The amazing start of John Curtiss in Grapefruit League action

Kodai Senga was supposed to start for the Mets Saturday night but instead he was sidelined with a sore right index finger. The Mets were forced to scramble and chose reliever John Curtiss to start the game in Senga’s place. Curtiss hurled a shutout frame and ran his scoreless streak in Grapefruit League play to four innings. While the Mets have given no indication who will claim the final three bullpen spots for the Opening Day roster, it’s looking like Curtiss might have the inside track for one of the openings.

Curtiss joined the Mets last season, as the club gave him a two-year contract despite the fact that he was going to miss all of 2022 while recovering from TJ surgery. Fully healthy now, Curtiss has been absolutely dominating in the small sample of Spring Training appearances. In 4 IP, he has allowed 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB and has 8 Ks.

And as impressive as that line reads, it doesn’t really do justice to how overpowering Curtiss has been this Spring. Here are his pitch-by-pitch logs in his four outings to date:

In four appearances, Curtiss has thrown 39 pitches and only five of those went for a called ball. That’s an incredible statistic but it might not be the most impressive one we can see in the above chart. Curtiss has induced 18 swings-and-misses. Whiff% is defined as swinging strikes per swing. Curtiss has thrown five balls and has six called strikes so far in his four appearances. That leaves 28 pitches that batters have offered at and they’ve missed 18 times, for a 64.3 Whiff%.

It may be hard to grasp the significance of that number. For context, Edwin Diaz had a 54.7 Whiff% on his slider last year and a 41.2 Whiff% on his fastball.

So, without a doubt, we can’t really compare what Diaz did in a full season versus MLB hitters to what Curtiss has done against the Quad-A hitters in a typical Grapefruit League contest. And it’s only four games. But for a guy who hasn’t pitched since August of 2021, this is beyond good results – it’s virtually impossible for him to have been any better.

Curtiss has essentially been a two-pitch guy in his MLB career, throwing a mid-90s fastball and a slider. Ben Clemens of FanGraphs wrote a nice piece on Curtiss back in June of 2021. In the piece, Clemens detailed how Curtiss made a giant leap forward by throwing his slider for strikes, rather than trying to get hitters to chase the pitch out of the strike zone. Previously, Curtiss had a big problem with walks. In his first three years in the majors, Curtiss had a 4.7 BB/9. But in 2020-21, he cut his walk rate to 1.9 over 69.1 IP before coming down with the UCL tear.

The early Spring Training results show him continuing to pound the strike zone. And in a game where we had Statcast pitch-by-pitch results complete with pitch identification, which we don’t have for every Spring contest, we saw a cutter work its way into Curtiss’ repertoire.

There are many relievers performing well for the Mets so far in Grapefruit League play. Curtiss is one of 13 pitchers in camp for the Mets to have thrown at least 2 IP without allowing a run. Some of those are other relievers ahead of him in the pecking order, like Adam Ottavino and Drew Smith. Others are guys further away, like Nathan Lavender, who aren’t really in the competition for a bullpen spot.

But while others can match his ERA, they can’t touch Curtiss’ WHIP or Whiff%.

So much is made about the nine-digit contracts handed out by Steve Cohen and the Mets this offseason. And while that certainly is a big story, the Mets have flexed their financial muscle in other ways, too. Curtiss was declared a free agent in November of 2021 and did not sign a contract until April of 2022. The other 29 clubs had ample opportunity to sign him but simply chose not to do so. The Mets paid the freight and now seem in line to reap the benefits for their patience and their foresight.