The Mets are heading into the offseason with a bullpen plan that starts and ends with Devin Williams.
After a season in which the club moved out several late-inning arms at the trade deadline, New York is now looking to rebuild that relief group with Williams locked in as the closer, sources told FanSided. The goal isn’t to find someone to challenge him for the ninth inning. It’s to surround him with enough proven help that the bullpen can hold up in the biggest spots.
That matters because the Mets already stripped out a chunk of their high-leverage depth last season when they dealt away A.J. Minter, Brooks Raley, Luke Weaver and Huascar Brazoban. The replacements did their part down the stretch, but the unit still needs more established arms if the Mets want it to be sturdier heading into 2027.
Williams, 32, is coming off another rough year, his first with the Mets and his second straight season in New York after pitching for the Yankees in 2025. He finished with a 4.43 ERA, 92 ERA+, 1.57 WHIP, 3.05 FIP, 52 strikeouts, an 11.4 percent walk rate, 16 saves in 19 chances and a -0.5 bWAR over 40.2 innings.
Even so, the underlying numbers give the Mets reason to keep betting on him in the ninth. Williams posted a 3.22 expected ERA and a .218 expected batting average against. He also logged a 29.7 percent hard hit rate, a 28.3 percent strikeout rate, a 34.4 percent whiff rate and a 38.6 percent chase rate, per Baseball Savant.
New York signed Williams to a three-year, $51 million deal last offseason, and he ended up taking over the closer role after Edwin Diaz left for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Now the Mets are shopping for the kind of relievers who can bridge the gap to him. They have been active in free agency and have checked in on former Mets Minter and Raley. They’ve also shown interest in Alex Vesia, Tim Hill and Jonathan Loaisiga.
President of baseball operations David Stearns made the team’s bullpen priorities sound pretty straightforward at the GM Meetings earlier in the week.
"It's really 'can we just get guys out?'" Whether it's right-handed, left-handed, where they've pitched before, how they get guys out - a little bit less important for us"
That’s the lane the Mets are in now: find arms that can win key matchups, stack enough quality around Williams, and make the late innings less fragile than they were a year ago.
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