Mets sign Edward Olivares, trade for Rays prospect Sean Harney

While the world waits for news on if the Mets pulled off the win in the Juan Soto sweepstakes, the Mets were keeping busy, doing more than just signing Clay Holmes.

Today, the team signed outfielder Edward Olivares to a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training.

The Mets also traded 2024 international bonus pool money to the Tampa Bay Rays for pitching prospect Sean Harney.

Olivares, a 28-year old outfielder from Venezuela, has played parts of five seasons in the big leagues, with his best season coming in 2023 for the Royals, where he hit .263./317./452 with 12 home runs and 23 doubles, adding up to 0.3 bWAR/107 OPS+.

After being traded to the Pirates last offseason, Connor Williams of Bucs Dugout wrote a really thoughtful piece about Olivares, which took a look at his underlying numbers and expressed some hope for what he could mean for Pittsburgh last season.

Olivaress good bat-to-ball skills have generated solid contact rates and low strikeouts, he was 64th percentile in terms of whiff rate and his 16.6 percent strikeout rate was in the 83rd percentile.

He also hits breaking pitches exceptionally well, hitting .300 off of them in 2022 and .297 this past season to go along with slugging .584 off those pitches.

His above average raw power however hasnt always shown up in games, but when it does show up it shows up big.

Olivares was tied for the fourth longest average homerun distance in MLB (minimum 10 homeruns) with an average distance of 416ft.

The right-hander improved his slugging percentage from .410 to .452 off the back of a launch angle improvement of 5.6 degrees to an average of 12.2.

While all of that may still be true, Olivares took a step back in almost every offensive category in 2024, making almost half the MLB plate appearances that he made the year prior, and hitting just .224/.291/.333.

As for the trade with the Rays, there hasnt been a ton of digital ink spilled about Sean Harney, who was drafted by the club in 2022 and who ended the year playing for the Double-A Montgomery Biscuits.

Interestingly, much like his new org mate Clay Holmes hope to achieve this season, Harney made the transition from relief pitcher to starter late in his college career at the University of Kentucky.

Harney has worked as both a starter and a reliever in the Rays organization.

According to Daniel Russel of DRays Bay, Harneys main pitch is a plus slider.

While neither of these moves jump off the page too dramatically, the Olivares move has the potential to do what Williams thought the Pirates could do, which is unlike the best version of Olivares by helping him be more selective at the plate.

And while Harney is essentially a flyer on a relatively unheralded player, it is nice to see the organization trying to find diamonds in the rough to help fill out its rosters..

This article has been shared from the original article on amazinavenue, here is the link to the original article.