3 recent Mets free agent additions who basically ended up in Witness Protection

The phrase “the best ability is availability” applies to far too many New York Mets players. Why does it seem perfectly healthy players always end up in Queens just to completely disappear? Did they see something they shouldn’t? Were they forced into changing identities and moving to a small town where no one would recognize them?

There are instances where injuries get in the way of a player’s tenure. For these three recent free agent additions, it was more than a minor inconvenience. We saw them so little, they practically ended up in Witness Protection because of the ailments.

1) Jed Lowrie

You can’t possibly discuss Jed Lowrie and the Mets without coming up with some joke. References to Big Foot, the Lochness Monster, and other creatures were commonplace during his tenure with the ball club. It’s a tenure none of us are quite sure happened.

There’s so much yet so little to say about the 9 games he played for the Mets spanning two seasons. First signed by his ex-agent Brodie Van Wagenen who had become the general manager of the Mets, he was an ill-fit from the start. The Mets already had second basemen aplenty and enough other options at third base. Where were they going to possibly find any playing time for Lowrie?

It turns out they didn’t need it. Lowrie got hurt early in the spring and wouldn’t play until a pinch hit appearance on September 7, 2019. He’d make a total of only 8 plate appearances. This doesn’t include the one time he was used as a decoy pinch hitter against the Los Angeles Dodgers in an attempt to get Clayton Kershaw out of the game. It worked! The Mets still lost 9-2.

Lowrie’s two-year deal worth $20 million felt bad at the time of the deal and even more so in retrospect.