Reese Kaplan -- Muddling Through With the Available Pitching

The Mets repeated the Michael Tonkin maneuver this week when they reacquired DFA´d pitcher Yohan Ramirez when the Orioles had seen enough and cut him loose.  To make room for him the Mets took early injured starting pitcher Max Kranick off the roster and set him free to make room for Ramirez.  With no options remaining Ramirez needs to come to the big club immediately and that means another body hitting the exit door from Queens. 

As a gambling man it would seem to me that Cole Sulser is the most likely to get his ticket punched after a surprising promotion from Syracuse.  He was not posting impressive numbers there and apparently they felt the less-than-spectacular Ramirez might offer up better innings in the majors, hence his Mets roster arrival part deux. 

With the bullpen temporarily set, the next issue for the Mets front office and manager Carlos Mendoza to tackle is the starting rotation.  Right now they have made the at least temporary move of granting Christian Scott a spot in the starting rotation to join Luis Severino, Sean Manaea, Jose Quintana and Jose Butto. 

Expected back relatively quickly is starting pitcher Tylor Megill who despite a strong start to his 2024 preseason has never established himself as a consistent force out of the pen nor in the rotation.  Health has often been a fragility for Megill and to be fair when a pitcher is not at 100% physically he may start altering arm angle, velocity or spin rate which can adversely affect output.  As a guy with career mid 4.50 ERA type stuff, he´d be welcome if what little was seen in the first few weeks in February and early March was indeed for real.

Following him would be southpaw David Peterson.  Given the Brooks Raley long term absence from the bullpen, it is entirely possible Peterson is more suited to joining Jake Diekman out there for left handed capability than the starting rotation.  He is also not renowned for his durability nor better than replacement level performance.  Again, when things go south on your pitching staff you tend to make due with whatever you have available.

The third member of the missing mound trio is the ace-in-waiting Kodai Senga.  He has been on the 60-day IL as well and they would want to ensure he is both healthy and throwing with the kind of quality he demonstrated during his 2023 rookie season.  Given his health and his track record in Japan of working as part of a six-man rotation, it has already been discussed by Mendoza that the Mets may indeed be moving in this direction for the foreseeable future both as a hedge for health and because they are not exactly offering up multiple Cy Young Award winners in the front or back of the staff.

There are some other interesting arms in the Mets system but none that seem ready to push their way onto Citifield.  It may be that this patchwork collection of pitchers nursing poor reputations or health issues may be what the Mets use until the July trade deadline when it may come time to see if any of the players with short term financial obligations may be dangled as trade bait.  

For now the Mets are seeing more good than bad from many of their pitchers with the notable exception of Adrian Houser.  You can´t really form much of an opinion on late arrival Sulser but he is not likely to be here more than another day or so anyway.  The arriving cavalry is lead by Senga and buttressed by previous less-than-stalwarts Megill and Peterson.  For now the fans probably are more interested in innings by Butto and Scott.