Mets inexplicably sticking with reeling starter after latest rough outing

While the New York Mets mostly shied away from the big names this offseason, they made several under-the-radar moves in David Stearns' first offseason as the team's President of Baseball Operations.

One of these moves involved his former team, the Milwaukee Brewers. The Mets orchestrated a trade, sending Coleman Crow, a prospect involved in last season's Eduardo Escobar trade, to the Brewers in exchange for Adrian Houser and Tyrone Taylor.

The Mets have already reaped the benefits of this deal with Taylor getting off to an unbelievable start but the biggest piece of this deal, Houser, has struggled immensely as a Met. His struggles only got worse in his latest outing on Saturday.

Houser allowed six runs on nine hits in 4.1 innings pitched against a struggling Cardinals lineup, raising his season ERA to 8.37 in five starts. He pitched well against a subpar Tigers lineup in his Mets debut, but has looked bad to awful in his following four starts. Despite his struggles, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza expressed his commitment to Houser remaining in the rotation.

Mets inexplicably sticking with Adrian Houser despite having better options in AAA

The trade to acquire Houser made sense as the Mets needed dependable rotation arms and Houser had proven in his seven seasons with the Brewers that he's a reliable back-end of the rotation kind of arm. He doesn't have overpowering stuff and won't win Cy Youngs, but he's a guy who usually keeps his ERA around 4.00 and keeps the ball on the ground. He simply has not been effective as a Met.

The Mets sticking with Houser would've made sense when looking at his track record, but the reason why it doesn't make sense is that they have multiple more appealing options sitting in Triple-A.

The easiest option for New York to turn to would be Joey Lucchesi, a pitcher with plenty of MLB experience who pitched extremely well for the Mets down the stretch last season and has a 2.42 ERA in his five starts this season. Lucchesi is already on the 40-man roster, so making a roster move would not be difficult in the slightest.

Another option that the Mets should be considering is Christian Scott, their No. 5 prospect according to MLB Pipeline. Scott has had a meteoric rise through the Mets system in the last couple of seasons and has a 3.48 ERA in his four AAA starts this season with 34 strikeouts and only four walks in 20.2 innings of work. He is proving every time he takes the mound that he is MLB-ready.

With how both Lucchesi and Scott are throwing the ball in the early season compared to Houser, there's no excuse to not try at least one of them out while letting Houser reset in the bullpen in lower-leverage spots. He has taken the Mets completely out of three of the five games he has started. With his next outing coming against a 17-10 Cubs team, it's easy to expect the worst before things might get better.