Stephen Nogosek had his best big league season yet in 2022

With it having become abundantly clear that they weren’t contending by the trade deadline in 2017, the Mets made a few moves that brought them relief pitchers in return. One of those trades sent Addison Reed to the Red Sox in exchange for Gerson Bautista, Jamie Callahan, and Stephen Nogosek.

Neither Callahan nor Bautista has pitched in affiliated ball recently, but Nogosek threw 22.0 innings for the Mets in 2022, his highest single-season total at the major league level. And he managed to put up a 2.45 ERA despite having a home run issue that was the primary factor in his 4.66 FIP.

Having made his major league debut in 2019, Nogosek had just 9.2 innings of major league experience under his belt coming into the season, and in that brief time, he had a 9.31 ERA. But as he traversed the Heath Bell Express between Triple-A and the big league club in his age-27 season, Nogosek produced pretty good results throughout. In Syracuse, he had a 2.30 ERA in 43.0 innings of work.

Whether or not that limited sample of relative success is sustainable is an open question, but the Mets have a lot of question marks in their bullpen at the moment. Unless the team acquires at least half a dozen relievers, he figures to have a shot at earning a spot in the Opening Day bullpen. Among the pitchers who became Mets in the summer of 2017, that’s an above-average outcome.