In a dark Mets' season, their competitive bullpen has been one of the bright spots

PHILADELPHIA — Austin Warren doesn’t know why they’re called “Clay Innings,” only that they’re really hard to pull off. A.J. Minter has a little more insight.

“It’s like 15 pitches or [fewer] in an inning,” he told Newsday before the Mets faced the Phillies on Saturday night, noting that pitching coach Justin Willard coined the phrase. “We keep tallies on it, and it reminds us to come in and throw strikes and just attack the strike zone. I’m pretty sure [Luke] Weaver is leading.”

Pretty sure, or is there a dedicated leaderboard?

“Oh, there’s a leaderboard,” Minter said. “Weaver and Brazo [Huascar Brazoban] are ahead. It’s like a two-way tie or a three-way tie. It’s the little competition that we have.”

Weaver provided the last piece of the puzzle. “It’s named after Clay Holmes,” he said. “Because he gets a lot of quick outs.”

Or he did before he suffered a broken leg. But although Holmes hasn’t been a reliever for two years, his spirit lives on in that bullpen, and it’s been to the unit’s credit.

There haven’t been too many bright spots in a trying season for a team desperate to bail the water that nearly sunk it, but the bullpen certainly has been one of them.

Entering Saturday’s 15-3 loss to the Phillies that dropped the Mets to 34-42, they had posted a 3.33 ERA, which was fourth in the majors, with an MLB-leading 329 strikeouts in 324 1⁄3 innings. Weaver hadn’t allowed a run in 18 appearances, a span of 20 innings in which he struck out 25, and his 0.9 fWAR was top 12 in MLB. Brazoban has been the unsung savior, a do-it-all reliever whose 1.91 ERA makes him a legitimate All-Star candidate.

(Mind you, the five runs in 4 1⁄3 innings allowed by Cionel Perez and Tobias Myers on Saturday wasn’t exactly inspiring, but they were deployed to mop up in a game that was out of hand.)

There is something to be said about the culture the Mets’ relievers have built in that isolated patch of grass, sequestered away from teammates and left to their own devices and their own weirdness. And that’s not a bad thing.

Relievers often have been considered their own breed of baseball player, the kind of guys who have a good amount of time to kill before being thrown into a cauldron. They’re not coddled in the way starting pitchers tend to be, and for better or for worse, they’re stuck with each other. In the Mets’ case, it’s for better.

“We definitely feed off each other,” Warren said. “We’re just an awesome group. We get along. We all joke, we all mess around. You have to do that. It’s a long season . . . There’s a lot of ways you could explain our bullpen, but we’re just full of life.”

It’s a cheeky sort of life, too.

See: Clay Innings.

“We’re all competitive deep down,” Minter said. “We all want to one-up each other, so I think guys have gone on these nice little streaks and it’s pretty wonderful to feed off each other.”

Maybe it’s a coincidence, or maybe not, but these also are players who, at some point, could have been left for dead.

“Weaver has the confidence,” Minter said of a pitcher who could have been out of the majors after back-to-back ugly seasons in 2022 and 2023. Spindly and fierce, Weaver decided to just . . . fail, reinventing himself as a closer.

Brazoban didn’t crack a big-league roster until he was 32. At 36, he’s having his best year yet.

Warren started his career in Division II baseball and was designated for assignment in 2023 and 2024 (in between, he had Tommy John surgery).

Brooks Raley came back from Tommy John surgery last year.

For a while, it looked as if the ghost of Pete Alonso’s Wild Card Series home run was destined to haunt Devin Williams for the rest of his career.

And then there’s Minter, who hasn’t allowed a run in his past 20 appearances dating to April 2025. His velocity is still down, he noted, and he’s been overly reliant on his cutter, but he’s made it work, allowing one unearned run and four hits with seven strikeouts in eight innings.

Most players coming back from a lat tear would be pleased with those outcomes. Not Minter.

“It’s taking a little bit longer just to get back to my normal self,” he said. “I’ve done a good job of just trusting my stuff and not letting the velocity dictate how I pitch.  I’m still going to attack guys and throw strikes, and I’ve been getting good results. At the same time, I do feel I could do a little bit of a better job at location and throwing my changeup more. I’m always going to rely on the cutter, but I need to make sure I do throw my fastball a lot more often.”

Like so much of the rest of this unit, though, Minter has something to prove to himself and to his teammates. He still thinks about 2025 and wonders, “What if?’’

What if he could have been the guy to spell that overtaxed bullpen? What if he could have been the factor that gave the Mets the one extra win they needed to reach the playoffs?

“I felt like I let the team down,” he said. “I definitely take accountability. It’s my job to stay healthy, so it was hard to watch for sure.”

But this entire unit is about making the most of a second chance, and that works in the big picture, too.

“I want to help this team win,” Minter said. “This organization, they want to win so bad and I want to help in any way I can. We definitely have something going in the right direction. You can tell there’s something different going on and it’s exciting to see. We have a little more than a month [until the trade deadline] to prove what direction we want to pull in and prove to this organization and to David [Stearns] what type of team we are.”

Following their bullpen’s lead might not be a bad way to start.

“They believe in each other,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “They can trust the guy behind him that he’s going to pick them up . . . Because of how tight they are, [they can be like], ‘Hey, I got you today.’ There’s been a lot of communication. There’s a lot to trust in that group.”

And they’re confident, their speckled backgrounds notwithstanding (perhaps even because of their speckled backgrounds; hey, they’ve survived worse).

“You’ve got to be confident,” Warren said. “If you go out there and show any sign of weakness, things are going to spiral.”

It’s a balance: competitiveness, confidence, camaraderie and just a little bit of tomfoolery (they’re relievers, after all).

“Regardless of whose name is called, whatever the situation — high leverage, low leverage — they’re going to go out there and do their best,” Warren said. “I feel like all of us can be put in any situation you want and we’re not going to complain about it. We’re just going to do our job and catch the ‘W.’ ”

And if they’re really lucky, maybe add another Clay Inning to their names.

(Watch out, Weaver — they’re coming for you.)

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.