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Brodie Van Wagenen Leaves Blanket Statement About Bullpen

Brodie Van Wagenen is at it again. The New York Mets braggadocios General Manager once again put people on notice with another blank check statement that is sure to get him in hot water with both fans and the press.

During the introductory press conference for reliever Dellin Betances, Van Wagenen boastfully proclaimed the Mets current bullpen as one of the best in baseball.

 That’s right, the same bullpen that still has Edwin Diaz and Jeurys Familia slated to patrol the late innings is, according to Van Wagenen, right up there with the likes of the Houston Astros and New York Yankees.

 “This signing was intended to blow the cover off our ceiling,” Van Wagenen was only warming up. “we believe that a healthy and dominant Dellin combined with Seth Lugo, Justin Wilson, Edwin Diaz, Jeruys Familia, Brad Brock and Robert Gsellman. This collective group has the potential to be one of the best in baseball.”

You got to be kidding me, right?

That is one heck of statement by VanWagenen, considering the Mets were ranked 25th in Major League Baseball in total bullpen ERA at 4.95.  How bad is that statistic? The Detroit Tigers who lost 114 games last season had a better bullpen ERA than the Mets.

What’s more the Mets were ranked 21st in all of baseball in save percentage at 58.46 percent.

The biggest culprits in blowing games on a regular basis of course were Diaz and Familia. Diaz had an ERA of 5.59 in 66 games, blowing seven saves. Familia’s ERA was 5.70; he blew four saves and never once nailed down a game. Things got so bad with Familia and Diaz last season that then-manager Mickey Callaway had to go to Seth Lugo as the team’s late inning reliever just to give his team a chance to win on a regular basis.

As for Betances, the Mets are taking a risk with a reliever who spent almost the entire 2019 season on the injury list with arm and leg injuries; the most serious being a partial tear of his Achilles Tendon in September.

When he was healthy, Betances was indeed one of the most dominant pitchers in the sport as the Yankees set-up man. But this is 2020 now, the Mets have to see whether Betances has fully recovered and can return to form. That is why they went with a short-term, one-year deal.

Meanwhile, the only other addition to the bullpen, Brad Brach is a total mystery. He pitched to a 5.47 ERA last season with the Cubs and Mets last season.

Brach has been the proto-typical reliever throughout his career. Some years he has been really good, like he was for Baltimore in 2016 where he posted a 2.05 ERA in 71 games out of the pen.  Other years, Brach has been less consistent.

In many ways the argument could be made that the Mets should add at least two more arms to the pen before Spring Training even begins next month. The more experienced arms the better.

For Van Wagenen to proclaim at this juncture that his bullpen has a chance to be one of the “best in baseball” is a fool-hardy statement by a man who wants so desperately for his acquisitions from last season (Diaz and Familia) to work out, and thinks his fan base is either too dumb or didn’t watch a single game last season to even notice.

And people wonder why the fan base sometimes labels Van Wagenen a ‘used cars salesman.’

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