How the Mets can try to make their minor free agent signing a stud MLB reliever

It’s less of an arms race and more of an arms stroll going on in Major League Baseball. Most of the moves thus far have been minor, a common occurrence in November. The New York Mets have been actively added to their depth. On Thursday, they signed Hobie Harris.

Neither a professional wrestler nor college hockey award, Harris is a near lifelong minor leaguer with over 400 innings in the minors including another 54.1 last year for the Minnesota Twins. The results weren’t great. A 6.79 ERA negated the strong strikeout rate Anthony DiComo shared upon breaking the news.

Exactly what is the plan with Harris? Toil away in the minors? Already 31, he might not be bound for much at all. Unless, as Thomas Nestico has suggested, they try to do what they did with Reed Garrett.

The Mets could be looking to make Hobie Harris their Reed Garrett 2.0

Here’s a brilliant breakout by Nestico of what the Mets could implement with Harris:

Limiting the 4-seamer would, in theory, take away the weakest pitch of Nestico last year. Garrett didn’t completely remove it from his arsenal last year. It was the fourth of five pitches he used with the split finger, cutter, and sweeper appearing more heavily.

Garrett had mixed results with the cutter and splitter. The latter was his best pitcher and most often used one. Batters hit only .132 against it. A pair of doubles were the only extra-base hits. Meanwhile, the cutter had a .304 batting average against. Only his 4-seamer, with a .400 batting average, was worse.

Sweepers have become all the rage in baseball and Harris is certainly a candidate to add one into his bag of tricks. He’s essentially the same age and stage of his career as Garrett was when he first joined the Mets back in 2023 as a waiver claim. A reinvention goes against the fabled “you can’t teach old dogs new tricks” idea. Clearly, with Garrett’s success last year, this isn’t a truth for everyone.

We’ll hold out hope of a repeat with Harris. Even if Garrett’s season had some downs after a brilliant start to the year, a project like Harris is one to watch with a careful and baseball nerd eye.