Quick question – who was the first off-season signing for the Mets in the 2024-2025 off-season? If you said Chris Devenski you either follow the Mets extremely closely or are good at following context clues!
The Mets signed Devenski on a minor league deal way back on October 28th. Devenski is a longtime major league veteran who was drafted by the Chicago White Sox in 2011. The following year he was traded as the player to be named later to the Houston Astros.
Houston is where Devenski made a name for himself. In his first four seasons (2016-2019) he pitched 305 1/3 innings spread over 221 games with a 3.21 ERA, 3.49 FIP, 1.048 WHIP and a 130 ERA+. Baseball Reference credits him with a 2.8 and 1.9 WAR across his first two seasons. In 2017 he won the World Series with the Astros and was an All-Star.
Then in 2020 Devenski had elbow surgery and has not been the same. Starting in 2020 Devenski has been with the Astros, Diamondbacks, Phillies, Angels and most recently the Rays. He has pitched only 94 2/3 innings since the start of 2020 with a 6.46 ERA, 5.30 FIP, 1.415 WHIP and a 67 ERA+. Baseball Reference has him with a -1.7 WAR during this stretch. In 2024 he pitched in 19 games over 26 2/3 innings for the Rays with a 6.75 ERA, 7.33 FIP, 1.575 WHIP and a 60 ERA+.
In 2017 Devenski had an xBA in the 96th percentile and whiff% in the 98th. According to statcast, the fastball velocity hasn’t changed much since 2017. It went from 94 mph to 93 mph, but over the last decade that was enough to go from the 66th percentile in the league to the 33rd. His whiff% dropped from 36.8% to 27.1%. He was using his changeup to generate absurd swings and misses. He still leans on his 83ish mph changeup, throwing it 51.3% of the time in 2023 and 47.5% of the time in 2024.
The Mets are hoping they can help Chris Devenski rediscover what he once had. Similar to other players in camp on minor league deals, the hope is that Jeremey Hefner and the pitching lab sees something or can help Devenski see something that can help him miss bats again.
For 2025, Devenski is fairly far down the Mets depth chart. Baseball teams burn through pitchers though so if he stays in the Mets system after camp, given his experience there is a high chance he’ll be called on at some point to fill a gap in Queens. Here’s what we are looking for this spring in Devenski:
- He has four pitches, but throughout his career has primarily used his changeup and fastball. Once his fully warmed up this spring, does he keep a similar usage split?
- Can he start getting swings and misses again on his changeup? Is he changing anything about where he is locating it? For this latter point, I’m not sure if we’ll know unless he, or someone else around him says something.
- In 2017 he had a 26.1 Hard-Hit%. Last year it was 44%! This spring – who is making solid contact against him? At what clip are players making that hard contact?
