Recently on The Mets Junkies Podcast, we messed around with $50M of Uncle Steve’s money and acquired a few Free Agents on the behalf of brand new GM Jared Porter. While Archer didn’t make the cut, I wonder if I made a mistake in leaving him out.

The eight-year veteran owns a 60-80 lifetime record with both the Tampa Bay Rays and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

In that eight years, the right hander has posted a completely respectable 3.86 ERA, however, since 2016 he’s consistently put up an ERA above four.

Also read: Free Agent Target: Garrett Richards

Archer did not pitch in 2020 due to a very familiar thoracic outlet syndrome. While many pitchers like Matt Harvey have not been able to return to previous form, Archer will come at a cheap price and his upside is high.

At his best, Archer pitched to a 3.23 ERA in 34 starts during the 2015 campaign. He put in 212 innings and averaged 10.7 strikeouts per nine, racking up 252 K’s that year. So while he only had a 12-13 record, he did have a solid 2.90 FIP alongside nasty stuff that was clearly missing a ton of bats.

Also read: Hello, is it me (NL CY Young finalist) you’re looking for?

Fangraphs has Archer bouncing back in 2021 with a 7-7 record while accumulating 147 strikeouts in 130 innings pitched. While he’s also projected to have a 4.22 ERA, that’s not bad for an end of the rotation type arm. However, ideally he’d eat a minimum of 20-30 more innings but for $4M, I’ll take it.

Photo from Cincinnati.com