Mets: Five under the radar pitching free agent candidates to consider

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Does Keone Kela make sense for the New York Mets? (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images) /

The New York Mets should look to add these five under the radar free agent candidates to their 2021 roster.

New York Mets owner Steve Cohen didn’t get to amass a net worth of over $14 billion in his lifetime by being “lucky”. Cohen, from the beginning of his investment career on Wall Street, preached a concept known as value investing. Under this philosophy, he and his team would find and purchase all types of assets through research that they deemed to be underappreciated and then flip them for large profits as the rest of the world caught up to the true value of what was in his team’s possession.

There is a good chance that this same tried and true method of investing is how Mr. Cohen will go about building the Mets roster into a title-contending one to some degree next season.

So while it’s still very expected that at least two to three of the big name, high profile pitching candidates in this free agent market class will be targeted by our financial guru of an owner, we should also expect some under the radar type acquisitions that may not exactly be household names, but can still boost the contention value of this organization to be on our roster.

Keone Kela

Big name pitching targets such as Blake Treinen, Liam Hendriks and Trevor Bauer will have some competition in the bidding process by other teams that are eager to contend and starving for upgrades in both their starting rotation and their bullpen. But Keone Kela is a guy whom you don’t hear much about but is a very reliable back end of the bullpen guy who can be used as either a designated closer or a reliable set up man.

Kela spent the first three and a half years of his career as a reliever with the Texas Rangers before being traded over to the Pirates in 2018. He features a blazing fastball that he can throw at 96 mph regularly and he mixes that pitch up with a hard biting curveball that he usually throws 84 to 85 mph. During his three minor league seasons prior to his call up with the Rangers in 2015, Kela averaged 12.2 strikeouts per nine innings with 4.5 walks.

In his six-year big league career, Keone has averaged 11.09 strikeouts per nine innings. Between 2015 and 2019, Kela posted a respectable 3.18 career ERA and a 3.28 FIP. HIs 2020 season was cut short after just three games due to a positive covid-19 test and right forearm inflammation that he decided to rest and heal fully instead of come back from later in the season.

But the extra rest should certainly benefit the 6’1″ 220 lb Hawaiian native and any team that decides to sign him to a 2 or 3 year deal going forward.

Corey Kluber

With all the big name starting pitcher free agent names being thrown out there like Trevor Bauer, Marcus Stroman or Masahiro Tanaka, a man who is a former two-time AL Cy Young award winner is surprisingly rarely getting mentioned as often as some of those other targets. And that person is Corey Kluber.

Kluber, as we all know, had one heck of a run in his career with the Cleveland Indians from 2011 to 2019 where he amassed two Cy Young awards in 2014 and in 2017 as well as finished top three in Cy Young Award voting back in 2016 and in 2018. From 2013 to 2018, Kluber had an ERA of 3.12 and averaged about 9.7 strikeouts per nine innings pitched as a full-time starter. The Birmingham Alabama native recently just won 20 games in a season just two years ago back in 2018, so it’s not like he has been completely washed up for a long period of time either.

Kluber turns 35 next April and is coming off two years where he has been mired with injury. He pitched just one inning in his first start in 2020 before leaving with a torn muscle in the back of his right shoulder for the Texas Rangers. In 2019, in his last season with the Indians, Kluber went down with a fractured right forearm in May after he took a line drive to his pitching arm in a game against the Marlins. He was 2-3 with a 5.80 coming into that game and struggling with his control and mechanics.

The Rangers decided not to pick up Kluber’s $18 million option for 2021, making him a free agent. On the bright side, Kluber did look good in Spring Training and the shortened mini-camp in 2020 before he went down with the torn shoulder muscle. There is a good chance he recovers fully and if he can be even 70% the pitcher he was in 2018, the Mets might be able to find a short term hidden gem that they can pencil in between Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard for under $8 million next season. Kluber could provide that much needed depth and stability to a Mets rotation that had neither of those in 2020.

Mike Leake

Mike Leake is one of those pitchers that has had a quiet, not so flashy yet steady major league career. He was originally drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in the first round of the 2009 MLB amateur draft and within a year was impressively moved to the big show. Leake has rarely posted any big strikeout numbers throughout his ten year Major League career as he is averaging a little over 5.7 strikeouts per nine innings.

However, he rarely walks hitters either, averaging giving up under 2 walks per nine innings pitched. He is basically a pitcher that induces a healthy ground ball contact rate and whenever the ball is hit in the air off of him, rarely does it go out for any home runs. Leake opted out of the 2020 season due to covid-19 and has kept his name out of the free agent spotlight as a result.

He has proven to be a solid low-end number three or four rotation option on average ball clubs and is durable too, averaging about 183 innings pitched per season in his career. Should Marcus Stroman accept the Mets $18.9 million qualifying offer, I think Mike Leake would be best suited as a #6 rotational depth starter for the Mets in 2021. We all know injuries are inevitable for all ball clubs through the course of a 162 game schedule, and Leake’s consistency and reliability would definitely be a plus through the rigors of a full season to keep the Mets competitive.

Jose Alvarez

Jose Alvarez is a 31-year-old southpaw from Venezuela who was signed as a teenager with the Boston Red Sox organization in 2005. He made his Major League debut with the Tigers in 2013 but was traded after that year to the Anaheim Angels. From 2015 to 2018, Alvarez was a workhorse out of the bullpen for the Angels, making 270 appearances as a reliever in five seasons.

In that time he posted a 3.35 ERA and averaged just under a strikeout an inning. He had a FIP of 3.45 in that time span as well. The Phillies acquired Alvarez in 2019 and in two seasons with Philadelphia, he has posted a 3.17 ERA in 75 appearances.

Alvarez took a painful line-drive shot to the groin in a game against the Toronto Blue Jays in 2020 and cut his season short. He had made 8 appearances last year for the Phillies before that painful accident. Seven of those eight appearances were scoreless and Alvarez had a 1.42 ERA before the incident.

With the Mets possibly losing lefty reliever Justin Wilson to free agency this offseason, Alvarez might be the guy who can come in and replace him on the cheap. Alvarez was only making a little over $1 million a year last year and if back to his old self, shouldn’t cost Steve Cohen more than $1.5 million a year to bring into the fold in this depressed free agent market. Alvarez, when pitching a full season, can be counted on to add anywhere from .5 to .75 WAR a year for whatever club he throws with.

Taijuan Walker

As discussed more in-depth by a colleague of mine in this article here, Taijuan Walker is a pitcher who has bounced around the Major Leagues in his brief career but has shown more recently that when healthy, he has good enough stuff to produce high quality starts in spurts for teams that pick him up. In his three full seasons with Seattle, Walker had a K/BB ratio of 3.26 however didn’t really live up to his hype. In his subsequent seasons with the Diamondbacks, he was on the IL most of the time but managed to pitch decently in 2017, posting a respectable 3.49 ERA in 28 Major League starts.

Walker changed his pitching approach in 2020 however, going more to his splitter and curveball pitches and less to his four-seam fastball. This helped him decrease his WHIP and slightly increased his strikeout rate per nine innings while with Toronto and Seattle. Similarly to Mike Leake, I think Walker can come in and serve as a back up rotational starter for the Mets in 2021.

In spurts, he has shown that he can provide some quality starts and add one WAR to whatever team he pitches for. Of course, the injury bug hitting him is always a concern, but if limited to 13 to 15 fill in spot starts next season, Walker can certainly add some quality depth to an already strong Mets rotation.

Next. Best free agent SPs in Mets history

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Those are some of the lesser hyped arms for our beloved owner to consider to kick things off right and put together a more well-rounded team come next year. We all know that even though it’s the household stars that carry our team for the majority of season, sometimes it’s the outlier guys that end up coming up with the biggest performances in the most crucial situations to launch a team to its ultimate goal. Let’s hope the Mets can bag a few of those types of players and put together an exciting 2021 for all of us fans.

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