New Year Resolutions for the NY Mets starting pitchers for 2022

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With the arrival of 2022, Major League Baseball remains embroiled in a lockout as both sides attempt to negotiate and agree to a new collective bargaining agreement. Meanwhile, the New York Mets are waiting for an agreement to be ratified before they could resume their free agency spending, which has been massive thus far.

Given the current standstill when it comes to free agency, this extended time off provides us an opportunity to evaluate the Mets players who are returning to the team in 2022, and what they can improve on once the season starts.

For this list, I decided to examine five of the Mets starting pitchers (Jacob deGrom, Carlos Carrasco, Taijuan Walker, David Peterson, and Tylor Megill) and discuss what they can improve on in order to get the Mets back to the postseason in 2022.

Jacob deGrom

2022 Resolution: Stay healthy

Would you have expected something else here?

deGrom’s health is going to be the big X-factor for the Mets this season. Although the signing of ace Max Scherzer certainly helps and provides deGrom with much needed support behind him, the fact remains that deGrom is the team’s best player, and they will only go as far as deGrom takes them.

Even with the addition of Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom remains the team's ace, but he needs to stay on the mound and avoid stints on the IL.

deGrom’s absence to the Mets last year was destabilizing in multiple ways. First, it threw the starting rotation into disarray. Although Marcus Stroman pitched well last season for the Mets and stayed healthy, he wasn’t the number one ace that deGrom was. The other Mets pitchers, including Walker, Carrasco, Megill, and Peterson, were not able to rise to the occasion to pick up the slack as they dealt with injuries, maladies, and performance struggles of their own.

Second, deGrom’s prolonged absence impacted the team mentally. When he went down, a general perception permeated that a Mets team without deGrom would not be able to be a threat in the National League East. Based on how the offense performed during deGrom’s starts and after he went down, the Mets played like a deflated team.

For the Mets to get into the postseason in 2022, deGrom needs to remain healthy and dominant atop the team’s rotation.

Carlos Carrasco

2022 Resolution: Pitch better in the first inning

Carlos Carrasco did not have the Mets debut that everyone envisioned in 2021. After suffering numerous setbacks and an extended period on the IL, Carrasco did not make his Mets debut until July. Unfortunately, his return to the rotation did not result in the positive impact the team needed. Instead, he went 1-5 with a 6.04 ERA, 1.53 WHIP, and 50 strikeouts in 53 ⅔ innings, only to get injured again and be shut down for the rest of the year.

After undergoing elbow surgery at the conclusion of the 2021 season, Carrasco’s timeline to resume baseball activities and return to the active roster is unclear. However, given the fact that Carrasco has been injured throughout much of his tenure with the Mets, it is obvious that the team cannot count on him for a full season of work.

It's too early to say Carlos Carrasco is a disappointment, but 2021 was a year the veteran right-handed pitcher would like to forget.

However, Carrasco will pitch at some point for the Mets in 2022, and if there is something that defined his struggles in 2021, it was his inability to pitch deep in games. The main reason why he was unable to pitch deep into games was because of his inability to pitch well in the first inning.

In many of his starts, Carrasco failed to get out of the first inning unscathed. Over his 15 starts with the team in 2021, Carrasco compiled a 13.50 ERA while giving up eight home runs.

Normally, pitchers are at their most effective the first time through the batting order, and are analytically speaking less effective the third time through the batting order. Carrasco subverted this analytical trend last season, and that did not bode well for his ability to fortify the Mets pitching staff when they needed him to.

For Carrasco to become a stabilizing force in the middle of the Mets rotation, he’s going to need to stop allowing runs in the first inning and early in games.

Taijuan Walker

2022 Resolution: Learn how to finish strong

Last season, it was the tale of two Walkers. In the first half of the season, Walker looked like one of the best pitchers in the National League. He compiled a 2.66 ERA and only allowed 6 home runs in 94 ⅔ innings. Holding batters to a .205/.275/.298 batting line, Walker dominated batters, and the result was an appearance in the MLB All-Star Game. His fastball, in particular, was effective during that stretch, and it resulted in Walker’s strikeout rate being at one of the highest levels of his career.

Unfortunately, that did not last long. In the second half of the season, Walker fell apart down the stretch, his collapse epitomizing the Mets’ season as they quickly disappeared from postseason contention. During this stretch to close out the season, Walker compiled 64 ⅔ innings pitched and a 7.13 ERA. Batters held a .254/.321/.540 batting line against him.

Taijuan Walker's up-and-down season is not going to fly this time around, with the expectations for the Mets high.

Although part of Walker’s struggles could be related to fatigue (he threw the most innings in his entire career during 2021), the main issue is that his fastball, which was his signature weapon in the first half of the year, became a major liability for him. He left it out over the plate way too frequently, a sign that he was missing the location on his fastball more often during the second half of the year. The fact that he allowed 20 home runs over the second half of the season is evident that something was broken about his fastball.

The Mets have Walker for at least one more season. He is expected to be a contributing member of the team’s rotation. Although his first-half performance is probably not sustainable over the course of the entire year, Walker cannot afford to have another inconsistent season like he had in 2021. The Mets need him to fortify the back of the rotation, given that the team still has a hole or two in their rotation, following Noah Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman’s departures.

David Peterson

2022 Resolution: Diversify pitches more

David Peterson was a pleasant surprise when he first emerged on the scene during the truncated 2020 season. He admirably filled in for the Mets when their rotation was decimated, and his performance earned him a job in the back end of the Mets rotation in 2021.

However, the honeymoon period concluded quickly, and Peterson had a forgettable 2021 season that he would prefer to put in the rearview mirror. Before landing on the IL for the season, Peterson had 15 ineffective starts, compiling a 5.54 ERA and resembling more of a minor league pitcher who needs more seasoning.

A close examination of Peterson’s 2021 performance starts with a look at how he is mixing pitches up during at-bats. Peterson profiles as a starter who throws four types of pitches: fastballs; curveballs; sliders; and changeups. In 2020 when he made his debut, Peterson threw more fastballs than his three off-speed pitches combined. 53.2% of Peterson’s pitches were fastballs, 25.6% were sliders, 2.5% were curveballs, and 18.7% were changeups.

David Peterson is becoming increasingly reliant on his fastball, which may not be a good thing for him.

However, in 2021, Peterson doubled down on his fastball at the expense of his three off-speed pitches. He increased the usage of his fastball by over 5%, and over the course of the season, that pitch became much less effective.

This decision to throw more fastballs is perplexing to me. Peterson is not a hard-throwing pitcher, and he never is going to be. Unlike deGrom, who can routinely get his fastball to 99 and 100 miles an hour, Peterson hurls a fastball that is significantly slower (averages 92 mph), which means he won’t be able to blow by hitters as much.

Therefore, doubling down on the fastball does not appear to make much sense for a pitcher like Peterson. If he wants to be a fixture in the Mets rotation, Peterson needs to focus more on how to pitch and become more well-rounded. To become the pitcher the Mets expect him to be, Peterson should practice and improve on his off-speed pitches and use them more in games. Diversifying his pitch offerings will make it harder for hitters to predict what he is going to throw, and it might result in him pitching better in 2022.

Tylor Megill

2022 Resolution: Build up arm endurance to handle the grind

Just call Tylor Megill "Taijuan Walker, part two," because both their seasons were incredibly similar.

Megill was a mostly unknown prospect who was drafted by the Mets in the eighth round. Because of the minor league season being axed in 2020, Megill only had one full minor league season under his belt when he got called up by the Mets because of the injuries the team faced. When he first arrived on the scene, Megill was a welcome sigh of relief: He provided the Mets with solid work in his first several starts, which earned him the right to remain in the Mets rotation even when some of the Mets starters returned from the IL.

Tylor Megill showed promise and potential in 2021, but he needs to build up his arm strength so he can handle the grind of the major leagues.

However, because of Megill’s lack of professional experience, he was ill-equipped to handle a major league workload. Eventually, this lack of experience showed in his starts later on in the year, when he was still needed to eat innings for the Mets. In an ideal scenario, Megill would start the 2022 season in Triple-A, to accumulate the much-needed experience that the Covid-19 pandemic and the Mets injury woes deprived him of.

Regardless of whether he is on the Mets Opening Day roster or not, Megill will probably start for the Mets again at some point during the 2022 season. With that being the case, Megill needs to continue to build up his arm endurance so he can pitch more innings for them, in case he is needed. Given the Mets lack of serendipity with injuries, Megill will probably take the mound at Citi Field more times than the team would prefer.

Next. Pete Alonso's top highlights from 2021. dark

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New Year Resolutions for the Mets starting pitchers for 2022