The Mets’ bullpen has been their strength. How can they sustain it?

“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done.”
—“A Study in Scarlet,” Arthur Conan Doyle

Through one month of regular-season baseball, the Mets’ biggest strength has been their bullpen.

New York’s relief corps entered Sunday tied with Cleveland for tops in the majors in reliever wins above replacement. The Mets’ pen owns the best strikeout rate, the fourth-best WHIP and sixth-best ERA in the majors.

The Mets’ average win expectancy when their first reliever throws his first pitch is just .426 — yet New York has played .519 baseball, a difference of 2 1/2 games in the standings through the first 27.

How can they keep it that way?

The first step is to get starts like Sunday’s from Jose Quintana. Quintana became the first Mets starter to pitch the seventh inning this season, and then he went out and finished the eighth to boot. After struggling so much with deep counts in his first five starts, the lefty went to three balls on just three of 29 hitters and recorded 24 outs on 99 pitches.

Tylor Megill felt good after his rehab start yesterday. The next one is slated for Binghamton on Thursday, 50 to 60 pitches.

David Peterson is making his first rehab start today for St. Lucie.

— Tim Britton (@TimBritton) April 28, 2024

“It’s very fair and reasonable to ask the starters to go deeper into games,” pitching coach Jeremy Hefner said earlier in the week. “We haven’t been in a situation where we’re able to push them just because the pitch counts have been as such. They’re naturally going to be lower in April but we’re also not being economical in our pitches per at-bat. Those are all things our guys are very aware of and we’re working very hard to correct those things.”

At the same time, don’t expect the Mets’ rotation to start delivering gem after gem like Quintana’s outing Sunday. There’s a reason I wrote about concern over innings after just three games; this rotation’s recent track record of eating innings is not strong.

Luis Severino has been terrific, and Jose Buttó has shown he can pitch relatively deep even without his best stuff. But the Mets are unlikely to trust Sean Manaea or Adrian Houser much beyond 18 hitters, even on days they’re pitching well. And New York is likely to work in a sixth starter at various junctures this season, just like last year.

All that means that the Mets’ bullpen will be asked to contribute a lot of innings this season.

So the second step, according to Hefner, is “being intentional about when we’re giving guys rest.” That means going into a game with a plan and sticking to it, even if the game is tight and there’s a chance to win it late.

“We’re not pitching guys every time there’s a high-leverage situation and we’re trusting in all eight guys down there and not just three,” Hefner said. “That’s about the only way I know how to make it last. Yes, you want to go to the well and you want to put your best pitchers against their best hitters. But we’ve got to be mindful that it is 162 games.”

Jorge López is the only reliever to appear in more than 10 of New York’s first 27 games.

And the third step is building reasons to trust all eight pitchers down there. It’s putting them in the right positions to succeed when you can and preparing them for all kinds of situations, Hefner said. That process starts before a pitcher even gets to the majors.

“It’s player development, especially with the guys up from Triple A,” Hefner said. “What we’ve done with player development, these guys really believe in themselves and they also know what they need to do to have success. If you do that, we’re putting our best foot forward and we can live with whatever results happen.”

Sunday was yet another example of the Mets winning a battle of the bullpens. Eight of New York’s 14 wins have come in games where their win expectancy was 50 percent or worse when the bullpen entered the game.

The exposition

The Mets salvaged the series finale on Sunday thanks to late-game heroics from Harrison Bader and Mark Vientos. New York is 14-13 and sits in third in the National League East.

The Cubs dropped two of three in Boston over the weekend. Chicago’s 17-11 record is a half-game behind Milwaukee for first in the NL Central.

The Rays were, yikes, just swept by the White Sox, who equaled their win total over their first 25 games in one weekend against Tampa Bay. The Rays have fallen to 13-16 and last in the AL East. They play three in Milwaukee before an off day on Thursday.

The pitching possibles

v. Chicago (NL)

RHP Luis Severino (2-2, 2.67 ERA) v. RHP Jameson Taillon (2-0, 1.69 ERA)
LHP Sean Manaea (1-1, 3.33) v. RHP Javier Assad (2-0, 2.00)
RHP Jose Buttó (0-1, 2.86) v. LHP Shota Imanaga (4-0, 0.98)
RHP Adrian Houser (0-3, 8.37) v. RHP Ben Brown (0-1, 4.30)

at Tampa Bay

LHP Jose Quintana (1-2, 3.48) v. RHP Aaron Civale (2-2, 5.06)
RHP Luis Severino v. RHP Zach Littell (1-2, 3.27)
LHP Sean Manaea v. RHP Ryan Pepiot (2-2, 3.77)

Inside baseball

One of the reasons — OK, the main reason — the Mets have been able to lengthen their bullpen has been the emergence of Reed Garrett. Garrett picked up his league-leading fifth win on Sunday with a scoreless 10th inning that featured two more strikeouts to strand the go-ahead run at third.

When speaking about putting players in a position to succeed, Hefner talked about how the Mets need to ease Garrett into more important late-game situations — that thriving in high leverage is, in some ways, a learned skill.

Part of that is handling the adrenaline of situations like Sunday’s 10th inning or last Saturday’s ninth in Los Angeles.

“Now with a clock, you have to be very good at slowing your heart rate down, really zooming out and realizing that, yeah there are 40,000 people screaming at me, but it’s just a baseball field and I’m trying to throw the white ball over the white plate,” Hefner said. “Keep it as simple as possible and don’t overcomplicate things.”

“It’s falling back on your process and what you do,” said Garrett. “It’s knowing you did everything you can to be ready and successful that day.”

But there’s a practical distinction to pitching in those spots.

“You’re playing to the scoreboard a lot,” Adam Ottavino said. “You have to be smart. Maybe that first-pitch strike isn’t as much a priority as throwing something that’s not easy to hit and reading the hitter and using those open bases to get to the matchup you want.”

Ottavino instantly remembered a 2012 appearance in which his first-pitch fastball was turned into a two-run homer to put a close game out of reach (by Carlos Ruiz). Afterward, Jason Giambi pulled him aside.

“Kid, just go right to your slider,” Giambi told him. “Make them hit the pitch they don’t want to hit.”

“It’s just getting beat a few times by doing something where, looking back, maybe you didn’t need to do that there,” Ottavino said. “It’s just reading the situation a little more.”

“You’ve got to fail in those moments to learn lessons,” said Brooks Raley.

Raley talked about targeting specific areas in an opposing lineup. If your primary role is length — as it was for Garrett to begin the season — you’re coming in whenever the team needs innings. When you’re trusted in bigger spots, it’s usually for a lane in the other lineup. Teams are less inclined to go rigidly with a seventh- or eighth-inning guy.

“The game’s on the line, this is my pocket,” Raley said. “It’s just understanding when your inning comes.”

What’s this month been like for Garrett?

“Beyond incredible,” he said. “It’s been a blast.”

I looked up a stat

Houser has made five starts. In three of them, the Mets’ win expectancy was under 10 percent when he departed the game. That’s happened to the rest of the rotation three times combined.

Injury updates

Red = 60-day IL
Orange = 15-day IL
Blue = 10-day IL

• Kodai Senga will pitch to hitters from High-A Brooklyn in live batting practice Monday at Citi Field. It will mark his first time facing hitters since being diagnosed with a shoulder injury back in spring training.
• Tylor Megill struck out all six batters he faced in a rehab start for Brooklyn on Saturday. Megill will now move up a level to Binghamton on Thursday. He should throw between 45 and 60 pitches.
• David Peterson couldn’t quite match Megill, striking out only five of the six batters he faced in his first rehab start with Low-A St. Lucie on Sunday.
• Drew Smith landed on the IL with shoulder soreness he’d dealt with for a week. When it didn’t subside after his last appearance in San Francisco, the club decided it was best for some time off. Smith and the Mets are hopeful it’ll be a minimum stay on the IL.
• Francisco Alvarez had internal brace surgery on the torn ulnar collateral ligament in his left thumb on Tuesday. The Mets expect Alvarez to miss about eight weeks.
• Starling Marte is on the bereavement list and should be back on Tuesday.
• Relief prospect Nate Lavender, who made such a strong impression during spring training, is likely headed for Tommy John surgery on his left elbow. Lavender is scheduled for one more evaluation this week before making a final decision.

Minor-league schedule

Triple-A: Syracuse at Rochester (Washington)
Double-A: Binghamton v. Hartford (Colorado)
High-A: Brooklyn v. Aberdeen (Baltimore)
Low-A: St. Lucie v. Jupiter (Miami)

Last week in Mets

A note on the epigraph

“A Study in Scarlet” is only all right, but “The Hound of the Baskervilles” does deserve its spot near the top of the mystery canon.

Trivia time

Garrett’s five wins have him on pace to win an even 30. The last Mets reliever to earn five wins in the first 27 games of the season is also the last Mets reliever to win as many as 10 games in a season. Who is it?

HINT: It wasn’t this century.
HINT 2: He’s now the manager of the Polish national baseball team.

(I’ll reply to the correct answer in the comments.)

(Photo of Reed Garrett: Kelley L Cox / USA Today)