Mets designate veteran reliever for assignment

The Mets have designated right-hander Michael Tonkin for assignment and optioned righty Grant Hartwig to Triple-A Syracuse, per a team announcement. 

It’s the second time they’ve designated Tonkin for assignment within the season’s first three-and-a-half weeks. The Mets traded him to the Twins for cash last time, only to claim him back off waivers from Minnesota late last week when the Twins also designated him. 

The roster spots for Tonkin and Hartwig will go to right-hander Sean Reid-Foley and lefty Josh Walker. Reid-Foley is returning from the 15-day IL, while Walker is being recalled from Syracuse.

Tonkin’s second Mets stint lasted only two appearances and three innings. The 33-year-old righty pitched both Saturday and Sunday, allowing a pair of runs over three innings. He’s logged nine innings in the majors this season, yielding six earned runs (plus another six unearned) on 10 hits, four walks and four hit batters with 11 strikeouts.

Tonkin spent the 2023 season in the Braves bullpen, logging a 4.28 ERA, 24.2 percent strikeout rate and 9.1 percent walk rate in 80 innings. 

That set a new career-high MLB workload for the journeyman right-hander, who owns a career 4.44 ERA (4.54 FIP, 3.70 SIERA) with a 23.1 percent strikeout rate, 8 percent walk rate and 39.5 percent grounder rate in 235 1/3 big league innings between Minnesota, Atlanta and New York. 

Tonkin has also pitched in the D-backs and Brewers systems in addition to stints with the independent Atlantic League’s Long Island Ducks, the Mexican League’s Toros de Tijuana and the Nippon-Ham Fighters in Japan.

As with Tonkin’s prior DFAs, he’ll either be traded, passed through outright waivers or released within the next week. He’d have the option to reject an outright assignment to Triple-A if he goes unclaimed, though doing so would require forfeiting the remainder of the salary on the $1M split major league contract he signed over the winter.