The Mets are in agreement with free agent reliever Jorge López on a one-year contract, reports Carlos Rosa (X link). It’s a $2MM guarantee, per Jeff Passan of ESPN (on X).
It’s another low-cost bullpen flier for a New York team that has also brought in Austin Adams and Michael Tonkin this offseason. López had a rough 2023 campaign, allowing a 5.95 ERA in 59 innings. He split the year between a trio of clubs. The righty opened the year with the Twins, was flipped to the Marlins for Dylan Floro in a swap of struggling relievers, then landed with the Orioles on waivers.
The 30-year-old (31 in February) didn’t find much success at any of those stops. He was tagged for more than five earned runs per nine with all three teams. López struggled with home runs in Minnesota and Baltimore and posted generally lackluster strikeout and walk numbers. His strikeout rate rebounded in his 12-inning stint with the O’s but sat below 18% in Minnesota and Miami.
Overall, López concluded the 2023 campaign with a modest 18.4% strikeout percentage. His swinging strike rate sat at only 9.3%. The Puerto Rico native had also struggled late in the 2022 campaign after being traded from Baltimore to Minnesota. Since that deadline deal, he carries a 5.54 ERA through 81 2/3 innings.
That makes it moderately surprising that López secured a major league contract. The Mets still clearly remain intrigued by the form he showed in the first half of the ’22 campaign. He had tossed 48 1/3 frames of 1.68 ERA ball with a near-28% strikeout rate for the Orioles before being traded. López saved 19 games in that time and earned an All-Star nod.
While his production has plummeted in recent years, his velocity has not. He averaged 96.8 MPH on his sinker last season and just above 84 MPH on his breaking ball. The sinker velocity is down only slightly from the 97.7 MPH he’d brandished in 2022; his curveball speed is exactly the same. The Mets will try to harness that stuff and find better results than López has managed over the past 18 months.
With over five years of MLB service, López can’t be optioned to the minor leagues. He’ll almost certainly get a spot in the season-opening middle relief corps. The Mets are in the third tier of luxury tax penalization and will pay the tax for the third straight season in 2024. As a result, they’re taxed at a 95% rate. The total cost amounts to a $3.9MM roll of the dice.
We’re collecting the RP’s. Will many of them pay off? That remains to be seen.
I think this is the first signing with a major league contract.
No it’s not. They signed Luis Severino, Joey Wendle, Austin Adams, and Michael Tonkin to major league contracts.
Tonkin & Adams were split contracts – I think this is the first one that seems like a straight MLB deal.
Tonkin has a split contract.
Unless you count Severino and Wendle. And players with split contracts are on the MLB 40-man roster.
He named 4 players. You disputed 2 and then repeated the fallacy.
They were talking about relief pitchers dum dum
I wasn’t, and nobody specified relief pitchers until you chimed in with your gratuitous nastiness.
Huck 3: “ We’re collecting the RP’s.”
RP’s = Relief pitchers
I don’t think anyone is disputing who’s on the 40 man roster. We’re just pointing out which relievers are on a major league, minor league, or split contract.
That’s rich. Coming from the same commenter that insults people’s intelligence, then when they respond, you as a full-grown adult human, say “you insulted me, so now I win this argument. Thanks for making me a winner. Im a big strong boy and I win arguments”
Isn’t it though? LOL.
LOL
To my eye, his gratuitous nastiness matches your apparent obliviousness to the context provided by the first post.
For future reference, RPs = relief pitchers.
Hth!
I keep saying this, but it keeps needing to be said. Hefner has his work cut out for him this year, without a doubt.
This is worse than the Wilponzis.
Steve Cohen is resurrecting The Gong Show this offseason. Lol
@Huck 3 No, many of them will not pay off. So far the Mets have signed the kinds of guys whose upside is 30 innings in 2024 with an ERA of 4.30.
None of them will pitch competently for 50-60 innings with an ERA+ of 110.
In short, their upside is worse than the average season of a mediocrity like Miguel Castro.
There’s nothing wrong with assembling a bunch of guys to take over the “Stephen Nogosek 15th man out of the pen” role, but none of these guys, to date, will be on the 26-man roster when the Mets head north. None will be significant contributors. What’s weird about this one is its another waste of $2m, the way the Joey Wendle signing was. Lopez has had all of one tolerable season, and to get it he needed remarkable luck on HR%/FB, and BABIP.
We’re getting up to the point where the AAV of Severino, Wendle, and Lopez is approaching that of a real starting pitcher. Even Cohen has limits, so money frittered away on marginal talents is money that won’t be spent elsewhere. This is beginning to have the feeling of real ineptitude about it.
@JackStrawb, I don’t expect much out of any of them, but sometimes there are good surprises. So they hang on to those and DFA or trade the others, as appropriate. I did like the Rule 5 trade. We get a recently drafted college pitcher we can develop with years of control for a guy we would have been forced to keep on the roster if we wanted him. That was a good move. The rest we’ll watch and see how they turn out.
@JackStrawb, Spot on Jack as usual but what do you think; why all the hatred for Drew Smith in comparison to who these guys are?
I like Drew for what he is and what he costs; just don’t have high expectations. Drew has to be used in the right situations and not overused in back to back games in high leverage situations.
Honestly, we should have been collecting RPs like this every year. Low risk, and if one of the them payoff, either they will help us to the playoffs or can be flipped for assets on trade deadline
Not bad, let’s see what happens!
Not bad? Did you see numbers from last year?
Did you see his numbers from 2022? It’s almost like guys that were once good can become good again or something.
5.51 career ERA lol.
Did you see his numbers from every year other than 2022?????
He was a starter most of his career, turned him into a reliever and became useful and turned into a different pitcher
@marcher18 And then… Lopez turned back into a pumpkin in 2023–as a reliever. He’s a bad pitcher who got lucky in 2022. That’s all.
@Dotnet Did you see his numbers from 2023, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017?
Lopez has had the one, extremely lucky year, his fluke year, in 2022. It’s not like he discovered a new pitch or something, or junked a repertoire that wasn’t working. He’s simply a terrible pitcher with a career ERA of 5.,51 and FIP of 4.97 in 480 innings—as his return to (horrible) form in 2023 showed us.
I’ve been patient with Stearns’ offseason. The Wendle signing when Garret Hampson went for the same $2m was odd, but perhaps he plans to use Wendle as a player-infield coach for the Mets three, young failures thus far, in Baty, Vientos, and Mauricio. But $2m for a guy who is simply, plainly awful? It’s beginning to approach “inexplicable.”
Yes and not just one good year but an All Star season at that. I wonder how many good players never got chosen to be an All Star?
Yes he will make an excellent fit in the BP lol
I don’t mind 1 or even 2 reclamation projects for a
BP but that’s all Stearns has added. He hasn’t replaced Ottavino or Robertson. And could probably replace both by resigning both. Both like pitching here. So not sure what Stearns is waiting for. Our BP depth chart is Diaz, Raley, and Drew F’n Smith. It’s worse than last year’s BP.
I wasn’t expecting much this off-season. They basically admitted they were throwing in the towel for ‘24 at the deadline last year. And I’m ok with taking a step back and re-evaluating what went wrong.
@sfes
Whatever happened during and prior to the 2023 deadline is over. What they say and do this offseason is rather mixed messaged.
@sfes This is baseball, not the Space Shuttle disaster.
It’ takes a professional with access to the organization very little time, perhaps a week, to figure out “what went wrong” with a major league baseball team that underperforms. This isn’t some obscure mystery. We’re not looking for O-Rings or the motivation of an assassin.
this punting or throw in the towel idea is beyond stupid. I guess the players should punt playing hard or the fans punting spending cash or the advertisers……………
The offseason isn’t tomorrow, this was the first reliever they signed to a straight major league deal. Tonkin, Adams were split deals
@marcher18
Stearns has basically said he expects Tonkin to fill a very important role, as multi-inning reliever in the majors like he did for the Braves. Stearns seems to love relievers who do that. I gett the impression Stearns anticipates Tonkin will be a mainstay in the Mets 2024 big league pen..
@LongTimeFan1 Tonkin’s not actually bad in a park that suppresses HR a little bit, and he was a stud in AAA and for the Long Island Ducks, so there’s that.
He should be fine in a junk innings role, but at 34 I’m not expecting much. 50 league average innings would be a pleasant surprise. 4.43 FIP in 2023, and hasn’t given up less than 1.5 HR/9 in the majors since 2014. He needed a bit of luck just to put up a league average ERA–and will replace Drew Smith in the dreaded “average pitcher who can give up a HR to anyone, at any moment, on any pitch” role. Tonkin lives on borrowed time.
But… don’t we all?
Don’t forget Phil Bickford…
This could actually be a 100-loss team, depending on other moves and player performance.
Who comprises the starting rotation, as of today?
How is this team better than the 87 win team from 2023?
If you listen close, you can hear the rage of the Long Island loudmouths over this roll of the dice on a guy that was an all star 2 seasons ago. They of course know better than Stearns, and will tell you so tonight at 3 AM on WFAN
To say nothing of the Brooklyn Blowhards and Jersey Jerkoffs.
Don’t forget the Coney Island Coq suckers!
Staten Island Sourpuses
Bronx bombers.
I can hear Joe Beningo and Evan Roberts blowing their tops
Loudmouths—you know, the ones that load up on 10 cent beers
@Flanster: Alcohol need not be involved.
@10centBeerNight
Well it’s it’s 3:12 am now, and Lopez’s career performance still looks the same as it did 3 hours ago when you posted.. One good season in 8. Long leash because he can and has pitched triple digits. Still gets crushed. We’ll see if he can be helped by the Mets, but his resume doesn’t inspire confidence in a fan base expecting better from Stearns who seems to be bargain basement bullpen shopping.
This is what Stern’s was successful doing in Milwaukee. Why did you expect him to move away from successful when he moved to NY? This is why you wanted him!
@10centBeerNight Yes, if Covid has taught us anything at all, it’s “trust the experts.”
/s
Isn’t this the guy that Stearns already traded for Mike Moustakas?
@Captain-K-Midd,
Good observation. You’re correct.
Yup. And the Brewers sprinkled pixie dust on him for 19 innings, and it worked despite his 6 BB per 9, 7 K per 9 rates.
Stearns seems prone to getting, well… crushes on players. It’s weird.
Welcome back Fred Wilpon.
You’re not bright.
This is more a Jeff Wilpon move. Fred would have put his foot down at the idea of spending $2m for a guy with one tolerable season under his belt. Jeff would have thought, “cheap setup man!”
Mets going for quantity not quality so far in free agency. Cohen must be digging thru the couch cushions looking for spare change.
why must so many Mets fans be ignorant 12 year olds? do you not know how you build pitching depth?
I Don’t think he’s a Mets fan
@metzfan
If you really want to be the mature one here, stay away from calling posters 12 year olds, and regurgitating what the 38 year old Stearns recently said about building bullpen depth on the margins.
Stearns right now is operating as if he’s Sandy Alderson on a big market team with a small market budget. And maybe Steve Cohen is reigning in the budget for much of the 2024 roster build outside of a big ticket acquisition. That’s what it’s looking like, and will continue to do so in the absence of acquisitions to the contrary. Steve Cohen recklessly spent in 2023 and is footing the bill now for some of those traded players as the Mets 2024 penalty climbs to 95%.
+
Mets are really doing a full 180 with their approach to free agents. Pretty crazy how teams will spend half a billion one year, it doesn’t work, so the next year they blow up the most expensive and most core of the team and then re-construct with bargain bin dollar store contracts.
They are about to sign Yamamoto for about a quarter of a billion dollars, so the whole “bargain bin” comment is kinda silly.
Except they are likely to get outbid by the Yanks.
@deej: He might choose the Yankees, but it won’t be because they outbid the Mets with more money.
@deej Not if they don’t want to be.
I mean, come on.
No they’re not. You realize the Mets owner is with more then 10x the Yankees owners net worth.
because 2/3 of the bullpen was high priced pictures last year? do you have any idea how to build a bullpen? they can’t all be Edwin Diaz and they can’t all be 10 million a year pictures. someone’s got to eat up Innings and this guy could be a bargain but $2 million dollars is not a lot of money to waste and that is proof enough that Cohen is willing to spend money. the willpans would keep a guy like that forever and Cohen regime would either send him down or cut him so relax
Disregard.
because 2/3 of the bullpen was high priced pictures last year? do you have any idea how to build a bullpen? they can’t all be Edwin Diaz and they can’t all be 10 million a year pitchers. Someone’s got to eat up innings and this guy could be a bargain but $2 million dollars is not a lot of money to waste and that is proof enough that Cohen is willing to spend money. the willpans would keep a guy like that forever and Cohen regime would either send him down or cut him so relax
3rd time is the charm.
like a monet?
do you not remember the 2/3 of a bullpen is probably low priced guys you hope for the best for? they can’t all be 10 to 15 million relief pitchers. the payroll is over $350 million and you are talking about them being cheap and Bargain Bin? the difference is that the Wilpons would have been forced to keep a $2 million player and the Cohen regime has no problem sending them down or cutting them outright which shows you that they are playing in the big leagues when it comes to money. Try hard to be a smarter more knowledgeable fan and less of a complainer
@metzfan
You’re contradicting yourself. Which is it…building depth or DFAing those same players when they stink?
There are far too many vacancies in the pitching staff to fill with quality pitchers from the outside, so they’re looking at the margins for much of the pen and gamble on upside if they can harness it. Mets aren’t willing to spend much on that, though they’ll probably add at least one proven horse, late inning type. This is where we see the Mets aren’t all in for 2024 and they basically told us they wouldn’t.
The big expenditure will be on quality starting pitcher multi-year deal. It’s Yamamoto’s decision.
I don’t think Cohen is willing to recklessly spend the way he has. There are consequences to that, including it’s impact on 2024 with Mets paying portions of salaries of players no longer on the team. Meanwhile they’re not in talks this offseason with Alonso, who should already be locked up long term. It’s either about the money and/or years having too many position players of similar age locked up which affects roster age down the road.
“I have a pain in my chess and I can’t brief”
-Jorge Lopez
Screen shot some of these zany comments like “Wilpons are back.” They will be comedy gold when NYM sign 2 major SP arms and a power DH bat. Cuz it’s freaking December 7 and everyone is already signed.
and not a mention of what that date means
Lolmets is eternal, but you’d definitely take his potential for 4 million any day of the week. Hopefully he’s the next Tommy Hunter for Atl.
Jeremy Hefner has his work cut out for him.
<—- Sits back with his popcorn watching the battle between the Mets fans that have flashbacks of the Wilpons, running around yelling, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" versus the Mets fans that always love drinking Mets Kool-Aid so much that, even if the ownership isn't serving it, they will make some themselves by convincing themselves that moves like this are absolutely likely to work out, despite the majority of this guy's career.
Carry on. Good show!
I always love when the entire Marlins’ Fan Base shows up. I went to a game at loandepot back in June 2022 and I think we Mets’ fans outnumbered you about 2 to 1.
Met fans are praying you choke on your popcorn. You do realize that your team is owned by Bruce Sherman a joke who bought it from Jeff Loria an even bigger joke? I’d take the Wilpons over those two any day of the week. What really gets to you is the Mets actually have a passionate fan base which is more then can be said of the Marlins. You pontificate on this site about Jake Burger and Josh Bell and then post snarky little comments. The sky is always falling in Miami. 2 words Revenue Sharing. Now say thank you to the Mets. Hey who needs Yamamoto when you can have Devin Smeltzer!!!
Marlins have two WS since the Mets last won one though.
That is true. And what happened after they won those titles? They traded away every player of value and resumed being a non competitive team. The Marlins also have the same amount of championships as the Braves do btw. Unless you count those Boston Braves championship seasons.
@Chris from NJ
“hat really gets to you is the Mets actually have a passionate fan base which is more then can be said of the Marlins.”
Yeah, us Marlins fans saw how passionate your fan base is compared to our fan base when that last series in CitiField between our teams happened, and the Marlins fans took over. And what did your fellow Mets fans on here say (and I think you may have been one of them)? It was that Mets fans didn’t show up because it was a ‘meaningless’ game…a game with one team fighting to make it into the playoffs. Yeah, games that impact potential playoff participants are absolutely a meaningless games. Now that’s passion!
Wow. You just proved my point about you and your pontification about The Marlins. Someone says something and you go on a diatribe about something else. The Marlins don’t have a fan base. Miami is a transient city. Alot of transplants in Florida so the Marlins will never draw flies. It was a meaningless game to Mets fan. Who has a desire to see a rival clinch on your home field. And congrats to the Marlins fans who made it all the way to Queens instead of showing up all year in Miami. Do you realize how foolish you sound? The Mets are the biggest draw in Miami. And no thank you to the Mets for all that revenue sharing money the Marlins get from teams like the Mets? If it wasn’t for big market teams like the Mets they wouldn’t have baseball in Miami. Think on that one for awhile.
With the current market hyperinflated I don’t know if an update to the Luxury Tax thresholds shouldn’t get an update… just saying
This move is great! Lopez had an ERA of 6 last year, the bigger the ERA the better! Hopefully Stearns goes out of his way to sign Matt Bush, the guy who had an ERA of 9 last year. So far the pen consists of Diaz, Raley, Drew Smith, Cole Sulser, Kyle Krick, Jorge Lopez, Andre Scrubb, Cole Sulser, Austin Adams, Michael Tonkin and Phil Bickford. If that doesn’t scream World Series contender, then I don’t know what is. I pray that we sign Matt Bush to fortify the bullpen. You know if you add up the salaries of all our relievers excluding Diaz, its less than what Stearns makes (10 mil) in a season. He might be a contender next to InEppler for worst Mets GM ever. Hes essentially pocketing the money all to himself. Honestly, I fully believe Stearns should be in jail for robbing Steve Cohen of 40 million dollars. Stearns is essantially the same as Stephen Stratsburg. They want to get paid for doing absolutely nothing. On top of that they hired that clown Luis Rojas 2.0 (Carlose Mendunce). This team will be lucky to win 70 games, pathetic. Steve Cohen is a worser owner than the Wilpons
I hope his pitching is better than the jokes on his awful comedy show.
It’s amusing, anyway, that some posters here think that Stearns’ relief pitching acquisitions to date are going north with the team in April 2024.
What they’ll be doing (with perhaps one exception thanks to injury) is going into the pool of the dozen guys who give you 10 to 30 innings at the butt end of the pen and in that role some of them will probably be a small improvement on the Tommy Hunter and Josh Walker types the Mets churned through in 2023.
One concern is that if Hefner couldn’t persuade those types to give the Mets acceptably below average innings in 2023, how likely is he to be able to do that in 2024? Another concern is that these guys, so far, don’t actually make the team any better. They just make it… less worse, at the margins.
It doesn’t mean Stearns might not sign Yamamoto, Montgomery, trade for Arozarena and sign Lee Jung-Hoo.in the next week, but it’s hardly impressive. These acquisitions won’t turn into brilliant setup men and form the core of a cheap, well above average MLB bullpen. They’re just the depth’s depth—the arms behind the arms behind, well, Drew Smith. It’s not impressive.
Don’t often see a GM sign a guy the DFAd.
Kirby Yates at $4.5m (3.28 ERA 4.63 FIP, 11.8 K/9, 6.0 H/9 in 2023, career ERA of 3.53 demonstrates significant upside, albeit not without risk) would be a serious attempt to flesh out a shockingly bad bullpen on the cheap.
Signing Jorge Lopez at $2m is not.
Lopez is an interesting player. He has good stuff and was dominant with the Orioles in 2022 and for stretches with the Twins. Even last year he started the season with 12 shut out innings, then turned into a pumpkin when the calendar turned to May. If a pitching coach can help him find consistency, he could be a solid pick up.
I’d like to see more quality depth in the BP, and haven’t so far. What I really expected coming into the offseason was the pursuit of a Stephenson, Hicks, or Reynaldo Lopez. We’ll see. Getting the feeling the best we’ll get is an Ottavino or Robertson reunion…
Doh!
One of the few comments that makes sense lol
Looks like we’re going to be repeating the past, hit and miss in the middle bullpen. De Grom suffered all those no-decision games he pitched so well in, unless something changes looks like we’re heading there again.