Mets place Carlos Torres on waivers

The Mets have placed right-handed relief pitcher Carlos Torres on waivers. While the team had been talking to other teams about trading him after designating him for assignment to make room on the 40-man roster for Antonio Bastardo, a trade obviously didn't happen.

The 33-year-old was signed to a minor league deal by the Mets in the offseason between the 2012 and 2013 seasons. Once he was called up to the big league team early in the 2013 season, he stuck around. He made nine starts for the team that year and one in 2014, but he spent the grand majority of his 241 innings of work over the last three seasons pitching out of the bullpen.

In total, Torres was decent major league relief pitcher. He had a 3.59 ERA and 3.94 FIP including the ten starts, but as a reliever, he had a 3.33 ERA and 3.74 FIP. He had a 4.68 ERA last year, though he had a 3.53 FIP. He also missed time late in the season because of a calf injury, and although he returned to the mound before season's end, he did not make any iteration of the Mets' postseason roster.

Torres and the Mets settled on a $1.05 million salary for 2016 to avoid arbitration shortly before the team designated him for assignment. Ideally, he would clear waivers and star the year in Triple-A Las Vegas, but that doesn't seem likely to happen at this point. And even if he clears, Torres would have the option of refusing the assignment, per @tpgMets, so there wouldn't be any guarantee that he would stay in the organization.