The Mets brought in a volatile lefty reliever to kick off their trade season.
The Mets kicked off their trade season roughly a week before the deadline, acquiring lefty Gregory Soto from the Orioles. Right hand pitchers Wellington Aracena and Cameron Foster went back to Baltimore in the deal.
Lefty relief help was a clear need at the deadline. A.J. Minter, signed to fill this role in the offseason, is done for the year. Ditto Danny Young, who flashed very promising stuff but struggled with control before eventually going under the knife for Tommy John surgery. Brooks Raley has been quite good since returning, but is coming back from his own TJ adding additional uncertainty. Any internal option beyond those guys is some combination of hurt or bad.
Soto can be a frustrating watch given his propensity for walking batters, and he’s had an ERA in the mid-4s over the last two seasons with the Phillies and Orioles. At the same time, he’s consistently posted high-quality stuff metrics (60+ Stuff score from PitchingBot; 110+ Stuff score from Stuff+; 70th percentile or better pitch quality from Rob Orr), struck out at least 25% of batters, and generally had better xERA and FIP figures than his actual ERA. And he’s managed to keep his ERA below 4 this season to boot.
That’s the classic profile of a volatile reliever, one who might blow up here or there but is also capable of ripping off 30 innings of 1.50 ERA ball down the stretch into the playoffs. A good team like the Mets can likely increase the likelihood of the latter while simultaneously hedging the downside risk with a deep enough bullpen around him (more on that in subsequent articles). It’s a great patch to a weak part of the roster.
Now, for the cost. Cameron Foster is a fungible relief prospect, a 26-year-old who seems to have taken a step forward at Double-A this season. There might be something here, and maybe he’s a useful up-and-down relief arm, but the Mets are clearly good enough at producing this caliber of player that they don’t need to sweat this too much.
Wellington Aracena, a 20-year-old RHP, is by far the more popular name here. He’s posted a 2.38 ERA over 64.1 Single-A innings (17 G / 8 GS) w/ an 11.75 K/9 on the back of a fastball that can hit triple digits this season. Those are good numbers for sure, and plenty of fans are regarding him as the next big breakout pitcher in the Mets’ system. In reality, he’s likely closer to Foster than to someone like Jonah Tong.
Aracena’s four-seam fastball shape is poor (13.6” vert, 4” horizontal), relying on raw velocity to overwhelm Single-A hitters. He doesn’t hold the velocity well either. The Mets have tinkered here a bit, but the reality is that this is a sort-of hard throwing relief arm with a limited track record of strike throwing and breakers that are fine but not standout. You know what the upside for that sort of player typically is? Gregory Soto.
A level-headed assessment of this trade has the Mets giving up two pitching prospects – both likely relievers – of the quality that can readily be replaced through the team’s robust pitching development processes. Neither would have ranked anywhere near the Mets top-10 prospects; Aracena has a plausible argument for the top-15, but more realistically sits closer to 20. Paying that price for a potential late inning weapon is an easy move for a team nearly guaranteed to make the playoffs and looking to make a deep run. This trade receives an A-.