The New York Mets have released 21-year-old right-hander Alvaro Carrillo, a decision that lands with unusual force given how the Venezuelan native had been pitching.
The move was announced via the MiLB transaction log.
Carrillo, a 6-foot-4, 175-pound arm from Palo Negro, signed with New York as a free agent on July 16, 2024, and has spent his entire professional career in the Dominican Summer League. That is ordinary. What he did this year is not.
In 14 appearances and 21 2/3 innings for DSL Mets Orange, he posted a 2.49 ERA with 33 strikeouts, two saves, and zero home runs allowed. Hitters managed only nine hits against him.
For a pitcher still working at the lowest rung of the system, that kind of missing-bats profile is the reason organizations keep young, projectable right-handers around for years.
That is what makes the release so jarring. Carrillo is not a finished product. Walks have followed him from the start — nine in 8 2/3 innings as a 19-year-old in 2024, 36 in 32 2/3 the next year, and 22 this season — and the Mets have every right to decide that command will not come fast enough.
But releasing a 21-year-old who just struck out 13.7 batters per nine innings is the sort of move clubs usually make only after an injury, a roster crunch that cannot wait, or a quiet agreement that the player will sign elsewhere. None of those explanations has been offered publicly.
Carrillo’s career minor-league line still shows the same tension that defined him in the DSL: 74 strikeouts in 63 innings and a 3.71 ERA, offset by a high walk rate. The stuff has always been ahead of the strike zone. In 2026 that gap narrowed just enough that the results looked like a breakout.
Opponents stopped squaring him up. The extra-base damage vanished. For a development staff that is supposed to be patient with raw velocity and length, cutting that player loose after a season like this reads less like evaluation and more like a hard stop.
If another organization claims him, the Mets may spend the next two years watching the same arm they just discarded climb someone else’s ladder.
That is the risk of cutting a young pitcher who was actually getting people out.
For now, Carrillo is a free agent, still young enough that the next team that signs him will be buying the same projection New York just walked away from.
