First NY Mets roster addition by David Stearns is gone, blame the Braves

Yesterday's 40-man roster deadline caused a bit of minor chaos for teams looking to protect Rule 5 eligible players. This led to a few smaller moves including one involving the New York Mets.

Just as we had familiarized ourselves with Penn Murfee, the reliever recently claimed off waivers from the Seattle Mariners was plucked away by the Atlanta Braves. The Mets narrowly escaped him going unclaimed on waivers themselves. Leave it to the Braves to erase what looked like an early savvy pickup by the Mets to begin the David Stearns era.

Losing Murfee, an already injured pitcher who’ll miss at least the first half of 2024, is hardly enough to get over. However, it's another blow to the Mets bullpen situation. The far more impactful one was the decision by Adam Ottavino to opt out of his deal.

Nowhere else do the Mets look emptier right now than the relief corps. It's Edwin Diaz, Brooks Raley, and everyone else. 

It was a risk by the Mets to put Murfee on waivers in the first place. Assuming no one else would have the patience to claim him, they thought wrong.

The subtraction does open up room for another pitcher in a similar situation as Murfee. The Mets have shown they are willing to take gambles on players in his situation. 

As the non-tender deadline approaches and a new slew of free agents become available or waiver wire additions are added, the Mets will get their crack at more depth pieces. Hopefully, these guys turn out much better than seemingly everyone the club added last offseason. There’s no need to rattle off the names of depth relievers from the 2023 season. None of them did all that well.

Losing Murfee to the Braves is a minor inconvenience we really hope doesn't come back to bite the Mets. We'll always have those two weeks when we brainstormed all of those puns about writing utensils we couldn't wait to add into a headline. Back to the drawing board, this time without Penn.

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