-innings option in the division, and Justin Wilson is a solid high-leverage alternative.
If the organization gets even half of what it expected last season from Jeurys Familia and Edwin Diaz, the team can surely expect to win 90 games (or at least the abridged-season equivalent). Robert Gsellman and Brad Brach, if given consistent roles, are also promising options at the bottom of the ladder.
Bringing Dellin Betances aboard only adds to this group’s potential, but the results need to show themselves before anything, at least more clearly than they did in the spring. Make no mistake here: the Mets boasting the best bullpen in the division is more of a testament to the other four teams’ holes than the club’s own attributes.
Relievers’ performances fluctuate more often than those of maybe any other species of baseball player, but the same can’t always be said for health. Brach and Diaz were the only pitchers who didn’t spend any time on the injured list in 2019, the latter still pitching through bone spurs in his elbow more-or-less the entire year.
The depth beneath the active set of arms is, for the most part, uninspiring: Daniel Zamora and Tyler Bashlor remain works in progress, and Drew Smith‘s future post-Tommy John surgery remains unclear. Even with a strong front of the line, the Mets’ bullpen is effectively one underperformance and two injuries away from a stressful repeat of last season.
