2 former Mets received a made up pitching award known as Cy Yuk

The regular season is over. Even if the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves need to play two more games today, count this doubleheader as the playoffs. Avoiding a sweep while everyone assumes the two teams will split is crucial to staying alive for another day.

With the end of the regular season comes the arrival of real and some fictional awards. One of those false awards from The Athletic’s Jayson Stark doesn’t hold back. The “Cy Yuk” award as he calls it goes out to the worst pitchers in the league. A pair of former Mets took them home in each league.

The Cy Yuk in the NL went to Taijuan Walker

It’s hard to believe Taijuan Walker was ever an All-Star for the Mets. Left to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies after the 2022 season when he didn’t collapse in the second half for New York, Walker won a career-high 15 games for the 2023 Phillies but did it with an unimpressive 4.38 ERA. Have you checked out his ERA this season?

Walker finished 3-7 with a 7.10 ERA. He made only 15 starts and 4 relief appearances in 83.2 innings. Worth -1.6 WAR with plenty of the weakest pitches measured in the league with terrifying results, maybe the easiest way to sum up his season with deeper analytics is the 6.3% home run rate.

Unbelievably signed for two more seasons, Walker is a burden on the Phillies pitching staff and payroll. Of all the Mets free agents to leave recently, his strut out of town is aging the best.

The Cy Yuk in the AL went to Chris Flexen

At least Walker got to enjoy seeing his teammates thrive. This wasn’t the case for former Mets pitcher Chris Flexen who trudged through the year with the Chicago White Sox. His pitiful 3-15 record was a testament more about the team he played for than the individual performance itself. In fact, give credit to Flexen who made 30 starts and logged 160 innings for a ball club that made history in the worst way.

Flexen ended the year with a 1.6 WAR (yes, positively!) in part because of a 4.95 ERA which matched exactly where he has been in his career. More removed from actually pitching for the Mets, Flexen was a guy who came back last season in the Trevor Gott deal only to get immediately DFA’d. His last actual games as a member of the Mets took place in 2019.

Yeah, Flexen had a lousy season. It pales in comparison to what Walker did. His 1.52 WHIP didn’t quite qualify to be the worst in the league although it is higher than anyone who does. MLB requires one inning per game which means Flexen was 6 outs away from it.