Mets Player Meter: Pitchers, May 4-17

The Mets have pitched a lot better lately. The high-leverage relievers are in an excellent run of form as a group and with Christian Scott settling in, the rotation seemed to have found some stability. But then the injury bug bit again of course and things will soon be launched back into chaos. But on the whole, this meter is a positive one.

Clay Holmes had been the Mets’ ace for the first month and a half of the season, but the Mets will now be without him for quite some time, as he was hit with a comebacker on Friday night and fractured his fibula. When the injury happened, he was in the midst of his first start in which he gave up three runs or more all season (which resulted in the Mets’ only loss in the past two series), which speaks to how good he has been. It’s an absolutely massive blow for the Mets.

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On the flip side, David Peterson has shown a massive improvement since the Mets have started using an opener ahead of him. Peterson holds a 2.77 ERA in May across three outings and he earned the win in two of those three outings. The third one in Arizona was a game in which he gave up three runs in five innings of work, but none of them were earned. Huascar Brazobán has served as the opener most days when Peterson is slated to pitch and it has worked out well for the most part, but the game in Arizona was not kind to him either. After a clean first inning, he walked two batters to lead off the second and both of them eventually came around to score, charging him with two runs. Brazobán has otherwise been brilliant though with his most impressive outing coming against the Tigers on Wednesday in which he pitched 2 1/3 scoreless frames in a game the Mets would go on to win in extras.

Christian Scott started that game on Wednesday and needed Brazobán to record the final out of the fifth inning. Other than not going deeper into games, Scott has been solid since his horrific first start back from Tommy John surgery. But it makes sense that Carlos Mendoza is not pushing Scott too much in the early going. He’s been perfectly cromulent for what the Mets need him to do, which is help hold the rotation together as the Mets ride out this storm of injuries.

The same can’t be said for Sean Manaea; it’s hard to say what the Mets can do about him at this point because, even though his velocity keeps rising and is getting closer to his average from last season, he has not been effective in any role. The Mets pretty much only use him in low leverage and they were forced into a situation yesterday where they were down, but within striking distance, but because they had used their high leverage guys the day before, Manaea had to come in to pitch the middle innings. He gave up three additional runs (only two of them earned because of the whacky miscommunication between Tyrone Taylor and Bo Bichette in shallow left field) and almost put the game out of reach for the Mets, who were luckily able to come back, but Manaea gave them a much steeper hill to climb. That was the first time Manaea had pitched in a week and he had only thrown 1 1/3 innings in the month of May before that—a scoreless inning in Arizona and a poor, but ultimately inconsequential outing in Colorado in a game where the Mets were up big.

But ultimately the Mets did win yesterday and a gutsy performance from Devin Williams, who has been excellent, helped make it happen. He struck out the first batter he faced and then issued a walk, but then induced a double play grounder off the bat of Austin Wells to strand the ghost runner and set up the walk-off, for which Williams earned the win. That capped off a run of 5 2/3 innings over six games in the past two weeks in which Williams has gone unscored upon. Over those 5 2/3 innings, Williams has struck out seven, walked two, and earned three saves and two wins.

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Williams isn’t the only one with a sparkly 0.00 ERA for this meter. Luke Weaver holds that distinction as well and earns a fireball for his incredibly clutch performance on Saturday, in which he inherited a bases loaded, nobody out jam and stranded all three Yankees runners by striking out two consecutive batters and then inducing a groundout to end the inning. He then went on to pitch a scoreless eighth inning as well. Weaver pitched a scoreless inning apiece across three other appearances in the past two weeks.

Weaver inherited that jam from Brooks Raley, who helped David Peterson navigate his way out of the sixth but then had the seventh inning get away from him a bit. But because of Weaver’s heroics, Raley’s 0.00 ERA for this meter was preserved. It was Raley who earned the win in the Mets’ other walk-off victory in the past week, which took place on Wednesday. Like Williams yesterday, Raley stranded the ghost runner in the tenth to set the stage for the walk-off in the bottom of the inning. In total, Raley pitched five innings across five games in the past two weeks and was unscored upon in all five outings. He has been the Mets’ most reliable reliever this season and his season ERA is down to 1.02.

Freddy Peralta was the starter in yesterday’s thrilling come from behind win and battled through not having his best control, limiting the damage to three runs in five innings despite issuing six walks. Peralta has not been flawless, but he has been quite good, as advertised—a pitcher who does not often go deep into the game, but almost always keeps his team in the game. Yesterday’s outing was the worst of the three he’s had so far in May. He pitched five scoreless innings in the Mets’ lopsided win against the Rockies—an impressive feat in Coors Field. He was the beneficiary of a lot of run support again on May 12 in the series opener against the Tigers in which he provided a quality start, giving up just two runs on seven hits in six innings of work while striking out seven batters, earning his third win of the season.

Austin Warren pitched the final two innings in that game against the Tigers and allowed only one hit in the appearance, striking out three batters. Warren is also part of the 0.00 ERA club this time around and what is even more impressive is that all five of his outings over the past two weeks were more than one inning. Though Warren has been ping-ponged back and forth due to the fact that he has options, he has demonstrated that he deserves to stay in the big league bullpen.

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The same can’t necessarily be said for Craig Kimbrel, who remains mostly because the Mets have very few other options and they do not want to expose the future Hall of Famer to waivers despite the fact that his best days are long behind him. Kimbrel hasn’t been awful for the Mets, but he’s been inconsistent. Things began on a high note in the series opener in Colorado when Kimbrel pitched a scoreless eighth inning in a close game to set things up for Devin Williams and earned his first hold of the season. But then a few days later in the series finale he gave up a go-ahead grand slam off the bat of Jake McCarthy and took the loss. He bounced back after that and had consecutive scoreless outings in Arizona and against the Tigers on Thursday. But then he yielded an insurance run to the Yankees on Friday in the form of a Ben Rice solo homer.

To be fair to Kimbrel, he wasn’t the only one who fell victim to Coors Field. Tobias Myers had arguably his worst outing of the season in Denver, giving up four runs in the sixth inning before he was pulled after just 2/3 of an inning of work. It didn’t end up costing the Mets the game, but it forced the Mets to use their higher leverage arms in a game they planned to have Myers pitch multiple innings, which had negative downstream effects. Myers redeemed himself after that though. He pitched a scoreless inning in two of the games in Arizona, including a scoreless tenth last Friday to earn the first save of his career. He gave up an inconsequential solo homer but nothing more in Thursday’s victory that secured the Mets’ sweep of the Tigers. He then delivered two scoreless innings of work in Friday’s game to keep the Mets in it.

Myers’ outing on Thursday came in relief of Nolan McLean, who notched a quality start and earned his second win of the season. He gave up six hits across seven innings of work, but limited the damage to just three runs, striking out seven batters and walking three. McLean also delivered a quality start in Arizona in the only game the Mets won in that series—the extra-inning game that Myers saved. In that start McLean gave up just one run on three hits, striking out six and walking just one batter. With Holmes sidelined for a considerable length of time, McLean is now the undisputed ace of the staff and the Mets are going to need him to keep this brilliance up if they can hope to continue clawing their way back to .500, even as the injuries pile up.