The Mets announced that left-hander Richard Lovelady has been claimed off waivers from the Nationals. Right-hander Justin Hagenman was placed on New York’s 60-day injured list in the corresponding move, as Hagenman will now miss the first two months of the season recovering from a rib fracture.
It’s a quick return to Queens for Lovelady, who was designated for assignment by the Mets in late January and then claimed by the Nationals. After a little over a month in Washington’s spring camp, Lovelady was DFA’ed again since the Nats needed roster space for the newly-signed Zack Littell.
Lovelady broke into the majors with the Royals in 2019, and he spent his first three big league seasons in Kansas City before a Tommy John surgery cost him the entirety of the 2022 season. Since recovering from his surgery, Lovelady has become a regular on the transactions list, as he has bounced around to multiple clubs in a series of trades, waiver claims, signings and re-signings. Since the start of the 2023 campaign, Lovelady has a 5.19 ERA, 20.7% strikeout rate, and 9.0% walk rate over 69 1/3 innings with five different teams at the Major League level.
This nomadic stretch includes multiple stints with the Mets over the last year, beginning last June when New York signed Lovelady after he’d opted out of a minor league contract with the Twins. Lovelady ended up posting a 6.30 ERA over 10 innings with the Amazins, while also being DFA’ed and outrighted three different times. The southpaw refused the first of those outrights and elected free agency, but soon re-signed with the Mets.
Lovelady has been out of minor league options following the 2024 season, which is why he has been ping-ponged around without much roster security. While the Mets clearly see enough in Lovelady to keep re-acquiring him, he is likely viewed as no more than left-handed bullpen depth, and a possible candidate for another DFA if New York needs roster space. Lovelady is signed for 2026 on a split contract that he inked with the Mets in October, and is guaranteed a $350K salary in the minors and $1MM in the majors.
Hagenman was a 23rd-round pick for the Dodgers in the 2018 draft, and signing with the Mets last offseason helped pave the way for the righty to make his MLB debut in 2025 as part of the Mets’ revolving door of pitchers. Hagenman posted a 4.56 ERA across his first 23 2/3 innings in the Show, with an impressive 23 strikeouts against only two walks but also four homers allowed.
After spending most of his minor league career in a strict relief role, Hagenman has been used more as a swingman in Boston and New York’s Triple-A teams over the last two years. He was viewed as a longshot candidate to make the Mets’ Opening Day roster anyway, but this rib injury will now heavily delay Hagenman’s work even at Triple-A Syracuse. One minor silver lining is that the placement on the big league 60-day IL will earn Hagenman some Major League service time.
Mets fans favorite depth reliever!
No loss of Lovelady for Mutts!!!
The prodigal son has returned to Gotham City. This is sure to enrage the fans
Especially Nats-obsessed losers everywhere
Stearns ❤️ Lovelady!
A return to Queens!
He has returned to the ladies who loved hm.
What is this love that Stearns has for this guy ?
Ha ha. Another day, another Richard Lovelady transaction.
Except this time it doesn’t involve the world’s oldest occupation.
Dont be a dick
@swinging wood
Farming?
Notice Richard is longer than Dick.
Love be a Lady tonight…
Mets Reclaim Released Dick. Great headline.
Try this one, Stearns hopes Dick can fill hole in Mets bullpen. 🤣
Of course they did
Mets can’t get enough of that d…
The intern misunderstood Stearns request… again
Tricky Dick Lovelady gets around the league in transactions more than any player I’ve ever seen.
Jesse Chavez would like to have a word with you.
RIP WWII vet Seymour Weiner. I think he would’ve approved seeing Dicky’s return.
WHO IN THE METS FRONT OFFICE LIKES THIS GUY?
Can some reporter find someone in the Mets front office who’ll go on the record to state why they think he is worth a claim?
Somebody better step forward and say something nice about him, because I don’t see any value claiming him.
He’s a Triple A pitcher….. nothing more, which makes Lovelady’s Lack of Options just a busy-work, job filling function for a paper-pushing intern.
Wow, and I thought I hated this bum.
Just another episode of As The Lovelady Turns (off-season edition). His name seems to be the one most written in stories here due to his many, many moves.
Just sign him to a 10 year contract and get it over with.
I thought that he announced that he prefers to be called Dicky.
That was misinformation…
x.com/AnthonyDiComo/status/1937224465118835077
Well I think that we all saw this one coming a mile away once the Nats DFA’d him. He’s got to have incriminating photos of someone in the front office.
Lotta Mets fans doing the Fat Frank thing on this and being willfully ignorant to the realities of baseball so they can have an excuse to be self-deprecating towards their “favorite” team.
Sure, Dicky is a fairly poor major league reliever. You shouldn’t go into a season thinking this guy is going to be your primary, or even secondary left hander out of your major league bullpen. But he IS a lefty. And any AAAA left-handed arm you can stash away off the 40-man is only a positive. There is no reason you guys should get this mad over an attempt to pad out your minor league depth with split contracts like Lovelady unless you’re actively looking for a reason to get yourself mad and poop on the Mets. Especially considering the age and health of their actual major league bullpen lefties Minter and Raley.
The thing is you cant really stash him as you will have to DFA him unless he is on the major league roster and for whatever reason people just want the warm lefty body. He would have to earn that spot over someone that has had some success and is younger and also out of options in Hudson whom also has ties to the Brewers in his history. Something tells me big richard will be DFA’d again by next weekend unless another injury pops up as i find it hart to see a team carrying 4 lefty relievers and one of them isnt the closer.
Still cant understand why Coulombe was out there for so long and people were picking up dick. He had a bad monthish and change with texas but a few years of solid work.
Yes that’s the point. Of course they’re going to DFA him and try to stash him again. And you guys are going to make stupid comments about the strategy again. Despite it being obvious and insignificant. They don’t want Lovelady on the 40, if they did they’d give him a bigger contract that would ward off teams from adding him. They just want him in AAA in case of emergency. It affects literally nothing here they had the 40 man space with an injury. If they need the 40 man space tomorrow to add someone else they like, Dicky will be back on the wire. And they’ll keep doing it until he clears. On opening day if he’s still on the 40 he’ll get DFAd for Tauchman or whatever other NRI they need to add. Because they want him in AAA. Not the majors. They might even release him outright on opening day, Joe Jacques or Hudson or Turner or one of the other quad-A lefties in camp might win that coveted AAA lefty/injury replacement/doubleheader extra player job. It’s literally just a depth move to see what wheat you can separate from the chaff in camp. And you can’t help yourself from catastrophizing it like Stearns gave this guy 100 mil guaranteed and annointed him closer for life.
you seem to have some real anger issues. Maybe get Jack Nicholson to help with that?
but if its obvious and insignificant why do it? … do you know the einstein’s quote on insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
There will be dozens of lefties that come and go and they will already have a lefty in Waddell that is his equvalent or better in AAA. Dick can also refuse assignment if he chooses which he already did once to the mets. So that stash would be his choice which he might decline and go where he gets a better shot than 6th maybe 7th lefty option out the bullpen. Id rather give one of the NRI the extra work and give the 40 man to a ss in case lindor is not ready for opening day and cut them if he is.
Which pitcher did Stearns give 100M to in his career let alone a closer?
What strange work lives these players who are continually DFA’d and claimed and then DFA’d again and then claimed again must have. I suppose, with the inflated self-regard that jocks typically have, they think, each time they are claimed, THIS TIME I will stick.
Alan53: You arbitrarily decide that because this work life is strange to you, it can only be explained by some character flaw in the person doing it. You arbitrarily decided that this job – and the money that goes with it – is somehow worse than what he might do if he quit baseball. Thus offering us a pretty good example of inflated self-regard yourself.
Maybe he doesn’t need to stick this (or any) time for this to be worth his while. Strange or not, it is possible that they just love this life. Its possible that the thrill of getting into just a game or two a year is enough reason for them to keep doing it, regardless of whether he sticks or not. Its possible that the MONEY he gets – sometimes a few hundred thousand dollars per season in the MINORS, plus another $30,000 per WEEK spent on the major league roster, also makes it worthwhile, and is better than whatever he might wind up doing after baseball.
Or maybe he wants to coach baseball someday. Every year and every organization he passes through provides him an opportunity to learn more, and to make contacts who might get him a coaching job when his playing days are over for good.
He’s got another thirty or forty years to do the standard jobs for half of this pay.
Eeew…..sticky dicky Lovelady?
Raise your glass of Courvoisier , the LoveLady’s man in the big Apple!
This guy gets bounced around more than my lovelady on a Saturday night. Maybe I can learn something.
Comments closed. LoL
here for the dick jokes
Does this mean that the Mets FO love Dick?
For the love of baseball..NOOOOO!! Not this bozo again!!! WHY Stearns?!?! WHY????
LOLovelady
Good luck Mets fans if he makes the team in any capacity.
How many times are they going to drop him and pick him back up ? Jeez
Tis better to have love and lost, than to not have loved at all…..again!
The dude has been a ping pong ball for a month here
Mets are lining up for another quick in and out with Dick Lovelady. I can’t understand the infatuation.