Last year on August 30th, Sandy Alderson made a trade to get former closer Addison Reed from the Arizona Diamondbacks for minor league pitchers Matt Koch and Miller Diaz. The move was met with much of the same criticism as an offseason free agent signing to a minor league deal.
Reed got the save for Arizona on Opening Day in 2015 after finishing the prior season with 32 saves despite a 4.25 earned run average. It was mostly downhill for Reed after that with the league hitting .313/.376/.505 against him from April 10th to June 20th. The D’Backs had seen enough and optioned him to the Triple-A Reno Aces.
Being sent to the minors seemed to rejuvenate Reed who posted a 1.74 ERA and struck out 11 in 10.1 innings for the Aces which led to him getting recalled by the D’Backs on July 29th. From July 29th through August 27th, Reed pitched well for Arizona with a 1.65 ERA and held opponents to a .625 OPS in 16.1 innings.
Then the Mets pounced on the buy low candidate giving up only a 24-year old failed starter in Koch (did pitch better in B-Mets bullpen) and another failed starter in Diaz who had a 1.46 WHIP for St. Lucie. Basically, two non-prospects for a guy who had previous success in the back end of a Major League bullpen.
On September 8th, 2015, Reed came into a 7-7 game against the Washington Nationals to pitch the seventh inning with Bryce Harper leading off. He would strike out two (including Harper) in the scoreless inning and a Kirk Nieuwenhuis home run off Jonathan Papelbon made him the winning pitcher.
From that night on he became the Mets seventh inning guy in front of setup man Tyler Clippard and closer Jeurys Familia. He would end up allowing only two runs in 15.2 innings (1.17 ERA) with the Mets to close out the 2015 regular season. In that span he struck out 17 while giving up 11 hits.
What would Reed do for an encore in his first full season with the Mets? How about set the team record for lowest FIP (1.97) in a single season by a Mets reliever, breaking Rick Aguilera‘s previous record (2.01) set in 1989. His FIP was also sixth best in the majors for reliever in 2016 and his 1.97 ERA was 10th.
Reed also notched a 2.6 fWAR which was tied with Swung Hwan Oh for fifth best in the majors behind only Kenley Jansen, Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances. His 7.00 K/BB ratio was good enough for sixth among relievers this year and by far the best of his career.
A big part of his success came from the career high groundball percentage (57.4%) he got from his slider in 2016. Reed also found success in pounding the strike zone this year with the third highest strike percentage (71.8%) of any pitcher that threw at least 40 innings.
The combination of Reed and Familia has become one of the best in baseball which helped the Mets go 75-6 when leading after 7 innings this season. Not only has the duo been effective, but they’ve also combined to throw 289.1 innings over the past two regular seasons.
Reed is under contract for one more season to continue dominating the eighth inning and I would like to thank Sandy Alderson for that.
