TRADE NEWS: Mets have splashed out $91,000 to complete the deal of a top pitcher.
These three have done much better with the Mets than they did with the clubs they played for in 2023.
Two months into the New York Mets season and things haven’t exactly gone the way we wanted them to. The team is average at best. However, if there is something positive to take from the first two months it’s how well several of the free agent signings have done.
The Mets were keen to sign players to short-term deals with just one year of guaranteed money. Plucking from a pool of many players in need of a rebound campaign, they’ve lucked out.
These three Mets free agent signings have been excellent for the ball club after a disastrous 2023 season.
1) Luis Severino
Last year couldn’t have gone much worse for Luis Severino. In 18 starts and a relief appearance he was 4-8 with a 6.65 ERA. Add this to the track record of injuries and he wasn’t the most appealing free agent pickup the Mets could make.
Go figure. Severino has been excellent. He has carried no-hitters late into games twice. Through 10 starts he’s 2-2 with a 3.22 ERA.
Perhaps a little more evolved, Severino isn’t a big strikeout pitcher, fanning batters at a rate of 7.7 per 9. His walks are also up. With the New York Yankees, he walked hitters at a rate of 2.8 per 9. He’s at 4 per 9 with the Mets this season.
The number of home runs he has given up is one of the biggest differences. The rate rose to 2.3 per 9 last year versus just 0.6 per 9 this season—half of where his career total was as a member of the Yankees. Severino is the owner of a groundball rate of 51.5% this season with line drives at 15.8%. He isn’t getting by with a whole lot of luck. A gutsy performer and not one to make excuses, the big shame of this free agent signing could end up being that it was only for one year.
2) Sean Manaea
The year Sean Manaea had in 2023 wasn’t nearly as disastrous as Severino. However, with the San Francisco Giants demoting him to a relief role at one point, he still had a hill to climb.
Maybe the haircut did help. Jacob deGrom became a new pitcher when he removed his locks. Manaea seems to be following suit.
Last year with the Giants included 10 starts and 27 relief appearances. Manaea would go 7-6 with a 4.44 ERA in 117.2 innings. For the Mets, he’s doing much better. Now 3-1 with a 3.16 ERA after 10 starts and 51.1 innings, he’s yielding much better results even with an uptick in walks and fewer strikeouts per 9.
Again, avoiding the home run ball has helped Manaea tons. Just 0.5 per 9 versus the 1.2 for his career and 1.1 per 9 he had last season, keeping the ball in the yard is making a difference.
It has been a couple of rough years for Manaea. His ERA ballooned up to a career-worst 4.96 as a member of the San Diego Padres in 2022. Although he remained in the rotation for all but two appearances, he has had to resort to pillow contracts over the last two seasons. The Mets did include a player option for 2025. However, with the way he has pitched, Manaea should be able to get more than $13.5 million guaranteed.
3) Harrison Bader
Ah, Harrison Bader. A sneaky good pickup by the Mets, it wasn’t always going this well for him. The year is young but we hold our breath in hopes that what he has offered the Amazins thus far in 2024 is not the result of a small sample size.
Bader has appeared in 49 games for the Mets and totaled up 167 plate appearances. Slashing .273/.329/.351 along the way, he has hit lightly but often. His .680 OPS remains unimpressive but a lot of it has to do with the lack of power he has shown. Only 6 doubles and 2 home runs have contributed to increasing a slugging percentage that is 40 points below his career total. On the 2024 Mets, we still accept these numbers.
The output is a bit atypical of Bader who had some ups and downs with the St. Louis Cardinals in his half-decade there. The 2023 season was his first not wearing Cardinals red at all. It would turn out to be one of his weaker seasons. The .622 OPS he’d finish with was a career low.
But there were more troubling stats. He slashed .232/.274/.348 for the year—each is below his career total. He suffered a complete outage in his 34 plate appearances with the Cincinnati Reds, batting .161/.235/.194 for the playoff hopeful club. He was one of a large number of players who passed through waivers last season late as MLB teams scrambled to knock whatever salary they could off the books. The poor conclusion for Bader with the Reds added with the constant injuries with the New York Yankees and overall poor numbers made him an afterthought in free agency.
It turns out he is having one of the better seasons among center field free agents. There might not be a huge contract coming his way next offseason, but Bader has undoubtedly proven he belongs in a major league starting lineup.
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