NY Mets Monday Morning GM: 3 players signed mid-year that could’ve made a difference

What was the difference between the 2024 New York Mets and 2025? A whole lot. They’re mirror images of each other. You raise your right hand, mirror you raise their left. You’ll never believe how they spell ambulance in their world.

A staple of the 2024 Mets was David Stearns’ ability to find players mid-year. The decision to call up Jose Iglesias is the most impactful, but other moves? The trade for Luis Torrens was genius. On a small and often overlooked scale, he picked up Alex Young off of waivers. He pitched to a 3.29 ERA for the 2024 Mets. Let’s even lump in offseason waiver wire addition Max Kranick as a success story. This past season, the late April signing of Brooks Raley joined the gang.

Stearns was active for the Mets, but mostly with players who failed to have an impact. See their long list of pitchers who appeared in less than 5 games as an example. Had he gone after any of these three, they might’ve made a difference.

1) Walker Buehler

In fairness to Stearns, Walker Buehler looked cooked. The Boston Red Sox released him on August 29. He was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies on August 31. The Mets hadn’t yet demoted Kodai Senga or promoted Brandon Sproat. They were going to go with what they had with Buehler joining Philadelphia on a minor league contract.

Buehler’s 5.45 ERA in Boston was left in Beantown. He pitched to a 0.66 ERA for Philadelphia in the regular season in a small sample of 13.2 innings. This came as part of a relief appearance plus two starts. His last start of the season came against the Miami Marlins with the Phillies winning 1-0. We could’ve used him.

This was more of a mid-level missed opportunity than anything else. Blame it on an abundance of faith that the Mets starting pitching would get it together in the final month of the year. The Mets were 4 games ahead of the Cincinnati Reds on August 31 after losing to the Marlins 5-1 in what would be Senga’s final start of the year. Monday morning GM’ing it, this feels like bad timing in multiple ways.

There would have been opportunities for Buehler to start down the stretch, bumping someone like Sean Manaea to the bullpen earlier. At minimum, the Mets would have had a guy who could have given them multiple quality innings of relief. That’s assuming he would have pitched as well for them as he did for Philadelphia.