Mets Player Meter: Pitchers, May 6-12 (2024)

The Mets played in a lot of close games this week and the bullpen held up admirably for the most part, as has been the case all season. There is not a single poop emoji in sight this week on the pitching side, which is a good thing. But the fact remains that the Mets are not getting enough length from their starting pitchers on the whole.

Sean Manaea started off the week on a high note, delivering a quality start in Monday’s victory and earning his second win of the season. He scattered six hits and walked only one batter—a refreshing change—but also only struck out one batter. His season ERA is now a perfectly solid 3.31.

The bullpen was spotless behind Manaea in high leverage on Monday, starting with Jake Diekman, who pitched a scoreless seventh inning, giving up one hit and striking out one. He earned his third hold of the season for the effort. Diekman also recorded the final two outs of the eighth inning of yesterday’s game to help limit the damage to just one run, which turned out to be crucial.

Diekman had clean up Adam Ottavino’s mess last night in the eighth. Ottavino has been one of the Mets’ most reliable relievers, but he’s faltered a bit of late. The more frustrating thing about Ottavino’s outing yesterday is not that he gave up a go-ahead RBI single to the red hot Marcell Ozuna, it’s that he walked Zack Short to lead off the inning and let him steal second. Luckily Brandon Nimmo was able to bail him out, though. Ottavino immediately followed Diekman on Monday and pitched a scoreless eighth inning, earning his eighth hold of the season. He then followed that up by earning his first save of the season the following day, but he did give up a run in the process. He struck out two in that outing.

Edwin Díaz followed up Ottavino’s scoreless eighth inning on Monday with a 1-2-3 ninth to protect the one-run lead and earn his fifth save of the season. After a shaky week last week, Díaz is back in the green with a clean sheet this week. He pitched a 1-2-3 ninth inning in a tie game last night with a strikeout and Nimmo’s walk-off homer earned Díaz the victory for that effort.

Luis Severino was the starter yesterday and had a solid outing, giving up a solo homer to Jarred Kelenic and nothing else through five innings of work. Unfortunately, things snowballed on Severino quickly when he came back out for the sixth and was pulled from the game without recording an out in the inning. He walked the leadoff batter (Zack Short, of course) and gave up a single to Matt Olson before leaving the game in favor of Reed Garrett. The go-ahead run would cross the plate and be charged to Severino, but luckily the Mets went on to win the game.

Despite allowing the inherited runner to score, Reed Garrett did truly deliver an exceptional performance in high leverage yesterday once again. In the box score, he gave up a go-ahead RBI single, but delving deeper, it was weak contact. He then struck out the next two batters to avoid the inning getting out of hand and came back out and pitched a scoreless seventh, which included a pickoff of Ronald Acuña Jr. Garrett also pitched a scoreless eighth inning in Tuesday’s victory, striking out two batters, to earn his third hold of the season. Ask and ye shall receive, Amazin’ Avenue faithful: Dickey fireball for Reed Garrett.

Adrian Houser made his first appearance out of the bullpen this week and was effective, pitching two scoreless innings in Friday’s loss to help save the bullpen. Yohan Ramírez, newly back with the Mets after being claimed off waivers from the Orioles last week, also contributed two scoreless innings of relief on Friday with three strikeouts, representing his only outing for the week.

José Quintana started Friday’s game and while it wasn’t the poop emoji-worthy performance of his previous start, he didn’t pitch particularly well. Well really he just had one ugly inning in which the Braves took him deep three times in a single frame. All four of the runs Quintana gave up came in that third inning. Overall, he gave up six hits, walked two, and struck out three. He was handed his fourth loss of the season and his season ERA is now well north of five.

Christian Scott made his Citi Field debut on Saturday and gave the Mets a quality start against a lineup known for hitting home runs. He gave up three runs on six hits in 6+ innings of work, striking out eight and walking two. Sadly, the Mets could not give him any run support—and in fact, were almost no-hit—and he took his first loss for the effort.

After Scott allowed the first two batters to reach in the seventh on Saturday, Sean Reid-Foley came in and got out of the inning without further damage, aided by an incredible double play turn by the Mets on a rocket by Ronald Acuña Jr. Reid-Foley also recorded the first out of the seventh inning in Tuesday’s victory before putting two men on.

Jorge López then came in the game on Tuesday and successfully stranded his inherited runners to protect the lead, earning his fifth hold of the season. López also followed Reid-Foley on Saturday, pitching the final inning of that loss. He was very wild in that outing, hitting a batter with a pitch, throwing a wild pitch, and walking two batters all in the same inning. One of those walks forced in an insurance run, but it is not a run that turned out to be consequential, as the Mets could not generate a true comeback effort.

José Buttó earned the win on Tuesday, giving up three runs on five hits in five innings of work. He struck out three and walked three in the outing. Luckily the Mets touched up Miles Mikolas and gave Buttó plenty of run support to work with.

Cole Sulser, freshly up from Triple-A, pitched the sixth inning in relief of Buttó and gave up a solo homer to Alec Burleson to bring the Cardinals within two runs, but struck out all of the other batters he faced in the inning. Sulser was sent back down to Triple-A the next day.