A few days after acquiring Gregory Soto, the Mets have made another bullpen acquisition ahead of the trade deadline, as the team is on the verge of acquiring veteran pitcher Tyler Rogers from the Giants. In return, the Mets are reportedly sending a whopping three players to San Francisco: José Buttó, Drew Gilbert, and Blade Tidwell.
Rogers is certainly one of the more unique relievers in baseball as a 34-year-old submariner who doesn’t throw hard and has never been much of a strikeout pitcher but
also rarely walks anyone and has consistently served as a workhorse for the Giants’ pitching staff. He is in the midst of one of the better seasons of his career, as he has thus far put up a 1.80 ERA in a league-leading 53 appearances—good for 1.6 bWAR. He will be a free agent at the end of this season, but the Mets will hope that he can be an important piece for their 2025 playoff run before then.
As for what the Mets are giving up: it’s not particularly surprising that any of the individual players involved are being used as trade chips, though seeing them all go in the same deal (for a guy the Mets will only have for two months, at that) is fairly surprising. Buttó has endured some ups and downs but has shown a lot of promise at times pitching in relief and has multiple years of team control remaining. Gilbert and Tidwell have been highly rated as prospects at times and less so at others—they are not currently seen by most reputable evaluators as being amongst the very top players in the team’s farm system, but they both still hold some name recognition and are close to the majors (with Tidwell having already made his major league debut with the Amazins early this year). It is something of a quantity over quality package for San Francisco, but nevertheless, the Mets are certainly hoping and expecting to get someone who will serve a hugely important role for the team in the stretch run to justify the price.
More from amazinavenue.com:
- Mets Morning News for March 13, 2019
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- Mets spring training postional battles (through March 11, 2019)
- Open Thread: Mets vs. Astros, spring training, 3/13/19
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