3 NY Mets players from the 2024 Opening Day roster who’ve already signed minor league deals

A minor league deal was all these ex-Mets from last year's Opening Day roster could get this winter.

San Francisco Giants v New York Mets
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2) Omar Narvaez

We only had to suffer a few months with Houser. With Omar Narvaez, we got more than a year. His contract was ridiculous before the ink even dried. Why give a veteran catcher coming off of a bad year a player option in the second year? Francisco Alvarez was going to be ready for the bulk of starts by 2024 no matter what. Narvaez would have needed a huge year in 2023 to opt into his deal. Obviously, that huge season never happened.

Narvaez, who was signed to be the starting catcher in 2023, would appear in only 49 games and received 146 plate appearances. An early season injury allowed Alvarez to take over the starting gig. Narvaez never challenged for playing time. He batted .211/.283/.297. The numbers were about on-par with the .206/.292/.305 he hit the year prior in Milwaukee.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, Narvaez hit only .154/.191/.185 for the Mets in his second season. He was unable to throw out runners, eventually only gunning down 1 with 33 successes against him. He was credited with a second caught stealing, but that came on a pickoff where he didn’t touch the ball.

Narvaez was officially released by the Mets on June 5. Luis Torrens had arrived and was about to become the fan favorite Narvaez never was.

When it comes to his future, Narvaez may actually have a path to the majors again. He signed a minor league pact with the Chicago White Sox who had one of the worst catching situations last year among their many issues.

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