Rick Porcello fondly recalled his youthful appreciation, as a New Jersey kid, for Mike Piazza and the 2000 Mets on Monday. What the 2020 Mets would really appreciate is if Porcello, their newest starting pitcher, could reach back only as far as 2016.
The Mets signed Porcello, who turns 31 this month, to a one-year, $10 million deal primarily because of his durability, as he has qualified for the ERA title (minimum 162 innings pitched) each of his 11 seasons in the big leagues, a most impressive feat. On the other side of the agreement, Porcello settled for such a modest deal because in the 174 ¹/u2083 innings he clocked for the Red Sox in 2019, he tallied a ghastly 5.