A NY Mets roster leftover who might not be worth the thaw in 2026

If you’re spending your Black Friday without any leftovers, you did your Thanksgiving wrong. Something as simple as cold turkey slapped between a crescent roll tastes like nirvana. The New York Mets have some leftovers from the 2025 season who won’t taste quite as glorious. One is a guy who is worth keeping around, but might not be worth thawing out if other opportunities come along.

Justin Hagenman got himself a major league contract from the Mets last offseason despite never pitching an inning in the majors. He ended up in 9 games, including a start. A 4.56 ERA was the result with just under a strikeout per inning. For what was expected, Hagenman wasn’t bad to have around as depth.

When we look at the minor league results, they were shaky. A 5.58 ERA in 69.1 innings, regularly in a starting role, Hagenman struggled to put himself squarely in the team’s plans for 2025.

Justin Hagenman remains a project for the Mets, and a replaceable one if someone better comes along

Because the Mets have a couple of injured players on their 40-man roster at the moment, they’ll need to dance around this offseason until the 60-day IL becomes available to them in February with some of their fringe MLB deals. They do have worse candidates to cut. Few are quite like Hagenman.

With the rise of several young players and return of others, the Mets have less of a reason to justify a 29-year-old whose best ability last year was throwing strikes. To his credit, Hagenman avoided the Mets’ bug that led to a frustrating number of walks. In the majors and minors, this wasn’t a problem. The downside to this, however, was an increase in hits allowed. Allowing 9.9 hits per 9, it also came with a high 1.7 HR/9, too. This helps explain the ERA in Syracuse being as large as it was.

The current Mets 40-man roster already has Brandon Sproat, Jonah Tong, Jonathan Pintaro, and Christian Scott as depth choices not even on the MLB team. Hagenman is more of a Brandon Waddell-type, but he is out of options and someone the Mets re-signed with what feels like a plan to DFA and reassign to the minors.

Others, such as Jack Wenninger and maybe even Robert Stock, can offer the Mets additional pitching depth via minor league call up. Hagenman can quickly become lost behind any of them and the Mets have to already be aware of this.

Hagenman can stick around for seconds in 2026. But thawing him out likely means they’ve undergone many of the same woes that plagued them in 2025. Injuries and poor performances are what got Hagenman into 9 games. Though not unimpressive, others are worth a look over a repeat of the dish he’ll bring to the table.