Juan Soto and 3 other Mets free agent targets playing in the 2024 World Series

2) Tim Hill

Does Tim Hill make Mets fans swoon? Maybe not. This doesn’t mean he’s a bad free agent candidate to sign. He’s the exact kind of left-handed reliever David Stearns would sign to become a member of the 2025 Mets bullpen.

The Yankees don’t have a whole lot of other superb free agent fits for the Mets. Even if Gerritt Cole opts out, does he really feel like a solution? We don’t need to have watched much of Anthony Rizzo, Gleyber Torres, Alex Verdugo, etc. to know how problematic their performances have been at times too. Hill is a little different. The 34-year-old Hill has been good in the past and after posting a 2.05 ERA in the regular season for the Yankees might have shown himself to be a quirky enough bullpen arm to consider.

Hill somehow managed to prevent all of those runs at Yankee Stadium despite pitching to contact. He struck out only 3.7 per 9 innings. Limiting his walks to only 1.8 per 9, he did something a lot of Mets relievers couldn’t.

Of course, with Hill there is the bad. He had a 5.87 ERA in 23 innings with the Chicago White Sox before joining the Yankees. It was up at 5.48 in 2023 as a member of the San Diego padres. His career ERA in the regular season now sits at 3.99 which is largely a result of groundballs. He has a career rate of 60.7% and got it up to a high of 69% with the Yankees this year.

When he’s on, Hill gets the job done. There is no way the Mets should consider him to be their number one lefty in the bullpen. Make him the Jake Diekman to someone’s Brooks Raley except with better results and no Tommy John surgeries.