PORT ST. LUCIE — It will be impossible to replace Aaron Loup, who finished with an ERA below 1.00 last season, but the Mets have options.
Unless they ignore those options and opt not to even try to fill his cleats.
“Nobody said we have to carry a left-hander,” manager Buck Showalter said before the Mets beat the Cardinals, 7-3, on Sunday. “It’s not a written rule.”
The candidates have looked solid, but there is a possibility no one wins the lefty competition. Still, with rosters expected to expand to 28 players through May 1 — and with the Mets already projecting to have five right-handed starting pitchers — it is hard to envision the Mets going all-righty in the bullpen.
A further-down roster battle taking place is likely between former Met and Yankee Chasen Shreve and eight-year veteran Alex Claudio, who are in camp on minor league deals. There is no southpaw reliever on the Mets’ 40-man roster.
Shreve has pitched a pair of scoreless innings, while Claudio, a former Ranger, Brewer and Angel, has tossed three in Grapefruit League play. Longer-shot possibilities include 30-year-old Rob Zastryzny (three scoreless innings).
“All of them have represented themselves well, as advertised — not just [Shreve] and Claudio, but there are some other options here,” Showalter said.
The best-known is Shreve, who has pitched 4 ¹/₂ seasons in New York — the first few with the Yankees before latching on in Queens in 2020 — and who eyed the Mets’ holes from the left side.
“That’s a reason why I picked the Mets. I knew they needed left-handed help,” Shreve said. “I’ve been in New York most of my career. So it was somewhere I wanted to come back to for sure at some point, and it just worked out.”
The now-31-year-old was dependable in The Bronx from 2015-18 before being included in the deadline deal with the Cardinals that brought Luke Voit to New York.
The Mets pounced on him after the Cardinals, and Shreve spent his 2021 season with Pittsburgh, where he tallied a 3.20 ERA in 56 ¹/₃ innings.
Shreve said his key to success still is setting up hitters for his splitter, against which batters hit .203 last season. He has started throwing his four-seam fastball down in the zone more, which he hopes hitters will mistake for a splitter and thus lay off it. In a live batting practice recently, Pete Alonso took a couple splitters that Shreve thought would induce chases because Alonso presumed the bottom would fall out of the pitch.
“Throwing [the fastball] down helps get a lot of [takes from hitters] — when they see the ball down, they just think splitter,” Shreve said. “And then once I do throw a fastball down in the zone for a strike, and then throw my splitter off that, it’s harder to lay off.”
In a division that will require late-game outs against the likes of lefties Juan Soto, Bryce Harper and Matt Olson, the Mets likely will need to decide if Shreve is the best bet.