Austin Barnes came to the New York Mets with a decorated baseball resume, but not a lot of recent individual success.
Barnes was a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers for 11 seasons, and a part of their World Series-winning rosters in 2020 and 2024. But he was released last May, and a brief foray with the San Francisco Giants didn’t yield a call-up back to the major league roster. He signed with the Mets in January on a minor-league deal that included a non-roster invite to spring training.
While it was valuable to have Barnes’ experience in camp, he ultimately proved not to be a fit for the club’s opening day roster. According to the official Major League Baseball transactions log, the 36-year-old was released by the Mets on Sunday.
Barnes appeared in just eight spring training games for the Mets, putting up a strong 5-for-16 batting line with three doubles. But it was never going to be easy to unseat incumbent Luis Torrens for the primary backup job behind starter Francisco Alvarez, and it also wasn’t going to make sense for the Mets to carry three catchers.
Barnes told the New York Post last week that he wasn’t sure if he would be willing to play in the minors if he didn’t make the opening day roster, so a number of possibilities are on the table at this juncture. He could re-sign with the Mets and go to Triple-A, he could look for opportunities with other major league teams, or he could retire at the end of a career many would kill for.
The Mets, as previously mentioned, are in a good spot with their catching depth chart. In addition to Alvarez and Torrens, who combined for 3.3 bWAR last year, they have 28-year-old Hayden Senger on the 40-man roster.
Barnes has 612 major league games under his belt in the regular season, a home run in the World Series, and a lifetime of memories. It will be interesting to see if any more memories are added this year, or if this was the last we’ll see of him in uniform.
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