NY Mets already signed next year’s version of Richard Lovelady

The two best pieces of advice you can give a new father: get as much sleep as you can before the baby is born and teach the kid how to throw left-handed. Throw left-handed and you can have a job in baseball forever. The New York Mets may not need to turn over every rock to find suitable lefty relievers for next year. But even with confidence A.J. Minter will return healthy and Brooks Raley can repeat his success, it can’t hurt to add some depth.

The Championship Series isn’t even over yet and already the Mets are adding to their depth chart. Joe Jacques agreed to terms with the Mets on a minor league deal with a pro-rated $800,000 salary if he makes the club out of camp.

There’s nothing wrong with the signing even if it gives off the same vibes many of their additions last year did. In fact, it feels a whole lot like Richard Lovelady all over again.

Joe Jacques feels like Richard Lovelady all over again for the Mets

Lovelady ended up with a 6.30 ERA and 3 home runs allowed in his 10 innings of work for the Mets. It felt worse. A couple of scoreless appearances had his ERA only about doubling the number of Spartans who fought at Thermopylae.

Only 29.2 innings of big league experience with most of it coming in 2023 with the Boston Red Sox, Jacques didn’t exactly post the kinds of numbers we’d like to see in Triple-A last year with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Seattle Mariners to make this a sneaky addition. A 6.02 ERA overall but with a solid 10.5 K/9 rate, he got knocked around way too often for us to believe his age 31 campaign next season will be much different.

Last winter, the Mets managed to pick up Genesis Cabrera on a minor league deal for minor league lefty reliever depth. More well-known and less green to the majors, it does feel like this is a step in the wrong direction if they believe there’s more to Jacques than meets the eye. He has only a 4.49 ERA in 218.1 career innings at the Triple-A level. A 33rd round pick from back in 2018, it’s not as if he was a highly regarded prospect.

Jacques didn’t even post ridiculous splits last year in the minors. Lefties handled him well with a .269/.383/.385 slash line.

Hopefully unneeded, Anthony DiComo noted how he is probably less of a major league consideration and more of a Danny Young alternative. The comparison isn’t bad as it took Young until his age 30 season in 2024 to accumulate more than 10 innings in a season. He did it with the Mets, pitching well enough to stick around for the start of 2025. Then came Tommy John surgery.