Before the season, if you had said a player on the Mets would break a club record, reaching a statistical threshold that only 12 players at their position ever have, the list of guesses would have been obvious.
Jacob deGrom is liable to break all sorts of records every time he touches the ball. Pete Alonso already owns the Mets’ single-season record for home runs and certainly possesses the power to one day hit 60 of them. Edwin Diaz, at his best, already threatened the MLB record for saves in a year and would have been a fun sleeper pick in this hypothetical game.
In reality, it was none of those three who turned in a season for the ages, although deGrom may have been on his way before injuries derailed his season. It wasn’t Francisco Lindor either, it was someone who collected less than one-seventh of Lindor’s 2021 salary.
Relief pitcher Aaron Loup, with his 0.95 ERA in 56.2 frames, gained one of the most unlikely entries into a very exclusive club. There have been only 13 instances in history of a reliever throwing at least 50 innings in a season with an ERA of 1.00 or lower. Loup’s miraculous 2021 is now one of those instances.
Other names on the list are fairly easy to guess, or at least understandable. Dennis Eckersley had a 0.61 ERA in 1990. Modern relievers Jonathan Papelbon, Wade Davis (twice), Zack Britton and Blake Treinen each turned the best seasons of their respective primes into a ticket for the sub-1.00 ERA gala. Loup is one of only four people in the group to have a season like this without a save, adding a fitting quirk of obscurity to the man whose career year came out of absolutely nowhere.
For Loup, for whom the Mets are his fifth big-league team, the circumstances of his season make the achievement even more improbable. Loup had made his bones mostly as a lefty specialist, the type of pitcher known colloquially as a LOOGY (lefty one out guy). The job of a LOOGY was to wait around in the bullpen until the other team’s best left-handed hitter came to the plate, come in to face them, and call it a day. But with the new three-batter minimum for relief pitchers, the LOOGY is effectively dead. To keep that same role somewhat intact, a LOOGY now has to come in for that one at-bat with two outs in the inning or risk potentially having to face a right-handed hitter.
In 2018, Loup’s last full season before the three-batter rule was introduced, he had 14 appearances of facing just one hitter. In 2021, that number was cut in half. Thirty-two of Loup’s 65 outings required him to go an entire inning, causing the 33-year-old to shoulder his heaviest workload since 2017. But with scoreless outing after scoreless outing — Loup was tacked for an earned run in only six of his 65 trips to the mound — the lefty proved to be up to the task virtually every time the phone rang for him. Along the way, he not only beat the Mets’ relief record for lowest ERA, he shattered it.
Before Loup came around, Jesse Orosco had the lowest ERA for a Mets reliever in at least 50 innings. Orosco put up a 1.47 in 1983, respectable for sure, but not as extraordinary as what Loup did. Tug McGraw also posted a 1.47 as a reliever in 1969, but four bad days as a starter inflated his total ERA. Granted, Orosco and McGraw’s figures each came in at least 79 relief innings, with Orosco topping out at 110, but relievers are simply not asked to do that anymore. Loup should not be penalized because he was born too late to have his arm turned to dust by old school managers. Instead, Loup should be properly celebrated for allowing six extra base hits in a full season, with only one of those leaving the yard.
The incredible, almost hard to believe statistics don’t end there. Consider the fact Loup let only two runs cross the plate at Citi Field. In the entire second half of the season, the one run credited to Loup came on a Juan Soto home run, certainly not something for a pitcher to hang their head over.
He also had three separate runs of 10 or more appearances without an earned run. In August, Loup held the opposition to a .091 batting average in 11 innings, facing 38 hitters and letting just three of them hit safely. During his best stretch of the season, from June 3 to Aug. 21, Loup faced 101 straight hitters without surrendering an extra base hit. Loup joined Armando Benitez in 1999 as the only Met relievers to keep hitters under a .200 batting average and .240 slugging percentage, and Loup did it while only walking 7.3% of the befuddled men who stood in the box against him.
Loup last took the postgame podium on Sept. 19, signature can of Busch Light in tow, matching his Busch Light t-shirt. Set for unrestricted free agency as soon as the World Series ends, Loup could parlay his immaculately timed performance into the biggest payday of his 10-year voyage. The record-setting southpaw said he hopes that chunk of change comes from the Mets.
“I’d love to come back,” Loup grinned. “I’ve had a blast playing here. I’ve had fun with the guys all year long and I’ve had a great year, so I see no reason not to.”
