When the Mets inked Adbert Alzolay to a two-year minor league deal ahead of the 2025 season, it was always with an eye toward the 2026 season. The right-handed reliever had undergone Tommy John surgery late in the 2024 season, and while pitchers sometimes return within a year, the Mets didn’t have him pitch in any minor league games last year.
Alzolay did, however, pitch four innings in the Venezuelan Winter League after the conclusion of the 2025 season, and he’s coming into spring training as a fully
healthy pitcher. And given the fact that he’s out of options, he figures to have a leg up on some of his competition in spring training.
Having made the Baseball Prospectus 101 ahead of the 2018 season, Alzolay made his major league debut with the Cubs in 2019. He made a handful appearances that year and a few more in the abbreviated 2020 season before making 29 appearances, 21 of them starts, in 2021. In total, he had a 4.58 ERA and a 4.68 FIP through his first 159.1 innings at the major league level.
A right lat injury derailed the vast majority of Alzolay’s 2022 season, but when he made it back to the mound in September, the Cubs used him as a multi-inning reliever. His 2023 season was undoubtedly the best of his career thus far, as he was healthy and finished the year with a 2.67 ERA and a 3.02 FIP in 64.0 innings of work.
Things didn’t go smoothly in 2024, though. Alzolay struggled mightily through 17.1 innings to start the year, and by mid-May, he had made his final major league appearance of the season because of the elbow injury. And he made just three minor league appearances on a rehab assignment in July of that year before ultimately requiring the aforementioned Tommy John surgery that August.
The hope here is that Alzolay can return to his 2023 form, as that’s the only for which he was both healthy and working exclusively as a reliever. His strikeout rate was solid if unspectacular, but his walk rate was fantastic at just 5.1 percent. For reference, the major league average for relievers that year was 9.5 percent.
While the Mets didn’t retain Brooks Raley for the entirety of his rehab from Tommy John surgery, they did sign him to a one-year deal with a team option as he was in the final stages of that recovery process. They’ll be thrilled if Alzolay returns to form anywhere near as well as Raley did last year, and if he looks anywhere near that good by the end of the Grapefruit League schedule, you have to figure he’ll be on the Mets’ roster come Opening Day.
As for projections, all of the systems published at FanGraphs have Alzolay throwing forty-something innings this year with an ERA in the vicinity of four. Even that would be a success given what’s happened over the past two years, but a higher-percentile outcome would be a big win for the Mets.
What do you expect to see from Alzolay this year? Jump into the comments to chat about it, or register for an account if you’re new to the comment section!
