Reese Kaplan -- Forgotten Lefty Reliever Coming Home Next Month

In between people haranguing about the blown Rays series and the ever increasing list of players on the IL it felt as if it would be a great time for good news to hit the Mets universe.  No, it’s not a positive story about Sean Manaea, a finally credible outing from Frankie Montas, a celebration of Paul Blackburn stepping up to fill in for Kodai Senga.  None of those fantasies have become reality.

This time the story is about the club’s ongoing need for a left handed reliever after having lost A.J. Minter and Danny Young for the season, then having auditioned any number of others without much track record of success in the hopes that magic would somehow happen and transform one of them into a southpaw savior.

A blast from the past who was brought in as a feel-good story but at the same time a long term gamble that evolved when the Mets extended a 2025 free agent contract to a still injured but recovering Brooks Raley.  Most fans remember when Raley was added to the Mets roster back in 2023.  At the time he was sort of an afterthought to folks who were not all that well versed in the outer fringes of the the Tampa roster.

Brooks Raley at the time was a 34 year old pitcher most folks didn’t know.  His whole career was bizarre.  He started off as a routine 24 year old in the Cubs organization in 2012 for an ugly cup of coffee worth 5 big league games.  That was then followed by a 9 game follow up at age 25.  Then he was out of the major leagues for the next 7 years.  

When he returned to the majors in 2020, it was split between the Reds and the Astros.  The numbers were not great.  In 21 games he became far less hittable and maintained an excellent WHIP, but with a 4.95 ERA in the majors he was not setting the world on fire.

In 2021 Houston brought him back as a key workhorse in their pen.  He was in 58 games and while he didn’t suck, he really didn’t shine either.  He was a bit more hittable and his walks increased as well.  The ERA for that season was 4.78.  They had apparently seen enough.

Now Tampa has a reputation of finding diamonds in the rough and by taking a chance on Raley at age 33 was a test of how well their coaches and labs could reach to extract better output from the now aging lefty.  Something obviously clicked because for the first time in his major league career he put together enviable numbers.  In 60 games he finished the season with a 2.68 ERA, a WHIP of just 0.969 and a strikeout to walk ratio of 4:1. 

When the winter meetings between the 2022 and 2023 seasons took place, the Rays looked at the four quality southpaws in their bullpen and probably figured banking on the younger pitchers made sense so Raley became the odd man out.  The Mets offered up prospect Keyshawn Askew who now at age 25 hasn’t advanced beyond AA.

For the Mets, Raley showed that his 2022 season in Tampa was not a one-time thing.  In 2023 the WHIP crept a little higher as did the number of walks, but over 66 games he delivered a 2.80 ERA for the folks who called Citifield home.  Unfortunately in 2024 he appeared in just 8 games had a perfect 0.00 ERA having given up just 2 hits in 7 innings pitched before he went down in need of Tommy John surgery.  

Come April of 2025 David Stearns and his boss Steve Cohen took a roll of the dice and coughed up a modest $1.85 million contract to Brooks Raley in the hopes that at age 37 when he returned from recovery he could once again show the same skill he put on display for 2+ seasons in a row.  

News arrived Monday night that Raley is progressing from the injury ward to taking the field.  

He begins his rehab appearances in A ball for up to 30 days to ascertain if he has fully recovered and his body can take the stress of pitching on a regular basis.  While still needing a left handed strong man in the pen, the potential July arrival of Brooks Raley is great news indeed.  

This development should not change the front office pursuit of additional left handed relief arms as the trade deadline approaches, but the somewhat forgotten man may be just what the doctor ordered to right things in the later innings of games when a quality lefty often is needed.