The New York Mets formally welcomed right-hander Dellin Betances to the organization on Thursday morning at Citi Field in Flushing with great fanfare.
Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen led off the ceremonies dubbing the 31-year-old “one of the most accomplished and dominant relief pitchers in Major League Baseball”, before expanding on the steps that were taken to secure Betances’ services for (at least) the 2020 season.
“I want to take a couple of minutes here to talk about our signing process. In part, because I think it demonstrates and illustrates that three things can be a good recipe for success — persistence, collaboration, and creativity. When those three things are combined with a group of motivated people, good things can happen.”
Noting that the courtship of the former Yankees stalwart began in November (newly minted Mets manager Carlos Beltran was spotted in Sao Paulo, Brazil with Betances early that month, for what it’s worth), Van Wagenen admitted that the Mets were not the only suitors vying for the imposing righty and that — as Betances’ agents told Van Wagenen — “this process was not going to be a fast one”.
As Betances and his team weighed their ample options, the Mets went about their offseason plans. But, as per Van Wagenen, the Mets front office kept coming back to Betances as a seemingly perfect fit for their beleaguered yet overwhelmingly talented bullpen. And, apparently, this was a concerted effort from not just Mets brass, but players and coaches, as well.
“We knew [following the Winter Meetings] that we had to make one final pitch,” Van Wagenen said. “We had to make one final pursuit to see if we could somehow be the winning bid within the Dellin sweepstakes. What that did was it launched a four-day period of time of an intense process.”
“Carlos Beltran, [Mets pitching coach] Jeremy Hefner, Robinson Cano, Jeff Wilpon — our COO — and even Jared Faust, one our [research and development] analysts, all made calls and presentations to Dellin [and his agents] to try to ultimately make a pitch on why we were the right team and why this was the best opportunity for Dellin going forward.”
Beltran and Cano — both former Yankees, themselves — surely got into their former teammate’s ear early on. From there, the Mets did their best to cover all their bases. And (for the first time in a long time) their wooing worked.
“Simultaneously, Jeff [Wilpon], David Cohen — our executive vice president and in-house general counsel — and I bunkered down and had a lock-down, 72-hour session of brainstorming ideas — effectively trying to come up with one way to walk out of the situation with Dellin.”
Clearly, the Mets — as an organization, apparently — got the job done. And it couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.
With a surplus of talent littered throughout their relief corps in Edwin Diaz, Seth Lugo, Jeurys Familia, Justin Wilson, et al, plus given the fleeting nature of any MLB bullpen’s overall performance, a reinforcement of Betances’ caliber has the potential to put this group — and quite possibly this team — over the top in the National League East. We’re all too familiar with the pitfalls of a porous relief corps.
As per Betances’ portion of the press conference, the hulking right-hander — still recovering from the partial tear in his left Achilles tendon suffered in September at Toronto (his only appearance of the 2019 season) — is aiming to be healthy for Spring Training in Port St. Lucie next month.
Getting Betances — who’s pitched to a 2.36 ERA (2.31 FIP) with 621 strikeouts (14.64 per nine innings), 170 walks, and 11.3 wins above replacement (FanGraphs) over his seven-plus season career for $10.5 million guaranteed ($5.3 million signing bonus, $2.2 million base salary) in 2020 with a $6 million player option for 2021 — is huge for the Mets.
Getting a healthy and hungry Betances (at 31, his next free agent contract could very well be his last) could be the magic combination of factors in capitalizing on an opportunity that, throughout the process, appeared to be tailor-made for both team and player. Again, absolutely huge.
The Mets can be proud of the fact they came together and addressed a dire need on their roster with the signing of Delling Betances. If all goes to plan, this could be the move we look back on next fall as the one that made all the difference. That’s a big if, but not as big as it was before Dellin was in the mix.
