NY Mets: The awesome 2015 rookie year of Sean Gilmartin

Sean Gilmartin put together an awesome rookie season with the New York Mets in 2015 but fizzled out only a year later. Let’s remember the good times.

Sean Gilmartin came to the New York Mets organization in the winter before the 2015 season as a Rule 5 Draft pick selected from the Minnesota Twins. The former first-round draft pick had yet to pitch in the major leagues at the time.

However, in 2015, he would get an opportunity to see plenty of action for the Mets during one of the best recent seasons in club history.

Gilmartin, made his MLB debut on April 10, 2015, against the Atlanta Braves—the team that originally drafted him. He went 0.2 innings and even earned his first major league strikeout. It was a fine start and a preview of what the Mets had in front of them for the year.

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During this season, Gilmartin managed to log 57.1 innings across 50 games. He went 3-2 with a 2.67 ERA. There was nothing deceptive about these numbers. He struck out batters at a rate of 8.5 per nine and walked 2.8 batters for every nine innings he pitched.

Gilmartin was excellent at preventing home runs—serving up only a pair all year long. Everything pointed up. It looked as if the Mets had found a lefty reliever they could count on for many years to come.

It didn’t take long for this to become untrue. In his sophomore season, Gilmartin trending backward. He had a 7.13 ERA in 17.2 innings of work. He barely pitched at all for the Mets in 2017 before becoming a waiver claim in June by the St. Louis Cardinals.

Gilmartin has hung around in the years following his time with the Mets. However, those opportunities have been very few. Altogether, he combined for 6.2 innings in the last two seasons.

Not necessarily remembered as one of the best arms out of the 2015 bullpen, Gilmartin’s numbers that year trounce what many other relievers have done in the years since. It’s unfortunate it seemed to be an outlier on the career ahead of him.

When the playoffs came around in 2015, Gilmartin didn’t get to join in on the fun. He didn’t pitch in the NLDS or NLCS. His lone postseason appearance came in Game 2 of the World Series in relief of Addison Reed during the bottom of the eighth inning as the Kansas City Royals tacked on some insurance.

With a runner on third and one out, Gilmartin successfully retired the two batters he faced. The bleeding stopped but the damage had already been done. He wouldn’t pitch again in the World Series.

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Relief pitchers are often fickle with how successful they are from year to year. In Gilmartin’s case, his rookie campaign was the best he had in him.