Blevins not on Mets roster, but not retiring
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Popular reliever Jerry Blevins may not have made the Mets’ Opening Day roster, but he’s not abandoning his goal of returning to the Majors in 2021.
Blevins said Sunday that he intends to report to the Mets’ alternate site once camp breaks in Florida. Mets officials told Blevins this weekend that he would not make the roster, opening the door for the 37-year-old reliever potentially to retire. Blevins will instead travel to the Mets’ MCU Park complex in Brooklyn, where he will work to stay sharp in April.
“I feel great,” Blevins said in a tweet. “My body and my arm have responded beyond my expectations. Hope to see you all in Queens soon!”
The left-handed Blevins did not pitch at all in 2020, after the Giants released him following Major League Baseball’s spring shutdown. Although Blevins did not retire after the season, he assumed his baseball career was probably over until the Mets came calling early in the offseason. Rather than agree to come to camp straight away, Blevins began a throwing program, which convinced him he could still pitch in the big leagues. So Blevins signed a Minor League deal and reported to camp last month.
“I still have that want,” Blevins said earlier this month. “I want to win a World Series. Literally the only team I would have come back for is the Mets. My body still feels great. I still have analytics that say my stuff is still the same, so I’m still there, I still have that drive. And then the perfect storm of having a chance to come to New York, where my family loved it, where my first son was born, and they’re a World Series competitor. So it’s going to be tough to make this team, but I still feel like I have an opportunity to do that.”
Although Blevins enjoyed a fine spring in Florida, producing a 3.18 ERA with five strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings, he also allowed 12 of the 30 batters he faced to reach base. It wasn’t enough for him to hold off Jacob Barnes and Robert Gsellman. Those two appear on sound footing to make the team following the Mets' latest round of cuts.
• Predicting Mets' 2021 Opening Day roster
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The Minor League season does not begin until May, leaving the alternate site and extended Spring Training as the only ways for players like Blevins to stay sharp.
And so that is precisely where Blevins will go. A 13-year veteran of the A’s, Nationals, Mets and Braves, Blevins spent much of that run as one of the game’s most effective left-handed specialists. He played for the Mets from 2015-18, but a broken arm prevented him from appearing in the ’15 postseason. Blevins last appeared in the Majors in 2019, holding lefties to a .540 OPS over 45 games for the Braves.