Astros Trade Rumors: Underrated left-handed bullpen options

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NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 22: Jerry Blevins #39 of the New York Mets delivers a pitch in the ninth inning against the Washington Nationals on April 22, 2017, at Citi Field in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images) /

Blevins has been around the game of baseball for a while. Drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 17^th round of the 2004 MLB Draft, Blevins made a name for himself as a left-handed specialist for the Oakland A’s from 2007-2013. Now, he is doing the same thing in his third season with the New York Mets.

This season, he has been one of the most reliable relievers for Mets manager Terry Collins to call on. In 44 appearances, Blevins has a 3.54 ERA with a 1.39 WHIP. With only a .224 batting average against, he has only given up 24 hits and has struck out 39 in 28 innings pitched.

Unlike Loup, Blevins is not a ground ball pitcher. He likes to rely on the strikeout. Averaging a career high 12.54 strikeouts per nine innings, Blevins is striking out 32 percent of batters faced this season.

Not a flame-thrower!

The baffling thing is that he is putting up these numbers without overpowering stuff. Blevins averages in the high-eighties to low-nineties on his four-seam fastball and low-eighties on his changeup, throwing this combination 95.5 percent of the time.

When he is not striking hitters out, Blevins has been generating a relatively equal amount of fly balls and ground balls. His fly ball percentage is only 3.1 percentage points lower than his ground ball percentage. However, Blevins has shown that he is becoming more of a groundball pitcher. Since he has been with the Mets, he has not had a ground ball percentage lower than 40 percent.

As a well-known name in the baseball community, Blevins may be a bit more expensive to get than Loup. However, with the numbers he has put up in his career, it seems like he would be a good compliment to Sipp in the Astros bullpen.

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