The New York Mets have yet to make a big splash this offseason. But they have made a flurry of small moves, to improve their depth.
One of them, was acquiring reliever Jorge Lopez, to improve their vaunted bullpen.
Lopez played for three teams in 2023, with the Minnesota Twins, Miami Marlins and Baltimore Orioles respectively. With those three teams combined, Lopez was 6-2 with a 5.96 ERA in 61 games.
However, in 2022 with the Orioles and Twins, he was 4-7 with a 2.54 ERA and 23 saves in 29 opportunities. He was an All Star that year after pitching to a 1.62 ERA with 17 saves in the first half for the O’s.
So it was only two seasons ago when Lopez was an All Star closer. If he can recapture his 2022 form, this would be a steal acquisition for the Mets and it would be a huge boost in their bullpen. Lopez would not be needed to close games with Edwin Diaz coming back next year. So Lopez could possibly be a set up man or pitch in the 7th inning with a lead.
Out of all the small signings the Mets made this offseason, the Lopez could turn out to be the best, if he can somehow turn back the clock on 2022.
The common denominator on all the signings is velocity. All of these guys throw hard. Stearns was upfront about his goal to get more velocity in the Mets bullpen and right now he’s just adding names left and right. I don’t know how many major league contracts he will give but he is signing guys that throw hard and sending them to the pitching lab. That’s the plan right now, it appears. As we have noted, Stearns told us that the Mets relievers only threw 4 fastballs over 96mph; by contrast, the Phillies threw close to 1,600.
Which is funny because multiple times The Athletic has tried to tell us that the problem with the relievers last year is that their repertoires were too similar.
These low level acquisitions seem reasonable and they do matter, but it’s tough to stay interested with the Dodgers adding Ohtani and now Glasnow, and just making themselves all the more appealing to YY.
I like a lot of this bits and pieces added to our organization, as they create good spring training opportunities to bring in better arms to the pen and bench players. But we’ve added no one thus far to the starting roster. We are clearly not a piece or two away from a championship caliber team and need that just to secure a playoff spot without an early departure. If I were YY I’d sign with the Dodgers, clearly the cream of the crop and a near guarantee to get to the playoffs. Do we need to resign ourselves to the fact that free agents are not dying to be part of a Citifield rebuild? We have a questionable pen, need a big bat in the lineup and oh yes, only have two solid starters, with one of them, Quintana, being on the wrong side of 30 who was injured for much of last season. It’s still December, but I’m starting to get that look to 2025 feeling especially with how strong the Braves and Phillies are. Time for Stearns to show us what a whiz kid he is.