The Mets have swung a deal with the Giants to acquire right-hander Justin Garza in exchange for cash considerations, according to Mike Puma of the New York Post. Garza had been on a minor league deal with San Francisco, so no corresponding move will be necessary for the Mets until and unless he’s selected to the 40-man roster.
Garza, 31, has pitched in the majors for parts of two MLB seasons. Selected by Cleveland in the eighth-round of the 2015 draft, he made his big league debut for them in 2021. He ultimately ended up pitching 28 2/3 innings of work for the club in total with roughly league average results. In those 21 appearances, he posted a 4.71 ERA (92 ERA+) and struck out 22.7% of his opponents, but walked 14.1% and allowed more than his fair share of home runs. He was much more effective than that at Triple-A, where he posted a 1.57 ERA in 22 2/3 frames, but even that effectiveness slipped away during a 2022 season where he did not make it to the majors and posted only middling results in the minors.
He split the 2023 season between the Angels and Red Sox organizations and made it back to the big leagues in Boston, but struggled badly in that 17-game stint with a 7.36 ERA. His walk rate was still an elevated 13.7%, but his strikeout rate actually dropped to a well below-average 18.7% while his issues with the long ball persisted. His results at Triple-A were once again lackluster as well, and given his disastrous results his last time in the majors it’s not exactly shocking that he has yet to get another major league opportunity since. While he posted good numbers for the Giants at Triple-A last year, that’s not been the case at all this season with a 6.11 ERA and 5.50 FIP in 17 2/3 at the highest level of the minors this year.
Now, he’s set to join a new organization in hopes that a change of scenery (and a move out of the Pacific Coast League) can help him get back on track. Garza’s improved his command during his time in the Giants organization over the past two years, getting to the point where he struck out 26.0% of opponents while walking 7.8% this year. If he can carry those improved numbers over to the Mets organization, perhaps he could be a viable option for New York at the major league level even in spite of his proclivity towards giving up hard contact. The Mets have gotten generally excellent results from their bullpen this year, but as they found out when injuries sidelined Danny Young and A.J. Minter earlier this year an injury or two can leave even the strongest bullpens scrambling for depth. The addition of Garza should help protect against that somewhat, as he’ll join other non-roster depth pieces like Colin Poche and Oliver Ortega.
I’m here for the inevitable trolling by LFGMets. He’s sure to have a field day with this one!
we taking bets? …. does he say he will be a star and that he predicted this since the guy was drafted as he watched him in grade school or does he say what a waste of time and money we need to fire stearns how dare he make some minor league deal.
He’s already drafting a response deriding Stearns for his bargain-bin ways.
thankfully there is ai now so we wont have to wait weeks for him to draft it.
@Blue Baron Mets get Justin Garza. Dodgers get Alexis Diaz, Kirby Yates, Blake Trienen and Tanner Scott. I’m sure Garza’s sub 6 ERA will be a great addition to this lousey pen
You never disappoint
And yet with a win tonight, the Mets have the best record in the NL by 3 games over the Dodgers and 3.5 over the Phillies.
You’ll never be happy no matter what they do. What a miserable attitude.
@Blue Baron The Mets were 9.5 games up on the Braves in 2022 and we finished second because they didn’t think it was necessary to improve the team at the trade deadline. You and a lot of other Met fans on here have a loser mentality. I want to win a World Series. To win a World Series, you need to go for it, not just tread water. They are not blowing out teams, every game is close. The rotation is performing outside of expectations and there is no way that they will be this good the whole season
Everyone wants their team to win the World Series. You’re not saying anything profound or shocking.
But in 2022, the Mets had neither Stearns in charge nor the depth of talent in the organization that they have now.
Stearns has shown us enough since he took over to trust his staff, mindset, and process.
LFGMets:
“The Dodgers drove so many in the industry nuts — how many times was it asked if they were good for the game or not? — by following a championship with further restocking. But approaching the 40 percent mark of the schedule, most of what Los Angeles did in the offseason has not gone well. The main roster adds have mainly been hurt and/or ineffective — significantly Michael Conforto, Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott, Blake Snell and Kirby Yates. Only Hyeseong Kim, who spent the first five weeks in the minors, has excelled.”
– Joel Sherman, NY Post
Two weeks in the pitching lab and he’ll be good to go.
Probably so. He’s had some peachy K rates in the minors.
They’ll have him junk his worst pitch, focus on his two best, teach him the circle change, and fire off an air horn next to him every time he misses the strike zone.
It’s the new thing.
What the heck do they see in Garza?
Thanks for the cash.
What the heck..,
Reed Garrett
Ryne Stanek
Huascar Brazoban
Danny Young
Jose Butto
Paul Blackburn
np … thank you for overpaying severino and for the draft pick
Luis Severino did not, in fact, sign with the Giants
that was my bad then for some reason i thought garza was from the A;s
I’m guessing Buster called them. Got a guy who is AAA worthy but you don’t have room there. Let’s see if we can turn him into a little cash. Who are you going to call ?
@Roll Perhaps you meant, “thank you for overpaying for Adames”?
If your GM is the kind who thinks a few bucks matter when he’s building bullpen depth for the long, 162-game haul, and the player generally has a K rate above 10 in the upper minors since 2021, he’s giving away too many wins.
Mets pitching has greatly overperformed so far
Alternatively, Mets pitching lab is strong.
Cora: Or Mets pitchers underperformed with other teams.
I hand it to them… thought it would be worse but outside of Senga, I can’t see Canning, Peterson, and Holmes holding the fort down all year. These guys haven’t even pitched full seasons. Their offense may just carry them because the Mets offense is just that good
If you look and think hard enough, you’ll always find something to worry and complain about.
Have we not seen enough pitchers go to the IL to realize it’s sound management to stockpile healthy arms? It’s quite possible this is just to reinforce AAA while guys go back and forth. Why does everyone feel the need to be negative about every single move.
Not everyone. Just a vocal minority
@tuck 2 Oh, agreed—absolutely. Any time someone whines about moves like this at the margins of the roster in an era where teams use 60-65 players including 30-40 pitchers in a season, just Mute them.
The Mets are presently one of the best run teams in MLB, and in 2024 when they surprised by making the postseason, they used 37 pitchers. They went 89-73 and got in on a tiebreak.
Lose one more game and they would have missed it. So who wants to say the last 10 guys who pitch for you and total 30-35 innings (the case with the 2024 Mets), about 3-4 games worth, don’t matter? Get slightly worse performance from the 10 relievers you use in the Justin Garza role—the guys you have to bring up on the AAA Express to fill in when other guys get hurt or simply can’t keep pitching five times a week—and you miss the postseason.
Apparently the Giants have a bit of a minor league pitching backlog. Just promoted a well regarded guy to AAA so maybe Garza was the guy that had to go. Buster giving him an opportunity elsewhere and taking the cash.
Fine depth. By now if some fans don’t trust Stearns, not sure anything can be said to persuade them
@10centBeerNight how about he gets real MLB relievers with years of sustained success and that actually make money? There is a reason why a lot of the reliever he gets are making the minimum and most of them do terrible. Time to stop cheapening out. The Mets have a chance to win the World Series this year
Yeah Stearns is the individual manifestation of the “If Tampa Bay wants your pitcher…” trope.
Who needs Mason Miller, Camillo Doval, David Bednar, Alexis Diaz, or any guy with years of sustained success. We have Justin Garza and his sub 6 ERA! Dollar Store David Stearns strikes again. The bullpen is our biggest weakness right now. How is the Mets pen that consists of Butto, Kranick, Castillo, Waddell, Stanek, Garrett, Brazoban, and Diaz going to compete with the Dodgers pen that consists of Trienen, Yates, Kopech, Vesia, Tanner Scott, the spanish guy they got for Maeda (forgot his name), Casparius, River Ryan, etc. The bullpen was the reason we lost to the Dodgers last year in the playoffs. Stearns needs to stop making these “under the radar” moves and get a proven reliever that makes money
Stearns knows to continue to build bullpen depth.