The Mets are close to signing free-agent lefty Chasen Shreve to a minor league contract, tweets MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo. It’d be the second Mets stint for Shreve, who spent the 2020 campaign pitching in Queens as well.
Now 31, he has pitched in the past eight MLB seasons, seeing some time with the Braves, Yankees, Cardinals and Pirates, in addition to the Mets. He’s played 292 games in his career, logging 285 innings, with a 3.63 ERA. His 25.6% strikeout rate is a few ticks above average, but so is his 11.6% walk rate.
Spending last year with the Pirates, Shreve had an outlier season for him. His strikeout rate dropped to 19.1%, yet he still managed to get good results, as evidenced by his 3.20 ERA. That was largely driven by a .234 batting average on balls in play, leading advanced metrics to rank his work in less favorable light. (3.87 xERA, 4.73 FIP, 4.93 SIERA, 5.15 xFIP) However, looking at Shreve’s Statcast page, he threw his slider more at the expense of his fastball and did a good job at limiting hard contact, perhaps suggesting that it wasn’t just pure luck that kept his ERA low.
The Mets, despite a wild offseason, have a clear lack of lefties in the bullpen. There’s no one on the 40-man roster at the moment who’s likely to fill a regular relief role. However, they have signed Alex Claudio, Mike Montgomery and now Shreve to compete for a job, or perhaps jobs, as the southpaw element of the club’s relief corps. Shreve did fare better against lefties (.200/.288/.344) but wasn’t awful against righties (.221/.321/.398) last year.
Not many lefties out there. May as well take a chance.
The Mets got Chasen sure but the only Chasen they will be doing is Chasing the Braves.
The Braves will be chasin the Mets. But I don’t know if it will be from 2nd or 3rd
@MetsFan22
Thank you for the prediction. Can you give us a win total for the Mets this year? Can you give us win totals for everyone in the NL East?
I especially want the win total for the Marlins. Please please please give me that.
Keep liking your own posts IMMEDIATELY after posting them. What a mental midget!
Theres no way this guy MF22 is for real.
@sfes
I actually am not sure if he is, but there are times when he seems like a troll. If he is a troll, he’s a good one because there are actual Mets fans on this site that do speak similarly to him, and there is a community of Mets fans that speak like him on the site Mets Blog.
Whether he’s a troll or for real, I still can’t figure out how anyone can make predictions that go horribly wrong. Seriously, fans like him that are really delusional at least get something right occasionally under the premise of “even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile”, but he hasn’t in any of his predictions and some of them seem like jinxes to his Mets. And if he’s a troll, he’s got to be clairvoyant in being able to know something will happen, so he’ll say the opposite as part of his troll schtick. I completely am curious about that because he aced it when he said last year that deGrom didn’t have to do anything else in his career and deGrom was as lock for the Hall of Fame. The very next start is when deGrom started having issues with health which has continued ever since. How does @MetsFan22 do that?
There really aren’t any others around here like Metsfan22. There really aren’t. And Mets Blog is trash.
@MarlinsFanBase & Cosmo22 Metsblog has been mainstream trash for 20 years. Even when this site first began it was basically an unintelligent WFAN caller crying on his LiveJournal.
Agreed about Mets Blog. Matt Cerrone basically bought his way into the journalism industry…not that it’s uncommon anymore in the entertainment sports and industry as a whole. But definitely a delusional homer that built a site catered to others just like him.
Haha, the division will be between those 2 this year. Phillies will be on the outside looking in, Marlins will be looking for breakouts, and the Nats will be looking for anything that’ll stick.
@vaderzim “Haha, the division will be between those 2 this year. Phillies will be on the outside looking in, Marlins will be looking for breakouts, and the Nats will be looking for anything that’ll stick.”
I 100% agree with your statements here, but I just want to point out this is the same thing everyone said for the last 3 years. So we’ll see.
@vaderzim
Make sure that Steve Cohen spent a ton of money to make sure that every team in the NL East gets the memo. For some reason, the Mets keep failing to get the memo over to the the other teams.
Mets live rent free in your head!
Nothing happening in Marlins land. Then again nothing ever happens there. They don’t even have rumors to look forward to.
Lmao booooooo!
Hahahaha I see what you did there. 🙂
I never underestimate the Braves. I actually like them, and it’s crazy since they’re in our division. But it’s also healthy I think. It will be a good rivalry for sure, and isn’t that what we’ve been waiting for since early last November? We live for this stuff!
Who do you guys think finish in 2nd? Braves or phillies. Both good teams.
Mets or Braves. Phillies are 3rd or 4th.
Carrying a lefty specialist is overrated. I’d rather have an extra full time reliever that can go 50-70 IP rather than 30 IP lefty
I don’t think having a lefty specialist prevents the team from adding another quality arm. No team has 8 good relievers who can go 70 innings a year. There’s gonna be mop up guys, specialists etc.
Yeah but why waste a roster spot on a pitcher that can only pitch a third of an inning? It leaves you with less depth and more strain on all the other relievers
A full reliever can take 30-40 IP off the workload of other relievers
I get it, I’m not saying it doesn’t work, but carrying a lefty who only pitches 29 innings is putting more load on the other pitchers
There are no more LOOGYs with the three-batter rule, so you need someone like Shreve who can be effective against righties as well, but you will have innings where your opponent is due to send up more lefties. Sometimes forcing the opponent to take out a player is just as useful as getting the correct hand matchup.
It’s not wasting a roster spot. No one has eight very good relievers. One way or another EVERY team has several relievers that are specialists, ie inferior relievers. He’s not taking a spot from a very good reliever, he’s taking the one of the specialist slots. Again, no team ever has eight solid 70 plus inning guys in their pen. No one.
Have you considered reading the last sentence of the article you’ve commented on?
More like Chasen Steve
….Cohen’s money.
Not a bad move, under the radar kinda signing
But when will he ever catch the Shreve?
K rate completely cratered in 2021
This is fine, Shreve can be a capable reliever. But they should have tried to sign Chafin. Having failed that, they should try to add another reliever that can maybe handle some late inning situations. See what the asking price is for Kimbrel. Unlikely, I know.
Thank god, don’t know why they got rid of him in the first place. Hes much better than Castro, Familia, Gsellman, and Drew Smith
Cannot wait for Olsen to bomb this dude
Why?? He isn’t very good.
Well…. “Whoopity Doo!” -Adam Sandler
We should have signed Loup when we had the chance. Just sayin’.
Honestly it’s even harder to determine the success of relievers from one year to the next. I think they gambled and believe the odds are/were in their favor to let him go based upon the money he was looking for. Yes, good lefty relievers are hard to come by, but there’s no saying what his rate of success (or lack, thereof) will be this year.
he’ll be the 45th man on their 60 man roster.
It was a stupid move not re-signing Loup imo
Did they ever really have a shot at Loup?
I’m guessing they don’t believe Loup will replicate that type of dominance this year.
bj, even if Loup doesnt replicate last year, i bet he will have good numbers this year
A lot of innings last year. I’m predicting Pedro Feliciano.
Oh god us yankee fans have bad memories about this guy. His only real contribution was getting us voit
David Peterson might be the lefty in that bullpen and in August the bullpen could see some innings out of Joey Lucchesi as well. Not too late to look at Tony Watson & Andrew Miller. Honestly, can anyone look at Loup’s 2016-2019 numbers and predict what he would do in 2020 & 2021?
If the SP depth holds up enough that we can afford to make Peterson a reliever I’ll be very happy.
Not a bad signing for depth or #2 LHP in the pen. Mets still need someone they can lean on in pressure situations tho.
Shreve is no closer, but I’m kind of wondering why the Pirates didn’t bring him back. Their bullpen is actually pretty solid, but not so much as far as lefties go.
Probably only ended up with Pirates because nobody else wanted him. This year someone else wanted him.
I hate to say this, but I don’t think the Pirates care about winning at all right now
I like it. Keep the moves coming Steve! Nice job Mets!
He was solid last year. Could have helped somebody. Surprised nobody gave up a lotto ticket to get him.