NEW YORK — That age-old baseball lament — “You never have enough pitching” — could not ring more true for the Mets as they embark on their mission to end their 37-year championship drought.
Even before Edwin Diaz went down for the season with a torn patella in the World Baseball Classic, and lefty Jose Quintana, who they signed to replace Chris Bassitt in the rotation, went down with a lesion on his ribs, there were legitimate concerns about their two old aces, Max Scherzer (38) and Justin Verlander (40), making it all the way through to the end of October. And then — bang — there it was: the announcement on opening day in Miami that Verlander was suffering from a low-grade strain of the teres major muscle in his armpit area and will have his Mets debut delayed indefinitely. After spending over a half billion this winter — $214 million alone on Diaz, Verlander and Quintana — in the effort to overtake the Braves in National League East and hopefully go on to win the first Mets World Series since 1986, Steve Cohen is quickly learning this hard lesson about pitching in baseball.
The Mets’ season is not over before it ever started, but it sure has been compromised.
Assuming Verlander gets back in a reasonable amount of time, it does not change the fact that the Mets’ rotation is loaded with questions: How long before Scherzer’s oblique — which sidelined him twice in 2022 — flares up again? Will Carlos Carrasco, with a history of injuries these past couple of years, hold up for a full season? How good is Kodai Senga? Is David Peterson finally ready to assume the role of a dependable No. 4-5 starter?
In the case of Senga, to whom Cohen paid $75 million to lure from Japan last winter, and Peterson, the 2017 No. 1 draft pick, who impressed this spring with a perfect 12 shutout innings, they need to pitch well from the get-go with Verlander down. In the meantime, perhaps in anticipation of injuries to the starting rotation, Mets GM Billy Eppler moved aggressively to re-build the Mets bullpen this offseason, signing 37-year-old David Robertson for $10 million, Adam Ottavino for two years, $14.5 million, trading for Brooks Raley and claiming right-hander Dennis Santana off waivers from the Twins and Sam Coonrad from the Phillies. In addition, there is John Curtiss, whom Eppler signed to a two-year deal last year knowing he was going to miss all of 2022 with Tommy John surgery.
Other than Robertson and Ottavino, none of them are exactly household names, cast-offs all, and very similar to the philosophy of the Tampa Bay Rays who, despite consistently having among the lowest payrolls in baseball, have been to the postseason four years in a row, twice winning the AL East, largely on the strength of a deep, nondescript bullpen.
Last year, the Rays’ primary bullpen crew, Jason Adam, Colin Poche, Shawn Armstrong, Raley, Ryan Thompson and Jalen Beeks combined for a 3.31 ERA with 370 strikeouts in 304 innings. Their combined salary was $7.95 million and they all had three things in common: They threw hard, they threw strikes and they all were acquired on the cheap from other teams. Raley, at $4.2 million through arbitration, was the only one of them making over $1 million, which is probably why the Rays elected to trade him to the Mets for a promising left-handed Class A pitching prospect, Keyshawn Askew.
Remember it was the Rays, when faced with injuries to their starting rotation a few years ago, came up with the “opener” concept in which they used multiple relievers to piece together victories. For the most part it worked and the last couple of years they simply modified it by limiting the innings of their starters and using 3-4 relievers to get through the games. One can imagine manager Buck Showalter likewise using multiple relievers for many games this year.
With Verlander presumably replacing Jacob deGrom in the rotation, Showalter still has to fill the combined 239 innings left from departed free agents Bassitt and Taijuan Walker — which is why it is essential that Senga, who only twice surpassed 150 innings in Japan, emerges as a solid No. 3 workhorse behind Scherzer and Verlander. Meanwhile, after losing Diaz, Quintana and now Verlander for an unspecified time, the Mets, above all, can certainly be justified believing you never have enough pitching.
