The Mets signed Oliver Ortega to a minor league deal at the start of December after he was outrighted by the Astros (and then chose free agency).
Ortega signed with the Angels in 2014 and made his debut with them in 2021. Before the 2023 season the Twins selected him off waivers and before the 2024 season the Astros did the same. He was kept off the mound for all of 2024 due to two elbow surgeries. In Spring Training he had a procedure to remove loose bodies from his elbow. It wasn’t fully successful and he had to have another surgery in June.
Ortega pitched in 27 games in 2022, his career high in the majors. Over 34 innings he had a 3.71, 4.76 FIP, 1.471 WHIP and a 109 ERA+. He had limited major league usage in 2023 with a 4.30 ERA, 4.76 FIP, 1.227 WHIP and a 104 ERA+ over 14 2/3 innings. Ortega showed a lot of promise with the AAA club, posting a 1.82 ERA, 0.981 WHIP over 34 2/3 innings. He had a 11.4 K/9 in the minors and a 8.6 K/9 in the majors, which was close to his 8.7 K/9 in 2022.
Pitch tracking in 2023 picked up five different pitches for Ortega. He tossed a mid-80’s slider 35.4% of the time, a low-80’s curveball (24.2%), a mid-90’s fastball (22.1%), mid-90’s sinker (17.1%) and mixed in exactly three mid-80’s sweepers. In 2022 he used his mid-90’s fastball 58.4% of the time. He did go from the Angels to the Twins during that time. Was this a different organization approach? Is it due to a small-sample size and game script?
Oliver Ortega is pretty much exactly what you expect as a veteran NRI in camp. He has some zip on the fastball and has shown ability to get some high whiff% (2023 slider and 2022 curveball each had a 45% whiff%). If the Mets can help him figure it out, he will be an interesting pitcher to watch in 2025. Here’s what we are looking for this spring:
- Health. Is is he healthy? Can he throw all five of his pitches without pain?
- Are hitters swinging and missing at his fastball? It only happened 12% of time in 2022, the year he relied on it, but happened 22% of the time in 2023.
- The slider was a new pitch for Ortega in 2023 and he relied on it heavily, it had an xBA of .094, by far the best of his pitches. Do the Mets see it as his best pitch? Do they want him to throw his sweeper more which had his best xBA in 2022?
