The Mets appear content to wait out the market for potential bullpen help.
During an offseason in which the team has committed $87.25 million in contracts to Curtis Granderson, Bartolo Colon and Chris Young, general manager Sandy Alderson doesn’t seem ready to splurge for a reliever after missing out on Grant Balfour.
Last week, Balfour accepted a two-year deal worth $12 million from the Rays, after the Mets extended him a similar offer.
There are still several veterans on the market — Fernando Rodney, Mitchell Boggs and Kevin Gregg among them — but the Mets may head to spring training content with Bobby Parnell, Vic Black and Jeurys Familia as the central components of the bullpen while giving other prospects a long look.
Among those considerations could be Jack Leathersich and Jeff Walters.
“We’ve got a lot of good young arms that we like — they just don’t have much experience,” Alderson told MLB.com. “Acquiring someone with some experience would give us some comfort going into spring training, but we don’t want to preclude some of our younger pitchers from getting a solid opportunity either.
“So if there’s somebody there that we like, we’ll pursue them. Otherwise, one of the ways we’ve approached starting pitching, for example, is to bring in a couple of guys on minor league contracts [John Lannan and Daisuke Matsuzaka], and have them compete with some of our own internal candidates. We may do the same thing with the bullpen.”