The Mets will toy with an opener this weekend to prepare for a potential look at a plan that can be deployed in the regular season.
Manager Luis Rojas previously indicated that the team would consider using an opener, and that will be in effect Saturday for the team's spring training game, with reliever Jacob Barnes getting the ball before Joey Lucchesi, a candidate for the back end of the rotation.
"We're actually going to test that tomorrow and see how that looks, trying someone like Barnes open a game and see how Lucchesi comes out of the bullpen," Rojas said in a Zoom call with reporters on Friday.
With Noah Syndergaard still working his way back from Tommy John surgery and Carlos Carrasco now out with a hamstring tear, the Mets are short on starters in a year where innings will be monitored more than ever due to the 2020 shortened season. As a result, a bullpen day could become a regularity, and Rojas wants to try it out before using it in a meaningful game.
"Lucchesi's come out of the bullpen twice only his career, so we want to see how he responds," Rojas said. "Why not do it when he has one more outing in camp and we can get a good feel on how he feels out there and if he feels there's no difference. So we're going to take advantage of that tomorrow and do that plan starting Barnes."
Barnes has started just one game in his major league career, back in 2019 while he was with the Brewers, but he won't be the only candidate to serve as an opener in 2021.
"I look at a lot of our relievers, and the vast majority could probably do it," Rojas said. "It takes a conversation. We asked Jacob and he feels OK…and he feels good about doing it. You take into consideration the matchups and things like that. There's not going to be a lot of difference between the lefties and the righties that he's going to see, because he's going to come in and face the top of the order of the opposing team and probably the meat of the order if he gets to two innings."
Barnes, or any other opener used this year, could go two innings, per Rojas, and he will use the final days of spring training and the early stages of the regular season to feel out which relievers are best suited to come out of the bullpen at the start of a game.
"A lot of them apply for it, but the one thing that comes into play is whether they have a good feel for coming in and doing it," Rojas said.
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