The Mets took the patient route with Adbert Alzolay, and so far the payoff hasn’t come close.
New York signed the right-hander to a two-year minor league deal after Tommy John surgery, then let him spend all of 2025 rehabbing before getting him back on a mound this season. Since then, he has worked only in the minors. After Tuesday night, even that setup looks shaky.
Alzolay was tagged for four runs in 0.2 innings for Syracuse, pushing his Triple-A ERA to 10.38 across his first 8.2 innings. That kind of line doesn’t just look bad in a small sample - it’s been bad almost everywhere he’s pitched so far.
Five of his eight appearances have included at least one earned run, and hitters have been squaring him up regularly. In June, opposing batters hit .351/.419/.676 against him. The one small positive: he hasn’t issued a walk in three straight outings.
Syracuse, though, has been a rough place to pitch across the board. Dylan Ross owns a 9.90 ERA, while fellow relief prospect Ryan Lambert sits at 6.00. Jack Wenniger, the team’s innings leader, has been one of the few steady spots with a 3.84 ERA, which doesn’t exactly jump off the page in isolation but looks strong compared with the rest of the group.
Alzolay’s struggles are a reminder that the Mets were never buying a finished product. He carried a lifetime 4.04 ERA in the majors, and his best selling point was always the 2023 season with the Chicago Cubs, when he posted a 2.67 ERA and 22 saves. That year also came with a sharp 1.8 BB/9 and 9.4 K/9, the kind of strike-throwing and swing-and-miss stuff that made him an appealing stash for the future.
In the best-case version of this plan, Alzolay would have worked his way back by June or July and become a deadline arm for the Mets without costing them a player. Instead, the $3 million-plus investment has produced little more than minor league damage, and right now he looks like a pitcher still trying to find his way back from the surgery that changed everything.
In Other News...
Mets Just Sent A Troubling Message About Kevin Parada
Kevin Paradas path through the Mets system has taken another turn, and it is not the kind that usually inspires confidence in a former first-round pick. After an uneven run in the minors this season, the catcher showed a brief offensive spike in Triple-A, but the Mets still opted to move him back to Double-A, where the bat has cooled again and the overall picture remains choppy on both sides of the ball.
For a player whose development was supposed to center on steady progress, the shuffle is a telling sign. Paradas struggles have left him squeezed by the organizations current catching depth, with more experienced options offering a cleaner fit for a club that needs reliability behind the plate. For now, the message is less about one bad stretch than about how much ground he still has to make up. [Read more 🡒]
Three Looming Threats Could Derail The Mets 2027 Vision
Steve Cohens long view for the Mets has always rested on the idea that money, smart front-office work and a steady talent pipeline can keep the club in contention year after year. But as the organization looks toward 2026 and 2027, there are real questions building around how much of that plan can actually hold. Cohen is keeping David Stearns in place to help navigate the next stretch, even as concerns linger about whether the president of baseball operations is flexible enough to adjust if the roster needs a different kind of fix.
The other pressure point is bigger than one executive. The next collective bargaining agreement could reshape how far Cohens spending edge goes, and the minor league system has not delivered the kind of clean answers the Mets were hoping for. Several players expected to be part of the core by then have not taken the expected step forward, which leaves the front office trying to build a contender while also waiting for development to catch up. [Read more 🡒]