Mets reliever Carlos Torres signs autographs before the July 4, 2013 game between the Mets and Arizona Diamondbacks (Photo credit: Paul Hadsall)
With the start of spring training just days away, we’ve reached the point in the off-season where free agents get ready to take minor league contracts with invitations to major league camp.
Mets reliever Carlos Torres signs autographs before the July 4, 2013 game between the Mets and Arizona Diamondbacks (Photo credit: Paul Hadsall)
Reliever Carlos Torres‘ time as a New York Met appears to be over. The 33-year-old elected free agency after clearing waivers today.
Over three seasons, Torres pitched 241 innings for the Mets in 165 games. He made 10 starts and 155 relief appearances. During his first two seasons as a Met, Torres was an above-average pitcher.
Last year, despite posting the lowest Fielding Independent Pitching of his MLB career, Torres struggled and allowed more hits per nine innings and had a higher WHIP than he had in any of his seasons with the Mets.
Topps released the official checklist for the first series of its 2015 baseball card set today, and I’m pretty excited about it.
With an official release date of Feb. 4th through hobby channels, scattered cards will probably start to turn up soon since individual Target and WalMart stores never seem to be all that concerned about keeping to day-and-date. (Mine, unfortunately, are more likely to put out the cards late than early.)
We’ve got a 700-card base set to look forward to in 2015, split into two series of 350 – and it does look like that will help us get cards of some middle relievers and bench players who might have been skipped in recent years. (How you feel about this is going to depend very much on your reaction to the news that Carlos Torres is getting his first baseball card since 2006 – if you said “who’s Carlos Torres?,” you probably would have preferred fewer cards to collect. I’m happy and wouldn’t mind going back to the 792-card sets that were the norm in the late 1980s, when there were only 26 teams and they employed a 24-man roster.)
By my count, there are 16 Mets players in the base set, and 14 of them are still Mets as I write this (though Dillon Gee‘s days in New York definitely seem to be numbered.) Daisuke Matsuzaka will be pitching for the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks this season, and Eric Young Jr. is still looking for a job.
To make up for that, we’re getting the first Mets baseball cards of the aforementioned Torres (and it only took 106 appearances over two seasons, not bad for a 26-year-old middle reliever who’s not exactly a household name) and rookie Dilson Herrera. Most of the Mets’ stars appear in Series 1, with Matt Harvey and winter acquisition Michael Cuddyer the biggest names who are waiting for Series 2.
PaulHadsall.com 