NY Mets depth chart: 2 players who moved up in spring training, 2 who moved down

Paul Blackburn moved down the depth chart

It’s Paul Blackburn whose spring performance allowed Megill to more easily move up the depth chart. Now destined for a bullpen role where he'll likely be an early inning option as pitchers like Kodai Senga continue to work back to full strength, Blackburn looked like one of the team’s clearest DFA candidates of the 2025 season. He was 1-1 with a 5.68 ERA in 12.2 innings spanning 5 starts. Not using him out of the bullpen at all might have been a minor error in judgment by the Mets. If the plan was to have him throw in relief, he could have benefitted from at least one appearance out of the bullpen to merely have a reminder of what it’s like. This is a guy who has made only 4 relief appearances in his entire MLB career.

An easy guess is the Mets know exactly how they plan to use Blackburn early on and it won’t necessarily include too many unplanned entrances. The bridge after Senga and possibly others will allow Blackburn to eat up a couple of innings at a time while hopefully giving the Mets a chance to win. In a worst-case scenario, a starter leaves early and they ask Blackburn to carry them as deep into the night as possible.

Blackburn’s career 4.85 ERA is uninspiring. He doesn’t post big strikeout numbers and certainly seems to profile best in the exact role the Mets will have him in. The Mets kept him around for depth. He showed us this spring they probably could have had someone else do the task.