Mets Designate Luis Garcia For Assignment

The Mets announced that right-hander Luis Garcia has been designated for assignment, as reported by The Athletic’s Will Sammon just before the club’s official news release.  Right-hander Joey Gerber is up from Triple-A to take Garcia’s spot on the active roster, and Gerber is already on the 40-man roster so no further moves were required.

Garcia came to New York on a one-year, $1.75MM free agent deal back in January, as the Mets became the ninth team Garcia has pitched for at the MLB level over his 14 big league seasons.  Unfortunately for Garcia, his tenure in Queens got off to a rocky start, as he has a 7.11 ERA and 12.5% strikeout rate over his first 6 1/3 innings and six appearances in a Mets uniform.  Four of those six appearances resulted in scoreless work, but Garcia was tagged for two runs in one inning on Opening Day, and he was charged with three runs over just a third of an inning of work in Thursday’s 7-1 loss to the Diamondbacks.

Yesterday’s 11-6 loss to the A’s saw the Mets use Garcia and four other pitchers in relief of Kodai Senga, who was chased after allowing seven runs in 2 1/3 innings.  Today’s transaction could therefore be about getting Gerber’s fresh arm into New York’s bullpen, and the relative lack of flexibility within the relief corps (in terms of pitchers with minor league options) may have simply made Garcia the odd man out.

Still, it is a little surprising to see the Mets pursue the DFA route with Garcia so soon after signing the veteran to a guaranteed contract.  Garcia has a .423 BABIP over his small sample size this season, so it can certainly be argued that bad luck has played a large role in Garcia’s struggles, especially for a pitcher with a 53.9% career grounder rate.  Garcia’s drop in sinker velocity (from 96.9mph in 2025 to 94 mph this year) may have been of some concern to the Mets, but it isn’t unusual for pitchers to lack a bit of velo in the early going.

Garcia has had plenty of ups and downs over his long career, but he was posting solid numbers just last year, when he had a 3.42 ERA over 55 1/3 innings with the Dodgers, Nationals, and Angels, albeit with a below-average K% and BB%.  Teams in need of bullpen help might look to claim the 39-year-old off waivers, though that would mean assuming the remainder of Garcia’s $1.75MM salary.

If he clears waivers and is outrighted, Garcia has more enough MLB service time to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency, while still retaining the rest of his owed salary.  A new team could then sign Garcia and owe him just the prorated portion of a minimum salary for any time spent on the big league roster.  The Mets would still be on the hook for the remainder of the $1.75MM, minus that prorated total.

Signing Garcia came at more of a cost to the Mets than just $1.75MM, as the total price tag came to $3.675MM when considering the 110% tax levied against New York for being in the highest tier of luxury tax penalization.  In a sense, DFA’ing Garcia this early is another sign of how money isn’t really an object for the Mets, and how the team will again be keeping up a steady churn of bullpen transactions in order to continually have fresh arms at the ready.