Buttó has been a big contributor this year and didn’t go out as a goat.
When you get to this point of a baseball season, it can feel a little cliché to say that the Mets wouldn’t be here without a specific player. It’s technically true about each and every player who appeared in a Mets uniform this year, of course, but it doesn’t feel like an exaggeration to say it about José Buttó.
The 26-year-old right-handed pitcher didn’t make the Mets’ Opening Day roster and hadn’t really even been considered a candidate for it. Having pitched pretty well, mostly as a starter, in a cup of coffee with the big league team last year, Buttó started the season in Triple-A Syracuse. After just one start there, he got called up as the team’s 27th man for a doubleheader against the Tigers on April 4.
The Mets infamously lost the first game of that doubleheader. Buttó started the second, went six innings, gave up just one run, and—very importantly—set things up for the Mets to win their first game of the 2024 season.
That began a seven-start stretch in the big leagues that saw Buttó put up a 3.08 ERA. It felt downright unfair when the Mets optioned him back to Syracuse in mid-May. But Buttó kept working as a starter there through the end of June, and in early July, the Mets called him back up—moving him into a relief role without any transition period and saying that they wanted to keep him stretched out enough to be an option as a starter.
Buttó took to the role exceptionally well. The Mets used him as a multi-inning reliever for all of July and about half of August. In 24.2 innings out of the pen, he had a 1.46 ERA through August 16, cementing his role on the team. And the Mets shifted to using him as a high-leverage reliever who typically threw one inning at a time from the middle of August through the end of the regular season.
His numbers the rest of the way weren’t quite as good, but in total, Buttó had a 2.55 ERA as a major league pitcher in the regular season. As a reliever, he had a 2.00 ERA. And while several relievers stepped up in unexpected ways for this version of the Mets, it was Buttó who threw two innings of scoreless relief in Game 1 of the Wild Card series to help get the Mets across the finish line in that win.
So last night, as the Mets and Brewers were scoreless through six-and-a-half innings, Buttó seemed a perfectly logical choice to pitch the bottom of the seventh. Sure, the Mets had typically given him more rest than that, but several of his peers had been worked or overworked in the days leading up to the series finale. And crushingly, Buttó gave up back-to-back home runs to put the Mets behind. In the moment, it felt like the season might’ve slipped away.
Had that been the case, the blame would have likely been placed on a few different players, some of them far bigger names than Buttó. But on some level, he would’ve gone out a goat in a year that saw him do so much for his team, even after he had to spend a month-and-a-half in the minors despite his excellent work at the big league level.
Instead, his teammates picked him up. Edwin Díaz, one of the overworked arms this week, threw an inning-and-two-thirds in relief of Buttó, who had recorded one out after those home runs. It wasn’t a flawless outing for Díaz, but he got the job done and kept the Mets just close enough for their ninth-inning heroics.
Francisco Lindor worked a walk. After Mark Vientos struck out, Brandon Nimmo singled through the right side to put runners on the corners. And Pete Alonso came through with perhaps the most clutch home run in the history of the Mets. Jesse Winker came around to score an important insurance run. Buttó’s ill-timed bad outing was already a distant memory, and David Peterson’s first career saved ensured that Buttó will have more very-well-earned opportunities to succeed in these playoffs.