The Mets made their signing of right-hander Ryne Stanek official today. Per Will Sammon of The Athletic, right-hander Dylan Covey has been designated for assignment as the corresponding move.
Covey, 33, has never pitched for the Mets. He was with the Phillies in 2024 but was outrighted off their roster in August. He elected free agency at season’s end and the Mets signed him to a big league deal at the end of October.
The righty has been a starter for most of his career but converted to relief work more recently. He tossed 39 innings out of the Philly bullpen in 2023 with a 3.69 earned run average. His 15.6% strikeout rate wasn’t strong but he did manage to get ground balls on 54% of balls in play.
He wasn’t really able to follow that up in 2024. He started the season on the injured list due to a right shoulder strain, eventually getting transferred to the 60-day IL. He wasn’t able to start a rehab assignment until late July. Once he was healthy, the Phils ran him through waivers instead of adding him back to the roster. Before the offseason came, he managed to toss 15 Triple-A innings with a 1.20 ERA, 27.6% strikeout rate, 12.1% walk rate and 71.4% ground ball rate.
Covey has always been a ground ball guy, so perhaps the Mets were intrigued but that uptick in strikeouts to end the season. Per the Associated Press, his deal pays him an $850K salary while in the majors and $350K while in the minors.
That minor league salary is relatively large, which is probably by design. Per the minor league collective bargaining agreement that was worked out a couple of years ago, the Triple-A minimum salary is just under $36K, so Covey’s is almost ten times that.
If he were to clear waivers, he would have the right to elect free agency since he has more than three years of big league service time. But since he has less than five years of service, heading to the open market would mean forfeiting what’s left of his deal. If he clears waivers, that means no club is willing to give him a big league roster spot, meaning he would likely be limited to minor league offers on the open market. That means he should probably just keep his current minor league deal. It’s possible that all comes to pass in the next few days. If it does, the Mets will get to keep Covey as some bullpen depth but without him taking up a roster spot.
Say it ain’t so Dylan !!!
Stanek’s an odd pickup at that price. He wasn’t actually good last year, giving up runs in 3 of his last 5 outings in September 2024, giving up runs in 3 of 7 postseason appearances with an unimpressive 3.92 FIP, and homer-prone throughout his career for a reliever and it got worse in 2023-2024. ..
This smells of Stearns’ shopping in the “$4m reliever” aisle last offseason, and we know what Diekman, Fujinami, and Ottavino did for (to) the 2024 Mets. Why go this route of adding $15m for 2025 for Minter and Stanek (with a player opt out for Minter) when Kirby Yates was available for 1/13m?
It’s routinely the case that the premium player gives you more than do two lesser players for the same total price, particularly for a contender with money at the margins that lets them add a fair number of relievers at slightly more expensive deals versus a small market team that has to be restrained even in the matter of a few hundred thousand dollars here and there.
That means the difference bt Stanek and the last guy in the Mets pen isn’t really all that great—not when relievers like Pedro Avila are available for the minimum, probably don’t require a major league deal, and in any case if the Mets have to they can throw a few hundred thousand more into the pot to bring Avila into the org without thinking about it.
It’s also reasonable to argue the effective cost of Minter at 2/22m with the player opt-IN after 1/11m (which is really what it is) is at least that of Kirby Yates at 1/13m, where if Minter is bad you’re stuck with him in 2026.
This is the kind of situation that’s beginning to look like a real weakness in Stearns’ approach where he’s otherwise an above average GM / PBOPs—although it’s still not clear what the organization is doing with payroll for 2025, and why in the case of 1-year deals that don’t adversely affect the Mets in 2026 and after they wouldn’t have tried adding Yates and Stanek for 2025 or, for that matter, Yates and Minter given they were willing to tolerate the risk of Minter sticking around after a bad year.
It’s too bad sports journalism is so fundamentally pitiful that these questions are never put to front offices in public forums.
Very well explained without the word salad.
Jack Strawb is a very weird poster with a strange agenda.
I second that emotion. Stanek is a good candidate for a sixth inning role. As for Covey, he has the ability to get ground balls and Ks regularly if he can maintain his control. He’s not a bad depth piece even with his awful win-loss record.