It’s beat a dead horse time!
The Mets’ plan coming into the year was to have five “lock” relievers and then use the final three spots as revolving doors, hoping that among their score of relievers with options that a handful of them would prove worthwhile. Then Edwin Diaz got hurt, meaning the club had four revolving doors instead of three. And not one option reliever with at least 10 IP has been any good. Here are the ugly numbers:
| Name | IP | ERA | G | GF | SV | H | R | ER | HR | BB | IBB | SO | HBP | BF | WHIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dominic Leone | 30.2 | 4.40 | 31 | 6 | 0 | 27 | 15 | 15 | 7 | 11 | 2 | 33 | 1 | 127 | 1.239 |
| Jeff Brigham | 29.2 | 5.16 | 32 | 7 | 0 | 18 | 18 | 17 | 6 | 13 | 0 | 33 | 5 | 124 | 1.045 |
| Stephen Nogosek | 25.2 | 5.61 | 13 | 1 | 0 | 28 | 16 | 16 | 6 | 14 | 0 | 25 | 2 | 118 | 1.636 |
| Grant Hartwig | 24.2 | 4.74 | 19 | 3 | 0 | 23 | 16 | 13 | 1 | 12 | 1 | 19 | 2 | 109 | 1.419 |
| Tommy Hunter | 23.2 | 6.85 | 14 | 6 | 0 | 28 | 20 | 18 | 6 | 5 | 0 | 20 | 2 | 106 | 1.394 |
| John Curtiss | 19.2 | 4.58 | 15 | 4 | 0 | 17 | 10 | 10 | 3 | 8 | 0 | 16 | 0 | 81 | 1.271 |
| Trevor Gott | 16.1 | 5.51 | 20 | 5 | 1 | 20 | 11 | 10 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 17 | 1 | 76 | 1.592 |
| Jimmy Yacabonis | 13.2 | 6.59 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 14 | 10 | 10 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 11 | 1 | 62 | 1.463 |
| Phil Bickford | 11.1 | 8.74 | 11 | 4 | 1 | 13 | 11 | 11 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 15 | 1 | 54 | 1.677 |
| Dennis Santana | 10.2 | 5.91 | 9 | 4 | 0 | 10 | 7 | 7 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 12 | 1 | 50 | 1.594 |
| Josh Walker | 10 | 8.10 | 14 | 2 | 0 | 12 | 11 | 9 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 48 | 1.8 |
| Totals | 216 | 5.67 | 136 |
And Reed Garrett and his 9.31 ERA doesn’t make the list, as he has only 9.2 IP. Even without Garrett, that’s 11 pitchers who are all below average, with eight of the 11 more than a full run worse than the MLB 4.18 average for relievers this season.
Now, you may be thinking, so what – all teams have relievers who aren’t very good. So, let’s look at the other NL East teams and see how many relievers they have with at least 10 IP and a below-average ERA:
ATL – Lucas Luetge (11.2 IP, 8.49 ERA), Ben Heller (14.1 IP, 4.40 ERA)
MIA – Devin Smeltzer (14.2 IP, 6.75 ERA), Matt Barnes (20.1 IP, 5.75 ERA), Dylan Floro (39.2 IP, 4.54 ERA), A.J. Puk (41.2, 4.32 ERA), Huascar Brazoban (56.2 IP, .29 ERA)
PHI – Andrew Bellati (18 IP, 4.50 ERA), Yunior Marte (35 IP, 5.14 ERA), Gregory Soto (47.2 IP, 4.72 ERA)
WSN – They have 11 and there’s little need to list them all. Nine of the 11 have an ERA over a full run worse than MLB average for relievers.
What’s clear is that all teams don’t have double digit relievers with below-average-MLB ERAs. No, only the teams that are really bad have that many who are that poor.
Before the trade deadline, the Mets had three relievers who were pretty good, which allowed them to convert the great majority of leads they had going into the seventh inning into wins. Where the crappy relievers mostly hurt was in games like Wednesday night, turning a close game into a rout. Now, with the Mets’ streaky offense, it may not have made much difference in the overall scheme of things.
But a team with money should never have a bullpen this bad.
One of many things that the Mets will have to do this offseason is to determine how much help they might get from their farm system from guys they can plug into their bullpen. And the farm system is a catch-all phrase here, meaning guys with MLB experience, too. Can they count on Tylor Megill and/or David Peterson to give them quality innings from the pen? What about Jose Butto and Nate Lavender?
In 2022, the average team got 592.2 IP out of their bullpen. If the Mets pencil in 65 IP apiece for Diaz, Adam Ottavino, Brooks Raley and Drew Smith – that’s 260 IP. They need to determine where the roughly 330 other innings are going to come from with their pen. Even if you want to write off 100 innings, that’s still 230 IP that we hope come from much better pitchers than we’ve seen in the Mets’ pen this year.
It seems like Billy Eppler’s plan was to get 325-something innings from his locks, write off 150 innings and then look to get in the neighborhood of 120 good innings from his option relievers. It seems like you should assemble your pen with the idea of getting 400-450 good innings if your guys stay healthy. And you need to shoot high because you know that injuries are going to hit. Last year it was Trevor May and Smith and this year it was Diaz.
My hope is that the 2024 Mets go to Spring Training with seven relievers they expect to make the Opening Day roster. That may mean signing three free agent relievers. Or it may be some combination of free agents and players like Butto or Peterson being counted as relievers from the start.
This past offseason, the Mets had so much work to do that you can almost forgive them for having the bullpen being an afterthought. There’s going to be a ton of work to do this upcoming offseason, too. But hopefully they give more attention to carrying a bullpen stocked with MLB-quality guys, rather than ones with a lifetime ERA of 6.00 or greater, just because they have options.
Yikes, thats just flat out brutal.
Hitting is a greater problem
Add starting pitching too.
The fact is the whole on field enterprise needs help, almost in equal measures.
In my humble and uneducated opinion, pitching is the largest Met issue now and going forward, and by quite a margin. Yes, there are hitting issues, but there aren’t as many holes to address. The starting pitching has gaping voids that will cost hundreds of millions to solve, but this article is about the bullpen. While bullpens are wildly inconsistent year to year, this should be the easiest portion of the team to assemble. Signing a couple of legit high leverage guys, moving Megill and/or Peterson into pen roles, and finding a guy or two on that list above that can take the next step (Hartwig?). Also, hopefully Montes de Oca recovers fully and can contribute in 2024.
Hopefully Eppler will learn from his 2023 pen miss.
Eppler’s strategy of three option relievers was it a failure. He compounded his mistake by not recognizing the mistake and didn’t adjust as a season progressed. One option reliever for the roster manipulation is good but three is a recipe for failure. Most of the season, the Mets did not have one (or two) long reliever /spot starter at on the active roster to eat innings. Lucchese should have been on the active roster for this role. He is a better pitcher than any of the pitchers in the above chart. At least he could have given the Mets average three innings of relief and saved the bullpen instead of using three different, below average, relievers .
All,
We will be using the Wednesday open thread to comment about all three games of the Angels series.
Also, we will use the 8/23 chatter for anyone looking to chat live time during this 3 set with California Angels.
Thanks for the update on this. Like any other addiction I got worried when there was no game chatter or recap – not that there was much to recap on outside of another great start by Senga.
Let’s not forget the Holderman trade for Vogelbach. Holderman is sporting a very respectable 3.20 ERA.
The Mets to upgrade the LHB DH at the time of the trade. At that time, Dom Smith had a 194/276/284/580. Vogelbach proceeded to have a 255/393/426/139 with the Mets, a marked Improvement from starter Smith. Meanwhile, Holderman was unproven rookie and their sixth option in the bullpen. For the Pirates, he had a 6.70 ERA and pitched only 10.2 innings until he was hurt. Deadline deals are for current needs but future needs , like Cespedes for Fullmer. So let us not forget the great deadline deal that Eppler made.
Yeah,the biggest problem is the hitting.
Can’t imagine how many potential wins were snatched away by the dreadful performance from our pen. I’m sure it was enough to prevent us from being 10 games better in the standings and therefore in wild card contention. If that was the case we would have been buyers at the deadline. The announcers pointed out what I have been saying the last three plus weeks – once you get past the first five in our order, there is no offense from the no-name gang. And even Alvarez in the five hole has been hitting less than my weight these past five weeks.
Big work ahead in the off season.
Boys,this team doesn’t hit,