Feb. 27: Griffin would earn $750K in the Majors and have the opportunity to earn another $500K via incentives, tweets FanRag’s Jon Heyman. His contract also comes with opt-out dates in the event that he’s unlikely to make the big league roster.
Feb. 26: The Mets are in agreement with free-agent right-hander A.J. Griffin on a minor league deal, tweets James Wagner of the New York Times. He’ll report to Major League camp with the team shortly. Griffin is represented by the Legacy Agency.
Grffin, 30, has spent the past two seasons in the Rangers organization, where he’s soaked up 196 1/3 innings over the course of 41 games (38 starts) for an oft-injured Texas staff. While he’s turned in passable K/BB numbers in that time (7.7 K/9, 3.4 BB/9), however, Griffin has been baseball’s most homer-prone pitcher over the past two seasons, averaging 2.2 long balls per nine innings pitched. Griffin has posted just a 29 percent ground-ball rate in that time, and his extreme penchant for fly-balls is magnified by the fact that 15.6 percent of flies against him have cleared the fence for homers.
At one point, Griffin looked to be emerging as a solid long-term piece for the A’s. He debuted in Oakland as a 24-year-old back in 2012 and went on to post a 3.60 ERA with 7.5 K/9 and 2.3 BB/9 across 282 1/3 innings from 2012-13. However, he underwent Tommy John surgery the following spring and was away from a big league mound for two full seasons as a result.
Griffin doesn’t seem especially likely to crack the Mets’ Opening Day rotation, but he could remain on hand as a valuable depth option early in the season. Jacob deGrom had a terrific season atop the Mets’ rotation in 2017, but Noah Syndergaard, Matt Harvey, Steven Matz, Zack Wheeler and Seth Lugo all missed significant time on the disabled list last season.
nice signing
If he’s fixable, Mickey will do it.
Given his haircut, he’ll fit right in with that pitching staff.
deGrom cut his hair.
But Thor and Gsellman didn’t.
“the fact that 14.2 percent of 15.6 percent of flies against him have cleared the fence for homers” What?
Maybe 15.6% of his batters faced resulted in fly balls and 14.2% of those were home runs?
If his groundball rate is 29% and they hit fly balls 16% of the time… with walks and strikouts acounted for also… that still doesn’t seem to add up. Maybe he also has an inordinate amount of line drives right back into his glove. That would be cool.
Strikouts walk IBB and HBP for the last two years come out to thirty percent giving us a total of 75percent. (Tried to edit above)
Not with the Mets. It’s bound to be a DL stint or two
Fixed now. Looks like it was just a typo.
Damn! Was really hoping my “pitcher has a leather magnet in his glove” theroy was correct.
He has so much potential. If he can just keep the ball on the ground and stay healthy, he’ll make the Mets happy
But that won’t happen in Las Vegas…and he won’t make it to Flushing.
you never know… he probably slots as the 10th in line for the Mets right now. They used 12 last year. As a Mets fan, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they did that again this year.
nice. hopefully they’re targeting a comparable depth arm or two for the pen
Good depth piece in case pitcher gets injured nothing more than that
Don’t count out the young arms the Mets have coming up. Bashlor Oswalt Smith even Colon all have potential to become solid pieces out of the pen this year.
Mets have been criticised for the lack in their system but there’s some potential bullpen arms that have the opportunity to really help out this season. Just hope Vegas doesn’t kill their confidence
Griffin won’t have a choice but to keep the ball down in the PCL.
When are they leaving Vegas again?
They need to do better than this for the bullpen (I like this move as rotation depth). I’m not saying they have to bring in Holland, but they really need another guy who would at least potentially be in the 7th/8th inning mix. Oh would have fit the bill, but someone like that.
Clearly a hair motivated signing
Perfect depth signing. Reminds me of what Minaya used to do, and maybe this has his handprints on it. His whole “numbers” philosophy of bringing in several low risk arms and seeing if just one or two of them pan out. I like it, and if the depth doesn’t come in handy … then the Mets are having a amazing season. But unfortunately it’s more likely he makes at least several starts for them this year.
@steve Adams … what was his ERA during those last 2 seasons ???
Low risk, I’m a fan of the move. Man if some of these current FA bats continue to go unsigned…there are several legitimate bats that could contribute substantially IMO in some capacity. Cargo must be seeking long term but, that leaves Jonathan Lucroy (seems good fit) Melky Cabrera, Jose Batista, Moustakas, Greg Holland, Lucas Duda. Just feels like any would be good to have on team.