NY Mets: David Wright addresses the meaning of having his No. 5 retired
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The MLB trade deadline is still days away, but the New York Mets are making moves.
The Mets have acquired Baltimore Orioles left-handed reliever Gregory Soto in exchange for pitching prospects Wellington Aracena and Cameron Foster on Friday afternoon.
Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns acted swiftly to fill a need for another left-handed pitcher in the team’s bullpen. He pulled the trigger with a little less than a week to go until Thursday’s 6 p.m. trade deadline.
“You never know whether you’re going to be able to line up,” Stearns told reporters. “I don’t know how many lefty relievers are actually going to be traded this deadline, so we weren’t certain, but with the injuries we’ve had from that side of the ‘pen over the course of the season, the importance that an arm from the left side can potentially have down the stretch and hopefully into October, it was certainly something we were looking to accomplish.”
Stearns said the Mets and Orioles had been in discussions off and on for the last few weeks before the deal crossed the finish line late Thursday night.
Last season, he made a similar move, adding righty reliever Phil Maton nearly three weeks before the deadline.
What to know about Gregory Soto
Soto is a weapon against left-handed hitters, holding them to a .556 OPS while picking up 22 strikeouts in 57 at-bats.
Overall this season, Soto has a 3.96 ERA and 1.29 WHIP with 44 strikeouts in 36â…“ innings across 45 appearances.
The 30-year-old southpaw signed a one-year, $5.35 million deal with the Orioles in the offseason to avoid arbitration. He will enter free agency for the first time after completing the 2025 season with the Mets.
Soto will join Brooks Raley as the team’s pair of left-handers in the bullpen, with A.J. Minter (lat) and Danny Young (elbow) both lost for the season with season-ending injuries.
“It’s a big arm. He’s pitched in leverage spots,” Stearns said. “We were looking to help complement our bullpen from the left side. It’s not always easy to do that this time of year, and so as we began to overlap on some names with Baltimore, we believed this was the time to push this one through.”
Leading with a sinker and slider, Soto is able to keep opponents off the barrel, with a 4.3 percent barrel rate that is in the top 6 percent of Major League Baseball. Opponents are batting .182 against his slider this season.
Who did Mets trade? Wellington Aracena, Cameron Foster
Aracena is a 20-year-old right-handed pitcher, who was signed by the Mets to a minor-league deal out of the Dominican Republic in 2022.
The Mets’ No. 19 prospect, according to MLB Pipeline, he was an All-Star in the Dominican Summer League in 2023 and has risen to Single-A St. Lucie this season, where he is 1-1 with a 2.38 ERA, 1.13 WHIP and 84 strikeouts in 64â…“ innings in eight starts and 17 appearances. His strengths include a high-90s fastball with a low-90s cutter.
Foster, a Murray State product, is a former 14th round pick by the Mets in the 2022 MLB Draft. The right-hander has excelled at Double-A Binghamton this season, posting a 4-1 record with a 1.01 ERA and 0.83 WHIP in 19 appearances.