Mets: Three reasons I’m just as excited to land Carlos Carrasco

Regardless of the end results, it will ultimately go down as the Francisco Lindor trade. When the New York Mets shipped off four players to the Cleveland Indians in exchange for their new shortstop, they also managed to pick up a pretty good pitcher in the process, Carlos Carrasco.

Carrasco has been a guy I viewed as a fit for the Mets for quite some time. I wrote about him in October and even brought him up on my appearance with Gary Harding on WGBB back in November when asked about some lesser-talked pitching targets I would like to see Steve Cohen’s club add to the roster. You can fast-forward to the 42-minute mark for my brief analysis on him back in early November while I battled a 102 fever during the interview.

But enough about me and the non-prediction, more desire, I made months ago that nobody else seemed to share. This is about Carrasco, what he brings to the Mets, and why we should all be excited to see him in Flushing.

Carrasco’s awesome numbers he will bring to the Mets

Performance on the field matters most with any professional athlete. Carrasco certainly has numbers to justify his presence on the Mets. Lifetime, he carries with him an 88-73 record and 3.77 ERA.

This doesn’t really tell the full story. From 2014-2020, we can get a better picture of the real big league pitcher he developed into.

During that span, Carrasco became one of the first notable pitchers on the Indians during their successful stretch of winning baseball. He won double-digit games four straight years from 2015-2018 when he worked almost exclusively as a starter. It’s those season when Cleveland became one of the biggest threats in the American League.

A lot of it had to do with Carrasco who was 60-36 with a 3.40 ERA across 117 starts and a pair of relief appearances.

Carrasco’s 2017 season is when he reached the pinnacle of his career. He won a league-best 18 games and finished fourth in the Cy Young vote. That year, and several others, have included a low walk rate and an excellent number of strikeouts per nine. He’s a master at throwing strikes. Heading into 2020, he owns a lifetime 1.19 WHIP, 2.3 walks per nine, and 9.5 strikeouts per nine. Five times he has finished a season with an average of more than 10 strikeouts per nine innings pitched—four straight seasons, too.

There are a lot of other numbers to love about Carrasco’s stat sheet. I’m sure we’ll get to more of them in the future.

Carrasco is an amazing story Mets fans can get behind

As awesome as his statistics are, Carrasco’s greatest triumph in life came off the field. Born in Venezuela, he came to the United States with big league dreams, originally drafted as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies.

His English wasn’t very good. So, in his first spring training, he apparently ate Domino’s Pizza every day for 90 straight days. According to Carrasco in an article for the Players’ Tribune, it was because it was the only thing he knew how to order.

Carrasco never forgot his roots and has done plenty of charity work in Venezuela. He has also contributed to the community in Cleveland where he spent his entire big league career up until the trade that made him a member of the Mets.

As part of his charity work, Carrasco would visit children in hospitals with one of his daughters. Inspired, Carrasco’s daughter, Kamila, began to donate her hair to cancer patients.

One might think Carrasco built up enough karma for a healthy life. Shockingly, he was diagnosed with leukemia in 2019.

Carrasco missed several weeks and somehow managed to battle back and return before the end of the season to pitch for Cleveland. The year wasn’t his best statistically. Just getting on the field was a win.

Leading up to what will be the start of his career with the Mets, Carrasco put together a solid final act for the Indians in 2020. He delivered them a 2.91 ERA in 68 innings pitched.

Carrasco has led a fascinating life as a big leaguer. I’m sure we’ll see more. Hopefully, it’s all good news going forward.