Is Luke Weaver good? I’m asking for a buddy of mine who will stay nameless, initials D.S. It’s a matter of some urgency, he informed me. Maybe – and I, after all, wouldn’t need to speculate – it is likely to be associated to a information merchandise first reported by Will Sammon of The Athletic. Weaver and the New York Mets are in settlement on a two-year, $22 million deal that continues to overtake their bullpen.
Eleven million a 12 months for a high quality reliever is a stable price. Eleven million for a man who is just a season faraway from almost carrying the Yankees to a World Collection title? A screaming purchase. Thus, the query in evaluating Weaver’s free company is easy: Is he the man who dominated in 2024, or the one whom Aaron Boone launched down the bullpen hierarchy and finally gave up on within the 2025 postseason?
When the Weaver expertise is firing on all cylinders, you watch him pitch and marvel why everybody can’t do it like this. He begins issues off with a model-friendly four-seam fastball, 94-95 mph and with prototypical backspinning motion. The mix of velocity, motion, and command flip what may seem to be an strange pitch into a terrific major possibility. As a starter, Weaver’s fastball was plus however not unhittable. It was held again by subpar velocity, however that was the one shortcoming of an in any other case stable providing. His star flip in 2024 was pushed largely by that pitch, with a number of ticks of velocity making it a monster as an alternative of merely good.
When Weaver isn’t pounding the strike zone together with his fastball, he’s snapping off top-of-the-line changeups in baseball. The superlative cambio has at all times been his high providing. He broke into the majors as a starter and used the change to outlive, throwing it greater than 1 / 4 of the time with out some other stable secondaries to talk of. It’s so good that it’s no mere platoon pitch, and it’s gotten higher since his transition to the bullpen. The identical few ticks of additional juice that turned his fastball unhittable additionally gave batters nightmares together with his offspeed choices.
These two pitches have been all Weaver wanted for his marvelous 2024 season. They’re additionally just about all he used this season, although, and therein lies the rub. Regardless of a reasonably related plan of assault, Weaver’s outcomes bought meaningfully worse this 12 months. His strikeout and swinging strike charges declined notably. He surrendered extra runs with worse secondary indicators. Some batted ball luck helped disguise his decline early on (.173 first-half BABIP), however by the second half of the season, the Yankees had quietly pushed Weaver down the bullpen ladder. When the playoffs rolled round, he didn’t have Boone’s belief, and deservedly not. He confronted seven batters within the postseason and retired precisely one among them.
Which Weaver is the true one? That’s the problem of assessing relievers. The 56 batters he confronted within the 2024 postseason reached base 10 occasions. The seven he confronted in 2025 reached base six occasions. Rivera-like dominance or unplayable; not less than Weaver doesn’t do something in half measures.
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The Mets don’t want Weaver to deal with closing duties for them. They’ve one other Yankees cast-off coming off a tough 2025 marketing campaign dealing with that function already. Devin Williams is simply an amped-up model of Weaver: more durable fastball, nastier offspeed pitch, larger collapse. However after Williams, there’s lots of room to stretch out within the Queens bullpen. Longtime nearer Edwin Díaz is a Dodger. Reed Garrett had Tommy John surgical procedure in October. Ryne Stanek, Tyler Rogers, Gregory Soto, and Ryan Helsley all left in free company; José Buttó left in New York’s commerce for Rogers on the deadline. That’s to not say there aren’t any choices – David Stearns is perpetually buying attention-grabbing arms who may flip into late-inning choices sometime – however this can be a clear space the place the Mets want to enhance, and in addition an space the place they will enhance with out displacing an incumbent.
Nonetheless, that doesn’t reply our preliminary query: Is Luke Weaver good? I can speak you thru his previous exploits all day. Naming some departed Mets pitchers? Additionally fairly simple. However that doesn’t change the calculus on the heart of this deal. If Weaver’s 2025 downturn – and particularly his late-year struggles – don’t persist, this contract can be a smash hit. In the event that they do, it’s an overpay. Evaluating the contract isn’t about describing his previous, it’s about estimating the chance of his future efficiency.
In my view, I’m skeptical that Weaver can repeat his 2024 kind ever once more. Sure, I feel he’s gotten meaningfully higher now that he throws for an inning or two at a time as an alternative of 5, however I feel that he additionally benefited that 12 months from variance in a number of locations which can be unlikely to persist. His fastball was actually good – however I don’t suppose it’s nearly as good because it performed that season. The 75.9% zone contact that pitch produced wasn’t only a career-best mark for Weaver; it was top-of-the-line marks within the majors, interval, twelfth amongst pitchers who threw not less than 300 fastballs. Guys who miss bats that steadily principally throw 100 with nasty motion. That zone contact price worsened to roughly league common in 2025. I’m not saying league common is the fitting place for this pitch, however neither was “principally Mason Miller.” Throwing your fastball previous hitters within the strike zone will flip any pitcher elite; when you don’t suppose Weaver has that ability, it is best to shade his outcomes down accordingly.
Along with the sort of one-year fastball dominance that I don’t anticipate to return anytime quickly, Weaver additionally bought the sort of batted ball luck that you just can’t depend on. He posted a .223 BABIP allowed in 2024. He adopted up with a .226 mark, pushed by a spectacular begin to the 2025 season, however his BABIP spiked to .288 within the second half. (He’s at .311 for his profession.) As a fly ball pitcher, he’s at all times able to stringing collectively lengthy runs of “In play, out(s)” notifications, however as a man who doesn’t throw notably laborious and but assaults the strike zone doggedly, he’s at all times able to getting lit up too.
You’ll be aware that whereas I discussed some areas of Weaver’s 2024 that he’s unlikely to repeat, I shied away from speaking unhealthy about his changeup. I like his changeup. I’m extremely excited to observe Mets opponents swing via changeups for 2 straight innings – although to be truthful, I mentioned that about this 12 months’s Yankees and it didn’t find yourself sparking a lot pleasure for his or her followers. However the changeup is more likely to stay as marketed, for my part. Certain, 2024 marked a career-high swinging strike price for the pitch, however he wasn’t far off of that mark this 12 months, and there’s nothing notably unsustainable about any of the element plate self-discipline metrics I observe there. “Good changeup is sweet” is usually what the numbers are telling me.
In actual fact, possibly Weaver’s 2025 is simply what he’s going to be going ahead. He wasn’t unhealthy within the combination, regardless of the season-ending collapse. Generally relievers simply don’t have it for a month or two. It’s an occupational hazard. His full-year numbers – 3.62 ERA, 3.89 FIP, 27.5% strikeout price – have been completely tremendous. This wasn’t a case of ERA not capturing his impact on the sport, both; he notched 1.67 WPA, and had 32 shutdowns to 12 meltdowns. Though there have been components of the season the place he seemed utterly misplaced, the general numbers have been serviceable for a center reliever, good even. The problems have been twofold: Expectations have been excessive after 2024, and Weaver saved his worst efficiency for crucial a part of the season.
Steamer and ZiPS projections mirror my normal view: They each have Weaver as inside hailing distance of league common subsequent 12 months. There are huge error bars round that estimate, clearly. The Mets and Yankees each have heralded pitching improvement methods, however generally new voices drive modifications in ways in which current coaches merely couldn’t talk. Weaver may unlock a brand new gear in Queens, or he may equally battle to take care of the enhancements he made within the Bronx in 2024.
Nonetheless, in the long term, predicting {that a} 32-year-old who had a profession 12 months at 30 received’t repeat that kind is an efficient guess. That additionally makes Weaver a wierd match for this incarnation of the Mets. My psychological mannequin of the Stearns period in New York is that he’s making an attempt to tie collectively the mastery of the fringes of the roster he confirmed in Milwaukee – good pitching improvement, discovering helpful function gamers within the higher minors, an ensemble method to the bullpen – with Steve Cohen’s monetary may. That sort of plan doesn’t typically embody offers like this.
A Brewers-ier answer for the bullpen can be to attempt to discover bargains and breakouts for all however the high job, saving offseason assets for less-volatile positions the place you’re unlikely to spike a number of years of fantastic efficiency out of an inexpensive free agent signing of an under-heralded prospect. It’s not precisely that the Mets are payroll-constrained, however everybody has some restrict, and spending on Weaver leaves them much less cash elsewhere. It’s not backbreaking, merely a marginal future draw back, however operating a entrance workplace is basically about accumulating small edges on the margins, not doing the inverse.
Might this deal work out for the Mets? Oh, most positively. “Setup ace” is well inside Weaver’s vary of potential outcomes for 2026, and the bullpen actually is a weak spot for this crew. The Mets are absolutely determined to make the playoffs after their late-season swoon, which makes “we will repair it in July if it’s damaged” a much less compelling argument. Everybody deviates from long-term tendencies to shore up short-term uncertainties sometimes. Although that lens, that is simply Stearns doing what’s essential to reconcile his imaginative and prescient for the longer term and the exigencies of now. I simply don’t like it, that’s all; I’d have signed a number of cheaper relievers earlier than giving Weaver this deal.