Just added Gregory Soto The Mets are working on it again for the Bullpen. Less than 90 minutes after his identical twins in the Ke’bryan Hayes trade, Tyler Rogers Is also on the road.
Rogers, with its 1.80 ERA and 2.59 FIP in 50 innings this year for the Giants, has been one of the best relief jars in baseball. Yet he is 34, and a rent, and a great deviation from the hard-throwing adonises that the Mets may have pursued otherwise. And yet David Stearns saw it suitable for giving up Drew Gilbert” Blade TidwellAnd José Buttó -Two big prospects and a man who has been decent this year in the Majors for two months of a man who throws underhand. Maybe up to three months, when the Mets make the play -offs and stay there for a few rounds.
It’s not that easy. Rogers is good, relievers are now expensive and fame is not always the same value in the prospect world.
Rogers is the most inimitable pitcher in the Majors. This season, 489 pitchers have thrown at least 250 throws. The vertical release point of Rogers, 1.38 feet, is the lowest from those pitchers with more than 20 inches. The second lowest arm angle in the competition is part of Tim HillWho releases the ball more than twice as far from the ground when Rogers does.
Rogers throws two throws: the slowest zinc shed in the competition (83.3 mph) and the slowest slider in the competition. Brent Ster Throw the second-layerest pitch in both categories and surpasses the slider of Rogers with four ticks and his zinc with five and a half. Try to imagine that someone throws five miles per hour slower than Brent Ster. And not, like a child.
There is a widget on the player pages of Baseball Savant that shows how much the different pitches of a player move in two dimensions, both in absolute terms and compared to comparable pitches. That relative movement figure is not the all, finite lake movement is not always better, for one thing but it is nice to be able to see at a glance.
Here is a nice thing that I learned today: all “Vs. comparable” movement numbers of Rogers are empty. “Similar pitches” include offers of the same type, within two miles per hour of speed and six centimeters extension, anyway. And simply said: Rogers throws so slowly that there is no one to compare him.
The downside of this -literally, with the arm angle of Rogers -60 degrees -is that his sliding controller goes up, not down, compared to his zinc shell. An opponent who encounters Rogers for one battle in a series, once or twice a year, will have to calibrate his timing for the slowest primary fastball in the Majors. Not only that, he has to deal with a release point and movement profile that he will not see anywhere else in the competition.
Making contact is not impossible, but good luck with the hard:
Rogers has the lowest EV90, the second lowest barrel percentage and the highest ground bal rate among qualified relievers this year. Hitters do not like single -high sinkers or pitches that emerge from the dirt and zoom in on their wrists.
It is not easy to beat Rogers, but it can be done. What he is not going to do is beat himself. His running speed is 2.1%this year, by far the best figure in baseball, and he only allowed three home runs in 2025 in 2025. Just like Sotos left-handedness has fulfilled a need for the Bullpen Make-up of the Mets, Rogers is a good addition to a bullpen thus tendency.
On the schedule resource depth card for the Mets, the four relievers are immediately after Rogers in the Bullpenhierarchy Ryne Stanek” Brooks Raley” Reed GarrettAnd soto. Soto has a walking percentage of 10.7%, making it the only one that is less than 11.0%. Closer Edwin Díaz Is only 9.5%, but during last year’s play -offs he looked so tired that he could hardly see the board, and he walked seven batters in his six performances after the season. After landing Rogers, the Mets also added cardinals closer Ryan HelsleyWhose 8.9% walking speed looks positive in addition to his new teammates’, but he was also in double digits in 2023.
When I was on Effectively Last week I said that the worst way to lose a baseball game is when a pitcher suddenly cannot find the battle zone and give up the game without his opponents having to do more than standing there. In Rogers, the Mets have a Reliever with a high leverage with whom the chance that that happens are practically zero. That was not the case this morning.
Now, on those big prospects.
Gilbert and Tidwell are both products from the many -line University of Tennessee Pipeline. Gilbert, an outfielder, was a superstar at the university and the copy of an all-gas-no-brakes-Hair-on-Fire style of playing style that made him every favorite favorite player of every opponent. When he came to the Mets in the Justin Landlander Trade from 2023, I was ecstatic, because if he had realized his full potential in that market, he would have been a general gifted scourge.
Tidwell, the second round pick of the Mets in 2022, has prototypical mid-rotation starter physicality, speed and things. He can hit 99 km / h and his name is knife, for God’s sake, what more do you want?
When casual fans know the prospects of Mets, they probably know Gilbert and Tidwell. But it is often the case that by the time that prospects poke in the wider public consciousness, the shine has come a bit of them.
Gilbert has had to deal with nagging hamstring injuries since they graduated from the pros, but worse than that, the bat has just not been there. He does not have the power to do much more than to punish mistakes, and even in his second way in Triple-A, he only does that enough to be a slightly above-average batter. He can run a little and play the midfield well enough not to embarrass himself, but this is not Jacob Young or Victor Scott II. If Gilbert wants to play, he will have to hit, and he just doesn’t have that.
Tidwell now has a messy delivery and problematic command. If he could find better, the Mets would not exchange him for Rogers, probably because Tidwell himself would now play a prominent role in their pitching staff.
This is the last chance that the Mets Gilbert and Tidwell had to discharge, not just because they may not shine much for long. The Mets also come across the type of schedule crisis that every good, rich team has problems. Tidwell made his Major League debut in May, so that he had to be placed on the 40-man schedule. Gilbert has to go there outside the season, or he is eligible for the Rule 5 version.
As far as Buttó is concerned, he is no longer options for Minor League. I have no doubt that if the Mets had their way, they would like to keep buttó in the organization. He has been a usable medium-sized leverage man this year and he appeared in six of the 13 postseason matches of the Mets in 2024. If the Giants make the play-offs (who are still not from the realm of the possibility), I see no reason why buttó would not pitch.
But a no. 5 or no. 6 Reliever that cannot be chosen is a difficult way to live with. At that time in the Bullpen, the flexibility to move a pitcher to and from the minors is worth acting a bit of quality.
Getting Gilbert, Tidwell and Buttó for Rogers-A 34-year-old Reliever who is a free agent, it is repeating-still a nice pick-up for the Giants. All three can be useful large Leaguers, or are already. But the chance is that there is no good starting pitcher, or a reliever with a high leverage, or an above -average starting position player, in this package, even if the name value says otherwise.
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