David Peterson
The New York Mets have had too many starting pitching injuries to start the season. In fact, at the moment, Kodai Senga is all that remains from their projected Opening Day rotation.
Justin Verlander and José Quintana started the year on the IL. Verlander is missing over a month, and Quintana is out until around the All-Star Break if not longer. Carlos Carrasco has an elbow injury, and there is a very real possibility he could be done for the season if not for his career.
Max Scherzer needed to have an extra day before his last start, and then he was suspended. Our good friend David Cone would show why the suspension was garbage, but nevertheless, Scherzer was suspended for 10 games.
David Cone's Rosin Experiment. pic.twitter.com/ZI5CnAkZ1C
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 24, 2023
As we know, this has pushed David Peterson and Tylor Megill into the rotation. That wasn’t a big deal as both were good starters for the Mets 101 team last season. Joey Lucchesi also had a history of being a capable Major League starter, so while the Mets may not have wanted him in the rotation, his needing to start wasn’t an issue.
The issue was with José Butto being pushed into the rotation.
Last season, Butto was thrust into the rotation, and the results were ugly. In his lone start, he last just four innings allowing seven runs to the Philadelphia Phillies. Alec Bohm really got the best of him hitting two homers. After that game, there were many who unfairly said he was a bust and would never be a Major League starter.
Fast forward to this year, and Butto was again starting games for the Mets. That is something no one wanted, but this time, Butto has fared far better than anyone would have expected.
Through two starts, Butto has pitched 9 2/3 innings allowing three earned runs. Per Baseball Savant, batters are not hitting him hard at all, and they’re having difficulty squaring the ball up on him.
Of course, it’s not all good news. Butto’s control has been poor, and that’s probably being kind. He’s walked 10 over 9 2/3 innings. That’s more than a walk per inning.
Forget about his 2.79 ERA being unsustainable with those many walks. It’s a flat out recipe for disaster. That goes double when he’s recorded only three strikeouts.
However, he’s getting away with it. There are some good reasons for it. There’s the aforementioned weak contact against him.
There’s also the 57.6% ground ball rate. Weak ground balls are easy outs for an infield with Francisco Lindor and Jeff McNeil. That’ll get you out of a lot of jams.
The other answer is Butto has faced bad teams in the Oakland Athletics and Washington Nationals. Assuredly, he’d get roughed up by better teams, but he pitched passably against the opponents he had to face.
We can dismiss what he’s done. He’s been five and fly against bad teams. That’s only part of the picture.
He’s also eaten up 9 2/3 innings which could’ve been put on the bullpen. That will help the Mets in the long run. It makes what he did far more important than many realize.
In the end, Butto looks like he still has work to do before he’s Major League ready. In the interim, he’s better than when we last saw him, and he still made a positive contribution to the team. Credit to him for stepping up.
We have been waiting all season for Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor to start hitting. As we saw last season, when they hit, this is a completely different lineup.
Lindor got things going right away with an RBI double. With Alonso switching back to the old axe handle bat, he would have a two homer game. For a Mets team that had not scored in over 20 innings, the six runs felt like 30, and it was a game where the Mets pitching staff had to lock down the win.
HE DID IT AGAIN! 🐻❄️ pic.twitter.com/v0xQS8vp8f
— New York Mets (@Mets) April 5, 2023
The Mets would not win because their pitching staff was quite bad in the game. We probably shouldn’t have expected otherwise because they were very bad all series long.
David Peterson was handed a 1-0 lead before he threw a pitch. He would allow four runs in the second. Alonso hit his first homer of the game tying the game at four in the third. Alonso hit his second homer of the game in the fifth giving the Mets a 6-4 lead, and Peterson couldn’t handle that lead.
Peterson walked Yelich to start the inning, and Buck Showalter brought on Drew Smith. He had a bad inning culminating in Jesse Winker‘s game tying two RBI double. That was two leads the Mets handed their pitching staff, and the pitching staff gave the leads away.
Fortunately, John Curtiss would step up and give the Mets two much needed scoreless innings. Then, Showalter did something only Showalter could do. He used David Robertson for the bottom of the Milwaukee Brewers lineup and saved Adam Ottavino for the top of the lineup in the eighth.
Ottavino would face Garrett Mitchell to start the ninth, and Mitchell would end the game with a walk-off solo homer. To a certain extent, you have to wonder what exactly was Showalter thinking.
With a pinch hitter in Mitchell looming to start the ninth, the Brewers had three left-handed batters set to start the inning. After the pinch hitter, the switch hitting Willy Adames would hit from the left side followed by Yelich.
While you may want to say, well Ottavino was great last year, left-handed batters still hit .301/.358/.480 off of him last year. Left-handed batters hit .168/.293/.257 off of Robertson last year. It would be hard to believe this information has elluded Showalter, and yet, with full knowledge of the situation, he saved Ottavino to face the Brewers best left-handed batters.
Yes, the Mets offense did nothing aside from Alonso and Lindor. Peterson was bad, and Smith faltered. All of that said, the manager failed the team and set them up to fail. With the Mets playing the way they have in this series, they predictably failed.
The New York Mets needed to rebuild their rotation for the 2023 season. Part of that was picking up Carlos Carrasco‘s $14 million option. The move made sense as the Mets needed arms, and Carrasco was coming off a season where he posted a 97 ERA+ and 3.53 FIP.
By all accounts, Carrasco looked to be a serviceable fifth starter. If he didn’t pan out, this Mets team has shown they are able to recognize a sunk cost. However, things do not appear that way to start the season.
On the latter point, the Mets pitching depth is already being tested. Justin Verlander and José Quintana began the season on the IL. That means their starting pitching depth of Tylor Megill and David Peterson began the season in the rotation. Down in Triple-A, Jose Butto and Joey Lucchesi got hit around in their first starts of the season.
That means, at least for right now, the Mets need Carrasco to be good. He was anything but that to start the season.
Carrasco was alright the first two innings not allowing a run. From there, it would slowly unravel starting with a Jesse Winker RBI single in the third. Brian Anderson piled on with a two run homer in the fourth.
The wheels came completely off in the fifth. He started the inning by walking Christian Yelich and Winker leading Buck Showalter to come get him. Both of the inherited runners would score as Tommy Hunter struggled out of the bullpen. After all was said and done, the Brewers led 10-0 after the fifth inning with Carrasco being tagged with five earned runs.
There were many things wrong with Carrasco. He lost 2-3 MPH on his fastball as the game progressed. Before this season, he was a slow methodical pitcher. IN his first start of the season, he appeared rushed by the pitch clock. In fact, he would receive a pitch clock violation before his first pitch of the season.
Carlos Carrasco receives a pitch clock violation before he throws his first pitch of the season pic.twitter.com/jfZFuYb38N
— SNY (@SNYtv) April 3, 2023
The home plate umpire would talk with Carrasco on a few occasions about the pitch clock. For his part, Carrasco was clearly impacted by the pitch clock. As he would say after the game, “It is crazy. I only have 15 seconds. it is what it is right now.” (Tim Britton, The Athletic).
As noted by Britton, fatigue might’ve played a role. Carrasco would throw 27 pitches over a 10 minute period in the third. He then threw 29 pitches over 11 minutes in the fourth. Over a stretch of 42 minutes, Carrasco threw 67 pitches.
Carrasco admitted to fatigue. We saw that both in his velocity and the Brewers bats squaring him up. The question for him and the Mets going forward is whether Carrasco can adjust. In his first start, the answer was a clear and resounding no for the 36 year old hurler. Given the state of the Mets rotation, he is going to have to figure it out right now because the Mets cannot afford him being non-competitive and unable to adjust to the pitch clock right now.
The New York Mets got even more bad news from the starting rotation front when it was announced Justin Verlander was going to start the year on the IL. While Verlander sounds optimistic, at the moment, we do not know how long he will be on the IL.
This comes after we learned José Quintana is going to miss much of the year due to his bone graft surgery. As a result, the Mets are going to have David Peterson and Tylor Megill in the Opening Day rotation when the team understandably wanted to use them as pitching depth.
Arguably, this is a very good thing. First and foremost, it is going to allow Peterson and Megill to further establish themselves as Major League caliber starting pitchers. Remember, after this season, Carlos Carrasco will be a free agent with the Mets almost a lock not to re-sign him. That means one of these two can grab a spot in the the 2024 rotation by pitching well next year.
The other alternative is either one of them show they can’t stay in the rotation. To a certain degree, that is what happened years ago with Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo. Both were forced to the bullpen by a mixture of the Mets then starting pitching depth and their struggles in their first full year in the rotation. Gsellman struggled while Lugo went on to become the best reliever in baseball for a stretch.
Remember, Megill and Peterson are Major League caliber pitchers. It is now incumbent on the Mets to find their best role. With the Edwin Díaz season ending surgery, the sooner we find out one is a reliever the better. Of course, that assumes one or both can’t last in the rotation, which is an unfair presumption. After all, both have had success in their limited chances in a Major League rotation.
Another factor going forward is Verlander’s age. The 40 year old has been a workhorse throughout his career, and it was one of the reasons the Mets acted quickly to sign him after Jacob deGrom signed with the Texas Rangers. Part of his being 40 is he is older and probably needs more rest than he needed 10 or even five years ago.
The innings the Mets need from Verlander are in September and October. As long as they get a fresher and healthier Verlander then, we can count his saving his arm right now as a win. Of course, that assumes he can come back at a reasonable point while the Mets stay afloat with him out of the rotation. Based upon everything, that sounds like a reasonable presumption.
In the end, we have two options. We can first throw our hands up and decry this being the same old Mets. Or, we can acknowledge that while this sucks, this may work out better for the Mets in the long run. You can pick which one you want, but no matter how you look at it, this is a great opportunity for Megill and Peterson, and it may also be for Jose Butto and Joey Lucchesi, who are the next up should any starting pitcher fail.
We knew entering the 2023 season the New York Mets rotation was old, and by extension, more susceptible to injury. We were just hoping that we could at least get to Opening Day, or at least the start of the World Baseball Classic, before the team had to face a starting pitcher injury.
As it turns out, José Quintana has a broken rib. As a result, he had to pull out of the World Baseball Classic, and he is almost a lock to be out on Opening Day. In reality, he may be out much longer than that. Of course, the hope is he misses as few starts as possible.
With Quintana out, it presents an opportunity for David Peterson. In some ways, this is really his first real chance to prove himself as a Major League starter.
Yes, he was a surprise add to the Mets 2020 roster during the pandemic shortened and impacted season. He performed better than anticipated. On the strength of that season, he was given a starting job at the outset of 2021. Unfortunately, he predictably failed, and his career has been in limbo ever since.
Since that time, Peterson has developed as a promising starting pitcher. We see he has excellent arm extension on his pitches. He has also developed into a pitcher who generates a high amount of strikeouts. His slider has become an excellent weapon, one that was one of the best in the majors last season.
Peterson has done all he could do in the minors. He now needs to be in the majors working on his craft with Jeremy Hefner. As an aside here, Hefner works extremely well with sinker/slider pitchers like Peterson. Hefner working with Peterson could very well have Peterson reaching another level of his game and/or becoming more consistent.
Peterson has earned this chance. He needs to be in this position. Now, it appears he is getting that chance to be a part of the Mets rotation. He now has to pitch so well the Mets simply cannot remove him from the rotation when everyone is healthy.
The New York Mets are still looking to build their bullpen, and the one spot they haven’t quite addressed is the one now vacated by Trevor Williams. Williams held down the role once held by Seth Lugo. Like Williams, Lugo left via free agency, and the Mets really do not have a long man in their bullpen.
In many ways, the long man role is one that needs to be manufactured. it is for a starter who can’t quite start but needs to be good enough to fill-in that role on necessity. It also needs to be a reliever who is not quite dominant because those dominant relievers are better suited and more needed in the later innings of games.
Often times, the long man is just found out of necessity. For example, Williams had no options remaining. He was put in the bullpen where he was terrific. We have seen the Mets thrive with long men options in the past like Williams, Pat Mahomes, Carlos Torres, and Sean Gilmartin.
This is a role which should not go to David Peterson or Tylor Megill, each of whom the Mets should be developing. Rather, the Mets need to sign a free agent for this role, and surveying the landscape, it would seem Dylan Bundy is well suited for this role.
Bundy, 30, was once a big time prospect being selected fourth overall by the Baltimore Orioles in the 2011 draft. Coincidentally, he would play as a rookie and young player under Buck Showalter, and like we see with Tommy Hunter and Mychal Givens, the Mets have liked bringing back some of Showalter’s old Orioles pitchers.
Looking at Bundy, his only good year as a starter was the pandemic shortened season of 2020. With a career 92 ERA+ and 4.68 FIP, it is really time to admit Bundy isn’t a viable starting pitcher in the leagues. That is moreso the case for a pitcher who has been at a 77 ERA+ and 5.00 FIP over the past two seasons.
Going to Baseball Savant, Bundy does a few things very well. First, he has excellent control. Second, he gets good spin on his fastball. Overall, he doesn’t walk batters, but when batters make contact, they really create damage.
Remember, by signing Bundy you’re not looking for a shutdown reliever. Rather, the goal is to find a reliever who can just eat innings. They need someone out there who can save the bullpen. A pitcher who doesn’t walk batters and is accustomed to pitch more than 1-2 innings is exactly who you want.
In his career, Bundy is at his best the first time through the lineup. The first time through he limits batters to a .239/.298/.432 batting line. That’s exactly what the Mets want. Rather, it’s what they need. They need a pitcher who can handle the first time through the order exceptionally well and who can eat innings to save the bullpen.
This is what Williams was. Of note, Jeremy Hefner worked well with Williams to adapt to this role. Chances are, he and Showalter can do the same with Bundy. As a result, the Mets should sign Bundy to take over the long reliever role.