Mets Place Devin Williams On Injured List Due To Shoulder Strain
The Mets announced Monday that closer Devin Williams is going on the 15-day injured list due to a right shoulder strain. Fellow righty Jonathan Pintaro is up from Triple-A Syracuse in his place. The Mets are expecting a fairly brief absence for Williams, per Anthony DiComo of MLB.com.
Signed to a three-year, $51MM contract over the winter, Williams hasn’t had the dominant rebound campaign for which the Mets hoped upon bringing him to Queens. The 31-year-old righty (32 next month) was arguably baseball’s best reliever from 2020-24, posting a 1.70 ERA and 41% strikeout rate along the way. A rough start to his 2025 season with the Yankees left him with a mid-4.00s ERA at the end of the year, but Williams recovered mid-May and had a strong performance over the final four-plus months.
That, coupled with still-excellent rate stats and raw stuff, emboldened the Mets to give Williams a fairly heavy contract despite a pedestrian 4.79 ERA. So far, it hasn’t paid dividends. Williams is again sporting better rate stats than his 4.66 earned run average would suggest, but last year’s struggles to strand runners on base have largely continued. His typically elite strikeout rate is “down” to 28.7%. That’s still more than six percentage points north of average, but it’s more of a “good” than “great” mark that comes as Williams’ walk rate has bounced from last year’s 9.7% back up to 11.8%.
Williams continued troubles stranding runners can’t be wholly overlooked, but there’s still plenty about which to be encouraged when looking beneath the surface. This year’s 39% opponents’ chase rate on balls off the plate is a career-best mark. His 16.2% swinging-strike rate isn’t up to his peak standards in the 18% range but is still tied with Tarik Skubal for the 11th-best mark among the 394 pitchers who’ve tossed at least 30 innings this year. Only 14 of those pitchers have yielded a lower opponents’ contact rate than Williams’ 67.9%. Only three have a better chase rate. That doesn’t undo the relative struggles this season but does serve as a portent for better days — assuming the shoulder strain indeed proves minor.
It’s not clear who’ll close games for the Mets in Williams’ absence. Setup relievers Luke Weaver (Pirates), Brooks Raley (Phillies), A.J. Minter (Twins) and Huascar Brazoban (White Sox) were all traded ahead of last week’s deadline. The Mets have been using Kodai Senga in short relief and could try him in a leverage role while Williams is out.
Beyond Senga, the Mets’ bullpen currently consists mostly of minor league signees and DFA pickups. The average Mets reliever right now is about 29 and a half years years old. Senga is the only member of the current group that entered the season with even three years of service. Daniel Duarte, Dedniel Nuñez, Chayce McDermott, Nate Lavender, Jefry Yan, Jack Weisenburger and the aforementioned Pintaro entered the season with a combined six years and 46 days of MLB service time. They’re all looking to prove they can be a part of next year’s group, and even a brief absence for Williams will only create further opportunities.