Mets Plug Leaky Bullpen with Submariner

Having just added Gregory Soto to the bullpen, the Mets are at it again. Less than 90 minutes after his identical twin went to Pittsburgh in the Ke’Bryan Hayes trade, Tyler Rogers is also on the move.

Rogers, with his 1.80 ERA and 2.59 FIP in 50 innings this year for the Giants, has been one of the best relief pitchers in baseball. Still, he’s 34, and a rental, and a major departure from the hard-throwing Adonises the Mets might otherwise have pursued. And yet, David Stearns saw fit to give up Drew Gilbert, Blade Tidwell, and José Buttó — two big-name prospects and a guy who’s been decent in the majors this year — for two months of a guy who throws underhand. Maybe up to three months, if the Mets make the playoffs and stay there for a couple rounds.

It’s not quite that simple. Rogers is good, relievers are expensive now, and fame does not always equal value in the prospect world.

Rogers is the most inimitable pitcher in the majors. This season, 489 pitchers have thrown at least 250 pitches. Rogers’ vertical release point, 1.38 feet, is the lowest out of those pitchers by more than 20 inches. The second-lowest arm angle in the league belongs to Tim Hill, who lets go of the ball more than twice as far from the ground as Rogers does.

Rogers throws two pitches: The slowest sinker in the league (83.3 mph), and the slowest slider in the league. Brent Suter throws the second-slowest pitch in both categories, outracing Rogers’ slider by four ticks and his sinker by five and a half. Try to picture someone who throws five miles an hour slower than Brent Suter. And not, like, a child.

There’s a widget on Baseball Savant’s player pages that shows how much a player’s various pitches move in two dimensions, both in absolute terms and relative to comparable pitches. That relative movement figure isn’t the be-all, end-all — more movement isn’t always better, for one thing — but it’s a nice thing to be able to see at a glance.

Here’s a fun thing I learned today: All of Rogers’ “vs. Comparable” movement numbers are blank. “Comparable pitches” include offerings of the same type, within two miles an hour of velocity and six inches of extension, either way. And simply put: Rogers throws so slowly that there’s nobody to compare him to.

The flip side of this — literally, with Rogers’ -60 degree arm angle — is that his slider moves up, not down, relative to his sinker. An opponent who faces Rogers for one at-bat in a series, once or twice a year, will have to recalibrate his timing for the slowest primary fastball in the majors. Not only that, he’ll have to deal with a release point and movement profile he won’t see anywhere else in the league.

Making contact isn’t impossible, but good luck hitting it hard:

Rogers has the lowest EV90, the second-lowest barrel rate, and the highest groundball rate among qualified relievers this year. Hitters don’t like ankle-high sinkers or pitches that pop out of the dirt and zoom in on their wrists.

It’s not easy to beat Rogers, but it can be done. What he’s not going to do is beat himself. His walk rate is 2.1% this year, by far the best mark in baseball, and he’s only allowed three home runs in 2025. Just like Soto’s left-handedness filled a need particular to the Mets’ bullpen makeup, Rogers is a good add for a bullpen that — while talented — tends to treat the strike zone like a suggestion.

On the RosterResource depth chart for the Mets, the four relievers immediately following Rogers in the bullpen hierarchy are Ryne Stanek, Brooks Raley, Reed Garrett, and Soto. Soto has a walk rate of 10.7%, making him the only one of those four who’s under 11.0%. Closer Edwin Díaz is only at 9.5%, but during last year’s playoffs, he looked so tired he could barely see the plate, and he walked seven batters in his six postseason appearances. After landing Rogers, the Mets also added Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley, whose 8.9% walk rate looks positively frugal next to his new teammates’, but he too was in double digits as recently as 2023.

When I was on Effectively Wild last week, I said the worst way to lose a baseball game is when a pitcher suddenly cannot find the strike zone and gives up the game without his opponents having to do more than stand there. In Rogers, the Mets have a high-leverage reliever with whom the odds of that happening are practically zero. That was not the case this morning.

Now, on to those big-name prospects.

Gilbert and Tidwell are both products of the much-heralded University of Tennessee pipeline. Gilbert, an outfielder, was a superstar in college and the exemplar of an all-gas-no-brakes-hair-on-fire style of play that made him every opposing fan’s least favorite player. When he came to the Mets in the Justin Verlander trade of 2023, I was ecstatic, because if he’d lived up to his full potential in that market, he would’ve been a generationally gifted pest.

Tidwell, the Mets’ second-round pick in 2022, has prototypical mid-rotation starter physicality, velocity, and stuff. He can hit 99 mph and his name is Blade, for God’s sake, what more do you want?

If casual fans know any Mets prospects, they probably know Gilbert and Tidwell. But it’s often the case that by the time prospects poke into the wider public consciousness, the shine has come off them a little.

Gilbert has dealt with nagging hamstring injuries since graduating to the pros, but worse than that, the bat just hasn’t been there. He doesn’t have the power to do much more than punish mistakes, and even in his second go-around in Triple-A, he’s only doing that enough to be a slightly above-average hitter. He can run a little, and play center field well enough not to embarrass himself, but this isn’t Jacob Young or Victor Scott II. If Gilbert wants to play, he’s going to have to hit, and he just hasn’t.

Tidwell, meanwhile, has a messy delivery and problematic command. If he could locate better, the Mets wouldn’t be trading him for Rogers, probably because Tidwell himself would be playing a prominent role on their pitching staff now.

This is the last chance the Mets had to offload Gilbert and Tidwell, not only because they might not have much shine on them for very long. The Mets are also running into the kind of roster crunch that troubles every good, rich team. Tidwell made his major league debut in May, which required him to be put on the 40-man roster. Gilbert has to go on there this offseason, or he’ll be eligible for the Rule 5 draft.

As for Buttó, he’s out of minor league options. I have no doubt that, if the Mets had their way, they’d love to keep Buttó in the organization. He’s been a serviceable medium-leverage guy this year, and he appeared in six of the Mets’ 13 postseason games in 2024. If the Giants make the playoffs (which is still not out of the realm of possibility), I see no reason why Buttó wouldn’t pitch then as well.

But a no. 5 or no. 6 reliever who can’t be optioned is a tough thing to live with. At that point in the bullpen, the flexibility to move a pitcher to and from the minors is worth trading a little quality for.

Getting Gilbert, Tidwell, and Buttó for Rogers — a 34-year-old reliever who is a free agent-to-be, it bears repeating — is still a fine pickup for the Giants. All three either can be useful major leaguers, or already are. But the likelihood is that there is not a good starting pitcher, or a high-leverage reliever, or an above-average starting position player, in this package, even if the name value says otherwise.