Mets fans are understandably waiting for a big splash to be made this winter. Still, David Stearns continues building up his new team’s depth — a luxury that hasn’t been available for this organization, in particular.
Wednesday evening saw just that kind of move with the acquisition of starting pitcher Adrian Houser along with Tyrone Taylor from Stearns’ former club, the Milwaukee Brewers for minor-league pitcher Coleman Crow.
The right-handed Houser provides another bottom-of-the-rotation option for an uncertain back end of the pitching staff.
Whether it’s a five or six-man rotation, the 29-year-old is immediately added to the top of the mix of what is shaping up to be a spring competition that also features David Peterson, Tylor Megill, and Joey Lucchesi. None of those three have provided long-term sustainability for the lower half of the Mets’ starting rotation.
Stearns has plenty of familiarity with Houser, who owns a 4.00 career ERA with a 1.357 WHIP across seven seasons. In 23 appearances last year (21 starts) he was 8-5 with a 4.12 ERA with a 1.392 WHIP.
The 30-year-old isn’t a strikeout pitcher. He punched out just 96 batters in 111 innings pitched last season and has averaged just 7.3 strikeouts per nine innings in his career. Walks had also been an issue in the past, though he did post a career-best 7.1% walk rate in 2023 which ranked in Major League Baseball’s 70th percentile.
Couple that with the need to generate outs via the ground ball — his ground-ball rate was above the 90th percentile from 2019-2021 — and the higher WHIP speaks for itself.
Houser predominantly uses four pitches, though he has a fifth in a changeup that has been slowly phased out in recent years. He threw his sinker, which averaged 92.1 mph, 47.2% of the time last season.
Coupled with a slider that’s nearly 10 mph slower, those are the main two pitches that Houser attacks the bottom of the zone with to generate that ground-ball contact. His four-seam fastball which averaged just over 93 mph will normally live toward the top of the zone.
