NY Mets: Five times a free agent turned out to be a catfish

Jed Lowrie, 2019-2020

Jed Lowrie could very well be the greatest catfish in Mets history merely for the fact that nobody is quite sure if he even exists. Signed by Brodie Van Wagenen prior to the 2019 season, Lowrie played in only nine games with the Mets and failed to get a hit in any of his eight plate appearances.

Throughout the 2019 season, it was a running joke about whether or not Lowrie was a real person. Of course, he was, as a guy coming off of an All-Star season with the Oakland Athletics one year prior.

Lowrie wasn’t a player on the same level as other names previously mentioned on this list. A good player, he wasn’t a big free agent splash meant to completely turn the team around.

Because of the results—or lack thereof—he brought to the Mets, I couldn’t possibly leave him off this list. He’s the kind of catfish to “ghost” the person they’re talking to online and maybe resurface with a new Facebook page in a couple of months with a new city on their profile.

Perhaps the one “good thing” we can say about Lowrie is that we never got to see him underperform. I know it’s a roundabout compliment to make. Without ever getting onto the field, it’s pretty hard to do a bad job.

Nevertheless, this is a catfish free agent signing the Mets should have skipped out on. If not for his history with Brodie Van Wagenen, I don’t think the club would have ever given him a social media follow and fallen into the rabbit hole of getting into a relationship with him for two years.