Taking Stock Of The Current State Of The Mets’ Bullpen

The New York Mets entered the offseason with several pressing needs. Despite not making any major splashes, president of baseball operations, David Stearns, and staff have slowly added and improved the roster. One of the areas that was, and still is, desperately needing help is the team’s bullpen.

In 2023, the Mets bullpen posted an ERA of 4.45, the 22nd-ranked mark in the major leagues. The unit also held the second-lowest total WAR, only better than the Oakland Athletics. They walked the eight-most, allowed the seventh-most home runs, and overall combined to be one of the worst bullpens in baseball. This unit desperately needed a makeover.

Getting Edwin Díaz back from his freak season-ending injury is a start, as for the rest of the unit, how do they currently stack up?

Edwin Díaz

As mentioned, getting Díaz back from his season-ending freak knee injury at the World Baseball Classic should do wonders in improving the bullpen for 2024. Healthy, Díaz is one of the best, if not the best, closer in all of baseball. He had a historic 2022 where he was an All-Star and posted a career-best 1.31 ERA across 62 innings. He struck out an absurd 118 and only walked 18 batters.

Díaz and his 0.90 FIP turned in one of the best seasons a Mets’ reliever has ever had. That marked his third-straight impressive season with the Mets in a row, after struggling mightily in 2019. Rewarded with a five-year extension before hurting his knee at the World Baseball Classic, expect a big year for the right-handed closer in 2024, instantly propelling the Mets’ bullpen to a much-better position than they were in during the 2023 season.

Brooks Raley

After being acquired by the Mets in December of 2022, left-handed reliever Brooks Raley has established himself as one of the better left-handed bullpen options in the league. In his first season with New York, Raley posted a 2.80 ERA and 61 strikeouts across 54 2/3 innings. The former Tampa Bay Ray posted an xBA and an xERA above the league’s 82nd percentile and did a terrific job of limiting hard contact (96th percentile hard-hit rate and 95th percentile average exit velocity). Each components of his game he excelled with while in Tampa Bay and Houston prior coming to New York.

Entering the 2024 season, the 35-year-old Raley projects as one of the strongest left-handed options in baseball.

Drew Smith

The highly-scrutinized Drew Smith turned in the poorest season of his career after two quality years in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Smith posted a 4.15 ERA and a walk rate in the league’s 10th percentile. The 11.9% walk rate was by far the highest of his career. Despite this, he still posted a relatively strong xBA of .224 that ranked in the league’s 74th percentile and his fastball owned a run value in the league’s 82nd percentile. However, the walk issues, and inopportune home runs allowed were too much for Smith to make up in 2023.

With the walk issues in check, Smith would have looked much more the part of the 2.40 and 3.33 ERA, respectively, pitcher he was in 2021 and 2022. He still projects to have a strong fastball, and with a much-stronger defense behind him in 2024, has the chance to regain that form again. However, his career 4.43 FIP and an xERA that has resided in the high-3.00 range at his best indicates Smith would be better utilized as a lower-leverage option rather than used in higher-leverage situations like he was during his down 2023 season.

Jorge López

Jorge López was one of the plethora of minor moves the Mets have made thus far this offseason. The hard-throwing, right-handed reliever signed a one-year deal worth $2 million back in December. The 2022 All-Star brings a plethora of risk, but at his best can be a steal for New York.

In that 2022 season, López posted a sparkling 2.54 ERA across 71 innings in his first full year as a reliever. However, things quickly unraveled and he reflected more of the 5.51 career ERA pitcher he has shown to be prior to becoming a reliever in 2022. He posted a 5.95 ERA appearing with three different teams in 2023. López gave up a ton of hard contact (seventh percentile hard-hit rate and average exit velocity) resulting in an xBA and xERA below the league’s 13th percentile. An extreme difference from his 2022 season where he allowed a minimal amount of hard contact.

It is an extremely hard ask to project what López will be in 2024. Will he be the All-Star he was in 2022 in his first full year as a reliever? Or the disaster that was the 2023 season? He has two complete polar-opposite results in two years as a reliever. However, one thing for certain is López is going to throw hard (90th percentile fastball velocity in 2023) and generate a ton of ground balls (97th percentile ground ball rate in 2022 and 73rd percentile in 2023).

Michael Tonkin

Michael Tonkin, another major-league signing from this offseason, threw 80 innings for the Atlanta Braves in 2023. The six-foot-seven, right-handed reliever had largely mixed results in 2023 as his 4.28 ERA and 4.43 FIP indicate. A deeper dive into his underlying metrics paint a slightly-below average to average season.

On the good end of the spectrum his 3.90 xERA ranked in the league’s 60th percentile and indicated he experienced some bad luck with the Braves. Additionally, Tonkin is a sinker-slider pitcher and each pitch ranked above the league’s 50th percentile when looking at run value in 2023. Lastly, he held a walk rate that was in the league’s 70th percentile. An area the Mets’ bullpen struggled with mightily last season.

The 2023 season was the first year Tonkin appeared in the big leagues since 2017. Over his five-year run with Minnesota, Tonkin posted a 4.43 ERA and 95 ERA+. Like López, Tonkin is an extremely hard pitcher to project given last year was the first he was back in the majors in quite sometime. From his 2018 through 2022 run outside the majors, Tonkin had strong results across several different levels of the minor-league system. He owns a career minor-league ERA of 3.05 with seasons of 1.21 and 3.17 in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

Austin Adams

The last of the new reliever options the Mets signed to a major-league deal this offseason is 32-year-old Austin Adams. Adams spent parts of the last three seasons with the San Diego Padres. In all, he posted a 3.97 ERA across 59 innings to go along with a staggering 85 strikeouts.

Adams most prominent season in the big leagues was 2021 where he threw 52 2/3 innings posting a 4.10 ERA with 76 strikeouts. His xBA in that season of .164 ranked in the league’s 99th percentile. He also did a great job at limiting hard contact posting a hard-hit rate also in the league’s 99th percentile. The only aspect that held him back that season, and has done so a majority of his career, is a woeful walk rate of 14.5%, a second-percentile ranking.

Adam’s career walk rate of 14.6% is much higher than the league average of 8.5% and is one of the main reasons he has yet to establish himself as consistent major leaguer. If he is able to work that out, even slightly, he has a chance to do a lot of good work for the Mets.

Even just last season, Adam’s posted extremely strong hard-hit rates and expected statistics in a very limited sample size. Of all the acquisitions New York has made this offseason, Adams is an extremely underrated and intriguing option.

Other Options

The six above analyzed relievers are almost certain to factor into the Opening Day bullpen. Given teams usually carry at least eight relievers, there are still a couple more open spots. The Mets’ main goal should be to address these externally, as the unit still needs some higher-leverage options. However, if they do not, let’s look at some of the internal options.

Several of the potential options are individuals who appeared for the team last year; Grant Hartwig, Phil Bickford, Josh Walker, Sean Reid-Foley, and Reed Garrett. However, all but Reid-Foley (7 2/3 innings, 3.52 ERA) posted xERAs over 4.29 in 2023, with most being close to 5.00. Additionally, New York traded for 28-year-old Yohan Ramírez who has 124 relief innings under his belt with a career 3.99 ERA and 5.04 FIP.

The Mets also have some non-40-man roster prospects that may get a look. Examples of these are right-hander Paul Gervase (2.05 ERA and 96 strikeouts across 57 total minor league innings last season), left-hander Nate Lavender (2.98 ERA and 86 strikeouts over 54 1/3 total minor league innings last season), and the rehabbing right-hander Bryce Montes de Oca.

Meanwhile, they also have the following veteran right-handed relievers who were added to the organization via minor-league deals or camp invites: Kyle Crick (3.56 career ERA), Cole Sulser (3.87 career ERA), Chad Smith (7.71 career ERA), Andre Scrubb (career 5.26 FIP).