Brooks Raley knew there was the possibility an opportunity wouldn’t materialize. But he trusted his pitching still could translate to value when healthy, that the 37-year-old’s 227 regular-season appearances — and specifically the 15 others in the postseason — would lead to something, even though his market slowed while recovering from Tommy John surgery.
In April, that chance came with the Mets, the organization he spent 2023 and the first part of 2024 with before undergoing elbow surgery and forcing it to adjust without a top left-handed reliever.
As the Mets resumed their season Friday, though, a bullpen that entered the All-Star break taxed after plenty of shuffling received a much-needed boost — essentially a “trade deadline acquisition,” manager Carlos Mendoza said — with the return of Raley, who was activated from the injured list following a near-spotless rehab assignment.
“Knowing the timetable with TJ, it was such a structured thing,” Raley said, who acknowledged that he was “itching to get back” to the majors. “There’s no positives when you come back early from this injury, so I knew that I was gonna have to just wait and be patient and be where my feet are. … Quite the journey, but today is cool.”
Raley hasn’t pitched in a game in the majors since April 2024, when the surgery upended a campaign that started with eight consecutive scoreless appearances and began to build on a 2023 season — his first in Queens — in which he collected a 2.80 ERA.
His pitching has been “in line” with his pre-injury form and “maybe a tick better,” Raley said, and he finished his rehab assignment with eight scoreless outings and just three hits allowed across nine innings at three different levels.
The Mets need him for high-leverage spots, too. They lost two of their left-handed options — A.J. Minter and Danny Young — to season-ending injuries early in the campaign and began cycling through options that included José Castillo and Richard Lovelady, with the latter designated for assignment Friday in a corresponding move.
“He’s a guy that the way he’s spinning the baseball, you feel good about whether it’s a righty or a lefty,” Mendoza said of Raley. “The experience. Guy that comes in middle of an inning with traffic. Clean inning, gets you three outs. Could be in the ninth. Could be in the eighth. Could be as early as the sixth. There’s a lot of flexibility there that having a guy like that is important.”
Last year, it “was hard” for Raley to watch the Mets’ postseason run while injured, he said. His future, at that point, still remained uncertain, as he needed a team to take a risk on a then-36-year-old coming off a major procedure. And now, after trekking through the minors, Raley has positioned himself to fill a significant role during any postseason run that follows for the Mets one season later.
“Hopefully, we can have a little more magic this year,” Raley said.