10:30am: The Mets announced that Minter and right-hander Frankie Montas have been transferred from the 15-day IL to the 60-day IL, which opens a pair of 40-man spots for Cabrera and Adcock. Montas, like Minter, is dealing with a lat strain. His occurred during spring training, however, and the team’s hope is that he can be ready to join the rotation early this summer. He’s already spent 35 days on the IL, however, and the move to the 60-day list does not reset that clock.
9:20am: The Mets announced Thursday that they’ve selected the contracts of left-handed reliever Genesis Cabrera and right-handed reliever Ty Adcock. Lefty Brandon Waddell and righty Chris Devenski were optioned to Triple-A Syracuse to clear spots on the active roster. The Mets haven’t announced corresponding 40-man moves yet but noted in their announcement that those transactions will be revealed later today. A.J. Minter and Danny Young are both facing lengthy injury absences, so they may be moved to the 60-day injured list to open those 40-man spots. Devenski has presumably agreed to be optioned since he has at least five years of major league service time. Such players can’t be optioned to the minors without their consent.
The southpaw contingent of the Mets’ bullpen has been wiped out in a span of a few days. Up until recently, they had both Minter and Young available. Minter had a 1.64 earned run average through his first 13 appearances. Young’s 4.32 ERA through 10 outings was less impressive but he had a huge 35.1% strikeout rate and 63.2% ground ball rate, as well as a solid 8.1% walk rate. His .450 batting average on balls in play and 61.5% strand rate were both on the unlucky side, which is why his 1.40 FIP and 1.75 SIERA pointed to better results going forward.
That meant manager Carlos Mendoza had a couple of strong options from the left side but that has quickly changed. Minter landed on the 15-day IL on the weekend due to a lat strain and season-ending surgery is a possibility. Young hit the 15-day IL yesterday due to an elbow sprain and he may require Tommy John surgery. So not only are the Mets going to be without Minter and Young in the short term, but maybe for the entire season.
That is surely what has brought Cabrera up to the big leagues today. The 28-year-old signed a minor league deal with the Mets in the offseason and has been pitching for their Triple-A club. He has tossed eight innings over seven appearances for Syracuse. The 7.88 ERA in that time isn’t pretty but it’s a small sample and with a miniscule 34.9% strand rate. He has struck out 35.3% of batters faced and kept balls in play on the ground at a 50% clip, though also with a 14.7% walk rate.
Lack of control is the main knock on Cabrera. He has 275 2/3 innings of major league experience with the Cardinals and Blue Jays, having walked 11.4% of batters faced in that time. He’s been able to work around that at times with strikeouts, though he’s been inconsistent in that regard.
He had a 26% strikeout rate with the Cards in 2021, allowing him to post a 3.73 ERA. But he only punched out 16% of batters in 2022, which helped bump his ERA to 4.63. He corrected a bit in 2023 with a 24.3% strikeout rate and 4.04 ERA. It was a mixed bag last year, as his ERA dropped to 3.59 but mostly via luck. His 18.5% strikeout rate and 10% walk were both subpar figures, but he had a 78.8% strand rate. His 5.13 FIP and 4.58 SIERA both point to the ERA being a mirage.
The Jays seemingly didn’t have faith in him keeping runs off the board at that pace. They could have retained him via arbitration, with MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projecting a modest $2.5MM salary for this year, but they cut him from the roster instead. That is what led to him landing with the Mets on a minor league deal. The injuries have created a path for him to get back to the majors. He will provide the Mets with one lefty reliever for now and the club will see which version of Cabrera they get.
The club also just needs arms generally, regardless of handedness. They are in the middle of a span where they play 13 straight games. Waddell and Devenski were just called up and combined to cover 6 1/3 innings in yesterday’s game, the former logging 4 1/3 and the latter going for two frames.
They have been swapped out for both Cabrera and Adcock. The 28-year-old Adcock has a fairly limited major league track record, with 20 innings tossed between the 2023 Mariners and 2024 Mets. He has a 5.85 ERA in that time. He has a much better 1.29 ERA in seven innings for Syracuse so far in 2025. That’s obviously a small sample but he has six strikeouts to just one walk.
His overall minor league track record isn’t huge either. The canceled 2020 season and Tommy John surgery in 2021 both put a dent in his ability to get work in. He only has 64 1/3 innings of official minor league work from 2022 to 2025, with a 3.92 ERA, 25.7% strikeout rate and 9.1% walk rate. He still has an option and can be sent back to Syracuse without being exposed to waivers if the Mets want to keep him on the 40-man as depth.
Let’s go Ty I know him personally and is a great dude!
Are you his mummy
Can you please tell him to be a better pitcher? Thanks.
Whats your favorite Genesis album
Seconds Out, if we’re allowed to count live albums.
Sweet – Have you seen Phil recently? He has not aged well for 74.
I’d have to go with Invisible Touch.
The Way We Walk
Phil’s getting close to finished these days sadly. Foxtrot and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway are tied for my favorites.
Peter Gabriel was the true talent of that group, although drumming and singing at the same time is boss.
Selling England by the pound + Foxtrot
Lamb Lies Down on Broadway…from the REAL Genesis!
Forget the 7 or Uber, I’m going to Abacab to Shea
If the Mets are lacking in left handed relief, why was Waddell sent down?
And how in the world does Devenski still have an option year? He’s been around forever.
Well, Waddell just pitched 4.1 innings. So he can’t be used for 3 or 4 days
It’s rare, but vets over 30 can still have option years, and no 10 and 5 rights. Many, many older pitchers have all 3 option years remaining
Dodger burner approach to roster churn
But he’s been in the majors most of that time. An option is only charged when the player spends more than 20 days of a season in the minors after having been added to the 40-man rosters.
Technically, he still has options. But that doesn’t mean the Mets can force the option on him. A player with 5+ years of MLB service time (like Devenski) has the right to refuse an option and become a free agent. Whether he exercises that right remains to be seen. But this is how the process goes – first the team options the player. Then the player decides whether or not to refuse the option. If he does, we’ll probably hear about it within a day or so.
@Baseball77 Yes and better question to ask is why that little league manager Carlos Mendoza put Devenski in a tight 2 to one ballgame and throw the game away!
As a long time, Mets fan Cohen can spend all the money in the world but when you put in a little league manager with no MLB managing experience until the Mets, just like Rojas btw, just hoping Mendoza line joins Rojas back on the Yankees bench!
Please Devenski, refuse the option!
Crazy a rookie little league manager took a team that was not even supposed to make the playoffs was almost in the world series and thats without an ace on the staff. Also dont mention that the team has the best record in baseball.
If he is little league manager what does that say about the rest of MLB? Guess they just soccer mom managers in the stands? 🙂 Lets go Randy Marsh.
They’re still lacking in LH relief, in that Cabrera’s MLB platoon split is all of .002 OPS and there’s nothing about his arsenal suggesting he’s someone you want facing a lefthander beyond his ability to get MLB hitters out, which is nothing special.
Even his mild good luck on BABIP and HR% giving him an ERA half a run better than his peripherals suggest, he’s a spare arm with an ERA since the end of 2021 around 4.00.
Why did the Mets hate Mike Vasil so much, and Dominic Hamel
You use the word hate far too loosely.
Why do you love them so much? What has either of them done at the AAA level to warrant a call-up by a contending team??
And for the record, Vasil isn’t even in the Mets system anymore. The lowly ChiSox took him in the Rule 5 draft.
If you follow Genesis Cabrera on IG, he’ll follow you and follow me
If we all follow each other, who’s leading us?
:p
Gwynn – Hope we stay away from the centipede movie thing. LOL
Never has any smarterest thing been said FPG! I second your motion. Lol
A circle of people can all sit on each others’ laps. It’s a weird phenomenon but it’s physically possible.
simon – That I don’t see happening. As the circle increases, it has to keep going up. So how would it become a 360° circle if the last person to sit on a lap is much higher than the first person?
The first and last person wouldn’t be able to connect.
Douglas Hofstadter has a photo of it on pg. 100 of “I Am a Strange Loop” with ten seated individuals all sitting with bent legs on oeach others’ laps.
I would say something witty, but I can think of no reply at all.
Finally. Another cardinals player going to get dfa’d in the next 5 days. Hope he sucks
His name is also as good as who you are as a commenter.
“The 7.88 ERA in that time isn’t pretty but it’s a small sample”
In other words he sucks, but he has sucked for a long time yet.
He used to suck. He still sucks, but he used to, too.
I didn’t think Devenski could have options left, whether he agreed or not. Don’t they run out after a few years?
No, there is no expiration date on options. The limits are: 1) the player has three options attached to him, each of which is good for an entire season.
2) a player with 5 years MLB service time can refuse any option.
Thats it. No time limit on the option itself..
Yep, you can be 22 with no options in the case of early Latin signings and you can be 38 with options in the case of late bloomers that didn’t make the 40 man until their 30s. And many other stories in between.
“That is surely what has brought Cabrera up to the big leagues today.”
———————————————————————-
—Probably not. Cabs has no platoon split in the majors, and that’s in a SS large enough to be representative.
You can go back to his 2017 and 2018 in the minors and find numbers when he was a starter suggestive of a useful platoon split, but that’s nothing you want to hang your hat on.
Given the handedness edge lets a pitcher on average knock down a hitter’s OPS by just .025, I’ll be surprised if the Mets don’t simply go with the best pitcher available rather than trot out a lefty like Cabrera just because he’s a lefty. He doesn’t have the stuff to do particularly well against tough LH hitters. I think the Mets brought him up simply because he was their best general alternative for the pen on the morning of May 1st.