Mets Monday Morning GM: 5 worst moves and decisions Billy Eppler made

It was a relief when the New York Mets moved on from Brodie Van Wagenen and his predictability in the front office. We knew each of his former clients was fair game for the Mets even if they weren’t a roster fit. 

With Billy Eppler, it took some time for us to figure out his faults. Many of those same weaknesses from his time with the Los Angeles Angels turned out to be true. It didn’t matter if he had a high salary. Eppler’s shortcomings made them irrelevant.

Now that his tenure is over with, we can look back at exactly which moves or decisions he made that hurt the Mets most. The big problem with most of them is how much they repeated themselves. The man was too stubborn when it came to certain players.

5) Picking up the Carlos Carrasco option for 2023

Mets fans, for the most part, agreed this wasn't such an unwise move to make. Carlos Carrasco was effective in 2022 after all. Picking up his $14 million option for 2023 was at least a safety net if they missed in free agency at building a complete rotation.

Unfortunately, Cookie was left in the oven a little too long. His 2023 campaign somehow became worse than what he did in 2021.

Carrasco ended up with a 3-8 record this year and 6.80 ERA. This is the type of performance you pay zero dollars to acquire. His walks were up. His strikeouts were down. He gave up one more home run this year than he did in all of 2022 despite logging 62 fewer innings.

This is one of the bad Eppler decisions he won’t get wrung out for. Carrasco looked like a capable fifth starter heading into the year. That’s not how it went down as he ended up as a roster burden for his 20 starts where we never thought the Mets would have a chance to win.