Biggest Mets free agent bust of the offseason has suddenly figured it out in the minors
Shintaro Fujinami is finally showing signs of life with a dominant stretch in the minors.
What’s going on here? This isn’t the same Shintaro Fujinami from earlier this season. An April that saw him walk 10 batters in 4.2 innings of work completely wrote him out of the picture for the Mets this season. He wasn’t just walking batters either. An astonishing 13 runs were scored (10 earned) in the small sample size.
Fujinami was so bad that despite being able to hide him in the minor leagues and the 60-day IL, the Mets designated him for assignment. He decided to stick around, likely to keep his money, and the 30-year-old has only now decided to raise some eyebrows.
In this 9-inning stretch of relief, Fujinami has allowed only 1 hit, 2 walks, and struck out 13. Maybe there is something there after all.
The biggest Mets free agent bust of the winter is finally pitching well
Fujinami unlikely improved enough where he’d become a featured player in the Mets bullpen before the end of the 2024 season. The Mets can ill-afford to have their season end because they bought too heavily into the success of a veteran hammering minor league players—many of whom have probably been recently promoted to the Triple-A level themselves.
What about beyond 2024? The Mets could have just as easily released Fujinami. The money was owed to him. Whatever they saw prior to 2024 that had them signing him to a major league deal was enough to continue the relationship.
Fujinami has been incredibly unhittable for quite some time. Having the right-handed version of what Jake Diekman did in the majors, the strange .113/.331/.196 slash line against him this year points directly at the walks for the reason behind his struggles. From June through his first appearance in September, batters are only 4 for 69 against him with 12 walks and a home run.
A project to work on again next season, maybe this time on a minor league deal? The Mets amazingly missed on multiple bullpen additions in the offseason. None was bigger than Fujinami getting paid $3.35 million to never see the light of the major league roster.