Some signings arrive without fanfare but still make you pause for a second look. Nick Burdi landing with the New York Mets is one of those moves. You see a name you vaguely remember blazing high-octane sinkers a couple of seasons back, then you realize he’s already been through the city once and survived the Yankees gauntlet long enough to flash promise. It’s a reminder of how quickly a bullpen career can shift, sometimes on nothing more than health and timing.
A second chance in the city
Burdi’s route back to New York didn’t follow the tidy path the Yankees once imagined. They tried to make him a part of their 2024 bullpen blueprint, leaning into his upper-90s turbosinker and strikeout potential. Injuries turned that plan upside-down, and his occasional battles with the strike zone didn’t help. By the time the season ended, he had become another what-if buried in a long list of bullpen experiments.
The Mets aren’t treating him as anything more than a low-risk opportunity, and that’s the right frame. According to his MLB transactions page, and as SNY noted, Burdi joins the club on a minor league deal after tossing 5.1 scoreless innings for Boston last year. There’s real performance under that line, too.
He posted a 2.83 ERA with 45 strikeouts and 16 walks across 35 Triple-A innings, numbers that show both the appeal and the concern. When he’s healthy, hitters struggle to square him up. When he’s off, the walks pile up fast.
Why this kind of signing matters
The Mets know their bullpen doesn’t have the luxury of ignoring upside plays. If anything, the last few years have made it clear that elite relief groups develop from volume, variety, and a willingness to take chances on arms other teams didn’t have the patience to sort through. Burdi fits that mold. He’s 32, still throws hard enough to miss bats, and carries no financial commitment. That’s exactly the kind of profile that sneaks onto a roster in June and ends up getting big outs in September.
The health question will follow him until proven otherwise. Burdi has battled injuries throughout his career, and the Mets aren’t expecting him to close games or carry leverage innings. They just want another look, another project for their new pitching infrastructure, and another option when the inevitable injuries or cold streaks hit the major league bullpen. Every contender stocks these lottery-ticket types. The smart ones sometimes cash them in.
What the Mets think they can unlock
That tiny Yankees cameo in 2024, a clean 1.86 ERA across 9.2 innings, still lingers as proof of what Burdi can look like when everything lines up. The stuff is loud enough to turn heads quickly. The question is whether the Mets can coax consistent strikes from him, because the raw talent isn’t really in doubt. If they find a mechanical tweak or a sequencing pattern that clicks, he suddenly becomes more than depth. He becomes a weapon.
Spring training will give him the stage to show all of that. The Mets coaches will get their hands on him early, and if he throws well, there’s always a path for a hard-throwing righty in a bullpen that’s still searching for definition. Maybe this is the window where Burdi finally stays healthy long enough to plant roots. Maybe it’s just another short stop on his tour of bullpens.
Either way, it’s a move that makes sense for a Mets team that knows it must keep swinging on arms like this. Sometimes the relievers who arrive quietly are the ones who end up mattering most.