Mets looking for relief from within
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — If there is one thing on which there is almost universal agreement among baseball people, it is that relief pitchers are the most fickle animals on the planet. From year to year they will go from beguiling to bewildering, from lights out terminators to burned out implosion artists.
Perhaps nobody in baseball is more cognizant of this infuriating fact of life than Sandy Alderson, who has made the overhauling of the Mets bullpen his annual rite of winter, more often than not with less-than-desired results, as evidenced by the steady parade of free agent relievers — D.J. Carrasco, Ryota Igarashi, Pedro Beato, Ramon Ramirez, Brandon Lyon, Frank Francisco, Scott Atchison, David Aardsma, LaTroy Hawkins — to pass through Flushing for mostly forgettable one-year cameos. It is why this year, Alderson has chosen to take a slightly different approach with the Mets’ relief corps.
Yes, he’s taken a couple of more fliers on once-dominant relievers by signing former closers Jose Valverde and Kyle Farnsworth as l ast-minute i nsurance policies in the event Bobby Parnell has any further setbacks from his offseason neck surgery. But make no mistake, the unspoken emphasis this spring is on homegrown rel ief arms, with much of the early camp buzz center ing a rou nd righties Jeff Walters (38 saves, 2.09 ERA, 60 Ks, 16 walks in 56 innings at AA Binghamton) and Cory Mazzoni (74K, 19 walks in 66 innings at Binghamton) and lefty Adam Kolarek (1.71 ERA, 63 Ks, in 63 innings at Binghamton). It is Alderson’s vision — if not as early as this year — to have a bullpen comprised mostly of pitchers who have come up through the system, with Parnell as its cornerstone, as opposed to the previous years’ collections of crapshoot retreads.
Alderson admitted Tuesday that the Mets made a run at free agent closer Grant Balfour and offered him slightly more than the two years and $12 million he got to return to the Tampa Bay Rays. But that was only because of the uncertainty of Parnell’s recovery, and once Balfour spurned the Mets, their high command decided it was going to be all-in on Parnell. The reason the Meets didn’t make a similar offer to Fernando Rodney, the one remaining proven closer on the free agent market, was that Rodney, who went on to sign a two-year, $14 million deal with the Seattle Mariners, had made point of saying he was expecting to get a $10 million-per-year deal.
“I never really paid attention to all that stuff,” Parnell said. “I know they’re in my corner and they’ve given me a lot of support. Right now, I’ve just got to get healthy — and everything is going fine. I have goals for this year, which I’m keeping to myself. The first one, however, is to keep my job.”
Assuming he does so, it will be without the safety net and mentoring that LaTroy Hawkins provided him last year. Hawkins was one of the few scrap heap free agents signed by Alderson these past three years who more than panned out, stepping in as closer when Parnell went down with his neck injury last year and saving 13 games with a 2.93 ERA. But in the first week of free agency, he signed a $2.25 million deal with the Colorado Rockies with a similar option for 2015.
Instead, the Mets’ set-up corps for Parnell will likely be Vic Black, the righty who impressed in his brief late-season trial after coming over in the Marlon Byrd trade with Pittsburgh; the workhorse lefty Scott Rice, and any combination of system candidates, Jeurys Familia, Josh Edgin, Walters, Kolarek or Mazzoni, and (more likely at the beginning anyway) the veterans, Valverde, Farnsworth or both.
“We’d have liked to have LaTroy back, but he wanted a decision early on and we just weren’t ready to do that,” Alderson said. “But you have to remember, too, he’s 41 years old and, as good as he was for us last year, we brought him to camp as a favor and you just never know what you’re going to get from a pitcher who’s 41.”
Spoken like a man who knows full well the fickle nature of relievers.