Latest NY Mets roster cut raises questions the other recent ones don’t

A lot of dead weight is getting dumped off of the 40-man roster by the New York Mets, but their latest decision is a bit of a head scratcher. After getting added to the 40-man roster and promoted to the big league team, Dan Hammer has been DFA’d. Zero appearances, it continues a wild trend over the last few days.

Hammer joins a non-elite company as someone who didn’t even have to remove their shoes after entering the clubhouse. None of these players were expected world beaters, but Hammer was at least pitching well in Syracuse.

A 1.77 ERA with good strikeout numbers and bad walk totals (way too common with this organization) had him profiling as a decent find that should have at least been sent back to Syracuse to build up more. Considering the Mets will have some open bullpen spots in the near future and Hammer is only 28 with all of his minor league options left, it’s odd they’d send him out so quickly.

The Mets are cutting dead weight left and right and Dan Hammer probably deserved better

Matt Seelinger had his chance and didn’t get it done. Alex Carrillo’s DFA was way overdo. Guillo Zuniga was a strange promotion in the first place. Then there’s Jared Oliva who fooled us all. Who noticed he was even on the 40-man roster?

Shuttling players in and out is nothing unique or new to the Mets or any other team. It happens and they just happen to be doing it a lot more over the last week. No official announcement has been made yet as to who’ll replace Hammer, but with his arm fully fresh and a 7-inning performance from Sean Manaea on Thursday, they weren’t exactly in great need of a change.

Small moves like this can irrationally irritate fans. The Mets have been lousy with roster management this week, not protecting themselves better in their 16-12 loss to the Kansas City Royals with more legit and available long men on a bullpen day where Kodai Senga was your bulk guy. A move should have been made ahead of that game other than to believe Seelinger in his MLB debut could give you necessary innings. It turned a bad first game into an embarrassment.

This roster spot the Mets are churning over continuously is one they should use on players like Hammer. We’ve entered self-discovery mode with one of the goals being an attempt to see if there’s something there with any of those random pickups. A player like Reed Garrett who joined the club in 2023 as a waiver claim is probably the best example. He stuck around for another year and excelled. Even this season, Austin Warren was an important bullpen piece until recently. While he showed flashes in limited opportunities last year, those are the kinds of players you can be patient with.

Other than the lost puns, there’s not a lot to be upset about with this move which was likely to result in a DFA at some point anyway. The team still needs to make some other official announcements, such as who replaces Mark Vientos on the MLB roster. The fact that it wasn’t immediately Ronny Mauricio makes you think.

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