The New York Mets took a some huge swings in previous off-seasons and they ultimately didn’t pan out for them.
Justin Verlander is gone. Max Scherzer is gone. On the bright side, Kodai Senga is entering just year two of a five year deal, and he showed that he can lead a rotation in his rookie campaign, posting a 2.98 ERA in 29 starts. Closer Edwin Díaz missed all of last season with an injury to his right knee, but he should be back and ready to go for 2024. If he’s right, that’s a huge addition to the roster.
Then, there are the actual signings the Mets have made this winter in Sean Manaea (two years, $28 million), Harrison Bader (one year, $10.5 million), Luis Severino (one year, $13 million), Joey Wendle (one year, $2 million) and Jorge López (one year, $2 million). These deals range from impactful to potential bounce back candidates, but there is a lot to like about the Mets offseason so far. There’s even been a couple of acquisitions via trade.
Can they catch the Atlanta Braves or Philadelphia Phillies in 2024? Probably not. But they should be improved over the 75-87 win team from a year ago. Let’s take a look at how these signings impact the roster.
New York Mets add arms
Sean Manaea is arguably the best under-the-radar signing of the group of pitchers the New York Mets have signed thus far. He posted a 4.44 ERA on the season, but in the second half that dropped to 3.43, roughly corresponding with the timing that he added a sweeper to his arsenal.
That sweeper had a 35.1% whiff rate, the highest of any of his pitches, while batters hit just .140 off the pitch. He also added two ticks of velocity to his four-seamer last year with the Giants after spending some of the off-season at Driveline. If Manaea’s newfound sweeper is the real deal, he could be a solid number three starter for the Mets in 2024.
Luis Severino hasn’t racked up a ton of innings the past five seasons, eclipsing 100 frames just once, in 2022 when he tossed 102 innings with a 3.18 ERA. This past season he held a 6.65 ERA across 89 1/3 innings. One reason for the rough season is that he has apparently been tipping his pitches. Andy Martino said that he’d heard Severino has about ten different tips, which is a lot. On SNY, former Mets reliever Jerry Blevins said he feels this is an easy fix that could be remedied by just moving his glove slightly to hide the ball from the first and third base coaches. If this issue is really this simple, then we could see a return to Sevvy’s career numbers, which included a 3.39 ERA heading into last season. Hopefully there will be more innings that go along with that production, too.
Then we have Jorge López, a right-handed reliever entering his age 31 season. While he has a career 5.51 ERA, one intriguing bit on López is that when he was with the Brewers for three seasons at the start of his career, he held a cumulative 3.69 ERA and seemed to have turned things around before he was traded to the Royals. New York Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns was with Milwaukee for that period of López’s career. That connection and familiarity with each other could pay dividends for the Mets in ’24. The righty also got hit hard by the long ball in 2023, giving up 12 homers compared to just four allowed in 2022. Playing his home games at Citi Field which has skewed pitcher friendly in recent years should help keep a few balls in the yard.
Adrian Houser is another player that Stearns has some familiarity with. Houser was drafted by the Houston Astros and traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, two of Stearns stops on the way to New York, but the right-hander was selected by Houston the year before Stearns arrived, and the Brewers traded for him just months before Stearns left Houston for Milwaukee. This is the first time that Stearns has actually brought Houser aboard.
That said, he holds a 4.00 career ERA and has been able to provide a decent amount of innings the past three seasons, including 111 1/3 in 2023. He’s a solid fifth option for the Mets. And they may not be done yet.
New York Mets target defense with offensive additions
The New York Mets have a plethora of solid bats in their lineup. The key for the team to have success will be to keep everyone healthy. That’s why the offensive additions may seem underwhelming at first glance, but when you look at what they can provide in the field, they could end up being cogs in the machine that help the whole thing go.
Harrison Bader is the Mets projected centerfielder coming off a season with the Yankees and Reds where he hit a combined .232 with a .274 OBP and a career-worst 70 wRC+ (100 is league average). Defensively though, Bader is one of the best in the game in center, finishing 2023 with nine Outs Above Average, which ranked seventh at the position. This will be a huge improvement for the Mets in 2024 after Brandon Nimmo finished at exactly league average and Rafael Ortega led the team with one OAA. Bader is projected for a bit of a bounceback offensively (93 wRC+) to pair with his excellent defense.
Joey Wendle is entering his age 34 season and gives the Mets their quota of three former Oakland A’s on the roster, following Mark Canha, Starling Marte, and Adam Kolarek last season and Canha, Marte, and Chris Bassitt in 2022. This year it will be Marte, Wendle, and Manaea doing that job.
In his two seasons with the Miami Marlins, Wendle was not good. He posted a wRC+ of 84 in 2022 and that dropped all the way down to 47 last season as he played shortstop. Over his career he has played consistently good defense at second base, but he has also seen time at short and third as well. The Mets are pretty well set at those three positions with Francisco Lindor, Jeff McNeill, and Brett Baty, but Wendle’s versatility should come in handy to give guys a day off here and there.
New York Mets projections offer hope for 2024
We’ve talked about what moves the team has made and what kind of an impact the New York Mets are hoping for from each, but let’s take a look at what the projections say. When you add up every departing player on the team from 2023, from Trevor Gott to Adam Ottavino to Carlos Carrasco, you get a total of 1.6 fWAR that is being lost. Those same 12 players are projected for a combined 1.8 fWAR, and 61% of that is from Carrasco’s 1.1 projection.
If you just take Severino (1.6), Bader (1.6) and Manaea (2.0), that’s a projected fWAR of 5.2 that has been added to the club. If you add in Wendle (0.4), López (0.2), Michael Tonkin (0.2), Austin Adams (0.2), you get another added win, for a total of 6.2 fWAR. Between what the team is losing in free agency and what they’ve already added this winter, that’s a difference of 4.4 WAR just on free agents.
Tyrone Taylor is projected for 0.7 WAR as a roughly league average bat, and Houser adds another 0.9 as a league average pitcher. That brings the total of WAR added to six. While “league average” may not be exciting, that is one underrated key to building up a winning roster. The more league average players you have to supplement the stars on the roster (of which the Mets have plenty), then the better the team as a whole will perform. The Angels struggled despite having two of the best players in baseball because they lacked those league average players to surround Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. The Mets aren’t going to make that same mistake.
Baseball isn’t played off of projections, and the wins and losses come on the field, but if you’re looking for a reason to get excited about New York Mets baseball in 2024, then those projections just may do the trick.