The New York Mets season-long disaster continued in the first two games of their series against the Baltimore Orioles, as the Mets dropped both contests and entered Wednesday on a three-game losing streak.
The Mets will try to get just their 70th win of the year, with only 11 games remaining, in the series finale. Originally, the Mets planned to send veteran right-hander Robert Stock to the mound.
But those plans suddenly changed when the Mets announced four roster decisions just hours before first pitch.
The Mets announced four pitching-staff moves Wednesday, swapping two injured arms for two Triple-A call-ups and leaving the last-place club to patch together a rotation spot on short notice against the Baltimore Orioles.
New York Mets Turn to Xzavion Curry for Surprise Start
Xzavion Curry found out Wednesday afternoon he’d be starting for the New York Mets that night. Stock found out his season was over.
Curry, recalled from Triple-A Syracuse, takes Stock’s turn in the rotation at Citi Field. MLB.com‘s Anthony DiComo confirmed the spot start Wednesday. The 28-year-old right-hander was Cleveland’s seventh-round pick out of Georgia Tech in 2019 and made his major league debut with the Guardians three years later, according to his MLB.com biography.
He has since bounced between the Cleveland Guardians, Miami Marlins and now the Mets, signing a minor league deal in May after a brief stint pitching in Mexico for Quintana Roo. Curry carries a 3.44 ERA in relief for New York this season, but his real case for tonight’s assignment is the 12 starts he made at Syracuse, where he posted a 3.56 ERA across 65 2/3 innings, according to FanGraphs’ pitching data. He’s a swingman by trade, but he’s the only available arm on the 40-man who has been stretched out as a starter all year.
Stock is a 36-year-old right-hander, a USC product who converted from catcher to pitcher after the St. Louis Cardinals drafted him in the second round back in 2009. On Wednesday, Stock landed on the 15-day injured list retroactive to Sept. 13 with the club citing numbness in his fingers as the cause, a symptom that could be tied to the arterial thoracic outlet syndrome that surfaced earlier this year.
Stock had surgery for the condition in March after the condition appeared while he pitched for Team Israel at the World Baseball Classic. He returned on an accelerated timeline, but the IL designation means he will not pitch again this year.
New York Mets Fill Bullpen Holes With Two Call-Ups
The Mets also placed reliever Daniel Duarte on the 15-day injured list with a left hamstring strain suffered during Tuesday’s extra-inning loss, a sequence SNY‘s Chelsea Janes tied to a play at the plate. Duarte, a native of Sonora, Mexico who missed all of 2025 following elbow surgery, has been a consistent reliever for New York this season with a 2.20 ERA over 28 2/3 innings.
Left-hander Jefry Yan fills the other vacancy. He left baseball entirely for construction work after his release in 2017, only to resurface in an Arizona men’s league and sign with Miami in 2021, according to SNY‘s report on his most recent option.
Yan touches triple digits from the left side but has walked 11 batters in 12 2/3 innings this season. Both Yan and Curry were already on the Mets’ 40-man roster from earlier stints.
With the Mets sitting at 69-82 and 19 1/2 games out of the NL East, according to StatMuse, these are evaluation moves, not contention moves. The final 11 games, including four against the Philadelphia Phillies followed by trips to face the Texas Rangers and Washington Nationals, will decide little beyond who sticks on next year’s pitching depth chart.
Mets Announce 4 Sudden Roster Decisions Before Orioles Series Finale