NY Mets should push Carlos Carrasco to return ASAP

Just a few days ago the New York Mets offseason trade acquisition pitcher, Carlos Carrasco, made a stellar outing in his third rehab start appearance for the Syracuse triple-A team. In a game against Buffalo, Carrasco went three innings giving up no earned runs, just two hits and striking out six. He looked sharp as his first three outs recorded were all on punch outs.

This was the third straight rehab outing in the minor leagues for the former Cleveland Indians starter, as he looked sharp in two of his three outings. Even though he had some command issues in his second outing, the movement on his pitches were still there so there wasn’t much cause for concern despite him getting lit up. The most important things is, his hamstring held up fine and seemed healthy after all three of his rehab stints.

The Mets have been thin depth wise in their starting rotation, despite the newly added additions of Tylor Megill and Rich Hill. Noah Syndergaard is still rehabbing an elbow injury, Jacob deGrom has continued to miss starts due to a mysterious pain in his forearm over the last five weeks and both Joey Lucchesi and Jordan Yamamoto have been out of action since June. The addition of Carrasco into the Mets rotation should help provide some much needed stability for our ball club heading into October.

The Mets should bring up Carlos Carrasco immediately to provide stability to their thin starting rotation depth.

Carrasco has been on the injured list since Spring Training when he tore his right hamstring muscle during a running drill. He was expected to be out of action only until mid May but struggled in his recovery back from the muscle tear. Adversity is nothing new for the Venezuelan native, as in July of 2019 he was diagnosed with a treatable form of leukemia that caused him to miss ten weeks of action while pitching with the Indians.

In 2020, Carrasco bounced back nicely, appearing in twelve games and going 3-4 with a 2.91 ERA and recording 82 strike outs in 68 innings pitched. He pitched his best seasons in 2017 and 2018 with Cleveland where he was a 17 and 18 game winner respectively and recorded over 200 total strike outs in both seasons (with a K:BB ratio of over 5). The Mets hope to channel that same level of success over the last two months of the regular season from Carlos as they hope to hold off Philadelphia and Atlanta for the NL east division crown.

With Noah Syndergaard still about three to four weeks away before even being considered to get called back up and Jacob deGrom possibly sidelined till the second week of August, Carrasco would be a much needed promotion to our team to strengthen our starting rotation. I think an ideal time to call him up to the majors would be after one more rehab start in triple-A or even as soon as this coming weekend in a home series against the Cincinnati Reds. I think it would be best to continue to stretch him out while he was up in the Majors getting experience and simultaneously getting batters out for the Mets.

Bringing Carrasco up would also allow our team to focus on adding another bat at the trade deadline to an offense that still struggles to put up more than three runs a game on a consistent basis. If and when deGrom and Syndergaard are healthy enough to rejoin the team, that would allow the Mets to move two of their current starters into the bullpen to strengthen that facet of our team also.

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Having a front line rotation of deGrom, Carrasco, Stroman and Walker all healthy going into a five or seven game play off series with Syndergaard, Rich Hill and Edwin Diaz all potentially pitching in the late innings out of the pen would definitely give the Mets a great chance to go far in the post season.