According to Andy Martino of the NY Daily News, the Mets are not interested in new free agent pitchers Dontrelle Willis, formerly of the Tigers, and Nelson Figueroa, formerly of the Phillies.
This is not really a big surprise considering the question marks surrounding these pitchers. Figueroa, who spent parts of two seasons with the Mets, recently bad mouthed the organization. Combine that with his mediocre career numbers, he has a 93 ERA+ in eight seasons, and this is not a surprise.
It is a little more surprising that they aren’t interested in the D-Train, but only slightly more. The Mets have big question marks in their rotation, but Willis is practically a walking question mark himself.
Willis, now 28, was once a star with the Florida Marlins. In 2005 he was 22-10 with a 2.63 ERA and a 152 ERA+. He was traded to the Detroit Tigers after the 2007 season and they signed him to a three year $29 million contract. In his first year in Detroit his skills almost entirely left him and he suffered a knee injury. He played in just eight games that year with an ERA+ of 49. The next season the Tigers put him on the DL for an anxiety disorder. By the end of that year he had only played in seven games with an ERA of 7.49.
Willis was actually effective early this season putting together a 3.75 ERA in 24 innings this April, but his four starts in May were not encouraging as he managed a 6.52 ERA in 19.1 innings.
For right now the Mets seem happy with Hisanori Takahashi, despite his poor performance last night, and R.A. Dickey. Jonathan Niese is also pretty close to coming off the DL. After that it is unclear exactly who they have, but they’re probably right in avoiding D-Train. Signing him would just be adding another problem to their already questionable rotation.
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