Reese Kaplan -- As the Dust Settles It Was a Good July for POBO

Well, come Tuesday morning when I posted about Stearns cutting his losses by jettisoning players who no longer fit the plans moving forward we didn’t know who was coming on board to replace them.

The Adrian Houser DFA news was a bit surprising giving their mutual Milwaukee history together, but his outright release had more to do with saving money on the rest of his paycheck as opposed to him refusing an assignment to AAA.  Still, it was a headline not many of us would have predicted, presuming that Stearns would have paid down and found a willing trade partner to take Houser. 

Ty Adcock, well, we didn’t see enough of him to draw conclusions one way or the other.  His games and 4.1 innings pitched resulted in a 14.54 ERA but to be fair it’s a bit unfair to judge a player based upon such a small sample size.  Still, he wasn’t exactly lighting up headlines in Syracuse either, having gone potentially one of the worst 3.21 ERAs you’ve ever seen.  

In 14 innings of work he gave up 20 hits, struck out 15 but walked 7.  That worked out to a WHIP of 1.93.  Sorry, but if that’s your IMPROVED minor league performance compared to other stops along the climb to the majors, then it’s not a surprise he was let go to make room for others needing to be added to the 40-man roster.

Of all of the moves made by David Stearns this midway period, the one that probably caught a number of people off guard was the Marlins’ old rookie last year by the name of Huascar Brazoban who debuted for Florida at age 32.  In 27 games in the 2022 season he finished with a 3.09 ERA which led him to a more prominent role in 2023.  That year he was in 57 games and while the ERA climbed by a full run, his WHIP improved.  

This season has been his best as the now 34 year old beanpole (6’3 and 155 pounds!) has a 2.84 ERA, a WHIP a hair over 1.00 and a 3:1 strikeout to walk ratio.  The best part is the Mets control him not just for the remainder of 2024, but for 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028 before becoming eligible to be a free agent in 2029.  Oh yeah, he earns under $800K.  Say what you will about Phil Maton, Ryne Stanek, Matt Gage or Jesse Winker...this deal looks like the hidden gem of them all.

As the Mets continue their quest for October baseball there are a number of players still on the roster that people earlier in the season (myself included) were fairly certain would be wearing different uniforms come August.  Free agents-to-be Pete Alonso, J.D. Martinez, Harrison Bader, Luis Severino, Jose Quintana and opt-out candidate Sean Manaea are still listening to Jose Iglesias sing OMG while they are in the locker room.   

While the reluctance to break up what’s currently working makes sense as they continue to fight for a postseason berth, there will come a time at year’s end when either a lot of new contracts will have to be written or a lot of frequent flyer miles will be earned as folks head out of town. 

No one told David Stearns it was going to be easy, but right now I think he hit that almost perfect balance between buying and preserving the pieces that got him to where they are right now.  We have two months to evaluate how well that strategy worked and then post World Series comes a possible mass exodus.  The business of baseball is never boring.