NY Mets Monday Morning GM: 3 failed reunions in 2026, 1 somewhat successful one

A reunion with old friends or family you haven’t seen in a while can be nice. When it comes to sports, a reunion only usually happens when someone is at the tail end of their career or another team decided the guy simply wasn’t good enough. The New York Mets know a lot about reunions and as fanciful as they can feel at times, they rarely work out.

For context, only players who finished 2025 or began 2026 with a different organization will qualify. A player like Richard Lovelady who was re-signed by the Mets in the offseason is disqualified. Four other players meet the criteria of leaving and coming back.

The failed Mets reunions of 2026

Tommy Pham

This was mildly exciting at best. After playing 120 games for the Pittsburgh Pirates last year and hitting .245/.330/.370, it looked like Tommy Pham should have at least received a $1 million MLB contract. He ended up signing with the Mets on March 27th instead to a minor league contract.

One of those guys who became popular because of his play, Pham became an outspoken team leader in 2023. He had grit and would end up getting traded with an .820 OPS to the Arizona Diamondbacks. The reunion wasn’t as successful. Pham 0 for 13 with 7 strikeouts. The Mets DFA’d him to make room for Austin Slater who was only a minor upgrade.

Zack Short

Nobody had expectations for Zack Short. A member of the Mets on Opening Day 2024, he came to the Mets via waiver claim from the Detroit Tigers. Despite hitting .169 in the major leagues, he always seems to find MLB playing time.

Short hit .111 for the Mets in 2024 before being DFA’d. In two stints with the 2026 club, Short was an .071 hitter. One hit in each season, the one positive is he didn’t really lose the Mets any games. Three games in June and another trio in July were all the Mets allowed. He was merely filling a seat on the bench both times while helping the Mets through the Marcus Semien and Francisco Lindor injuries.

Chris Devenski

This one should have gone better than the rest. Chris Devenski was good in 2025 with the Mets. A 2.16 ERA in 16.2 innings is a large enough sample to suggest he could give them key innings in a lost season. It wasn’t meant to be. After getting knocked around with the Pittsburgh Pirates to the tune of a 7.71 ERA, he joined the Mets and was somehow worse.

Devenski was DFA’d with a 13.50 ERA in 5.1 innings across 6 appearances. The final straw came when he surrendered 5 earned while retiring a single Miami Marlins hitter in the wild 15-14 Mets win. The point of having Devenski around was already questionable. At best, he was going to get another minor league deal from the Mets. The 35-year-old veteran might have pitched his way out of the sport.

The one (somewhat) successful Mets reunion of 2026

Robert Stock

Could we have really expected more? The quietest reunion of all, Robert Stock pitched two games with the Mets in 2021 before next pitching in foreign leagues. A 5.93 ERA in 30.1 innings doesn’t ooze excellence. The 36-year-old has stuck around with the Mets for possibly depth purposes next year.

Stock has been the victim of staying too long in a pair of starts. 15 of his 20 earned runs came in two separate outings. His dazzling performance on the road against the Tampa Bay Rays would have gone down in Mets history as one of those games we’d never forget if this season mattered. Instead, it was a nice story for an individual who feels like as much of a pitching lab rat as he does anything else.

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