Frustrating NY Mets depth piece is off to another bumpy start in AAA

There aren’t enough tentacles on a family of octopuses to point at all of the reasons why the 2025 New York Mets failed. Surely, the presence of Alex Carrillo for three games with zero clean appearances isn’t at the forefront as to why they failed to make the playoffs. Nevertheless, his poor usage and strange trust by management signaled a frustrating start to his Mets tenure.

Carrillo managed to survive the offseason and now lingers on the 40-man roster as a “maybe one day” kind of player. Well, it’s not looking like it’ll be today, tomorrow, or next week. Carrillo has struggled in Triple-A through his first three appearances. His only scoreless outing included facing two batters, one walk and a strikeout as the conclusion. The other two were quite brutal. It might be time to pull the plug.

Alex Carrillo is on borrowed time with the Mets

Carrillo started off with a 1 inning, 2 walks, and a double in appearance number one. One run across, it was probably the best of what we could ever hope to see from him in the majors. This was the minor leagues, though. Carrillo should be pitching better.

Appearance two came next with the walk and strikeout. Appearance number three is when things went off the rails.

Given a chance to face seven batters, Carrillo gave up a single, a pair of doubles, and walked two. He retired one batter.

An early 27.00 ERA won’t have the Mets shuttling him off the 40-man roster simply to replace him with someone else until they actually have the need. His 1.2 innings now include 5 walks, 2 strikeouts, and 5 runs across.

This strange obsession with trying to make Carillo work probably has a lot to do with his ability to strike batters out. At 13.7 K/9 last year in Triple-A, it’s ignoring his poor walk rate. He was at 7.3 BB/9 last year in Syracuse.

A high K, a “whatever” BB rate to go with it has been a quality of many fliers the Mets have taken on pitchers. Carrillo is a unique find from the Indepdent League, but seems to need more work than the Mets may have the patience or room for. ERAs over 4.00 in Double-A and Triple-A are a red flag of translating positive results in the majors. So far, Carrillo hasn’t shown he has it all figured out.