1 easily forgotten Mets injury the team never fully recovered from in 2024

Injuries didn’t doom the New York Mets. In fact, staying healthy was a calling card of this team. Many of their offseason additions arrived to Queens with a history of hitting the IL. Francisco Lindor managed to avoid it late in the season. Luis Severino, Harrison Bader, and J.D. Martinez all joined over the winter with a reputation for missing games. Aside from Martinez getting a delayed start in large part due to when he signed with the Mets, those three stayed healthy.

The Mets weren’t completely clean from injuries. Kodai Senga made one regular season start before landing back on the IL. Starling Marte had another lengthy stint. Let’s not forget how Francisco Alvarez going down with an early injury seemed to have the Mets’ season spinning out of control.

No injury seemed tougher for this team to overcome than the one to Brooks Raley. A hero from the season prior, he tossed just 7 innings of shutout baseball before Tommy John came to claim him and his 2024 campaign.

The Mets never fully recovered from the loss of Brooks Raley in 2024

You’ll have a tough time finding a non-closer who has had a better stretch of three seasons than Raley. He bloomed late with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2022, pitching to a 2.68 ERA in 53.2 innings of work. He followed it up with a 2.80 ERA performance in 2023 as a member of the Mets in what could be his one and only full season with the team.

In a lot of ways, Raley was a missing piece in the Mets bullpen this past year. We don’t even necessarily need to look at him strictly as a lefty. For many months, quality relief efforts weren’t coming from anyone. Not even Edwin Diaz was a trustworthy source for 3 outs.

When we look back at the 2024 Mets and the lefties they did use out of the bullpen, we see a lot of guys who flamed out. Jake Diekman, of course, struggled to find the strike zone. Tossing a few too many home run balls led to his dismal. Danny Young took over as the main lefty out of the bullpen. However, as time went on, he began to struggle mightily, too.

It’s easy to forget how good Raley was for the Mets in 2023. He had an ERA under 2.00 in four of the six months of the season. After 3 home runs allowed in the first month of the season, he would give up only one more in August when he put together his worst month of the year.

Raley’s presence in the Mets bullpen could have given the Mets an easier waltz to the postseason. In the playoffs, he would have been a big weapon to use. Everyone moves down a slot on the depth chart. They’re not carrying multiple players for the sake of filling out the roster.

The Mets got hammered too hard in the playoffs for one relief pitcher to have made a difference. We were still robbed of seeing another 50+ innings from an intended important member of this past year’s team.