Mets add Daniel Duarte for bullpen depth, option Jonathan Pintaro to Triple-A

The Mets made a quick bullpen adjustment, recalling right-hander Daniel Duarte and optioning right-hander Jonathan Pintaro to Triple-A in a corresponding move. The transaction was announced ahead of New York’s series finale against the St. Louis Cardinals, and it reflects the routine, day-to-day roster flexibility required to manage a late-season-like bullpen workload even in mid-June.

Duarte’s return to the major league roster gives the Mets another right-handed look in their bullpen mix. In modern bullpen planning, even when teams do not identify a single “role” player for a given day, carrying additional arms helps cover multiple innings, protect leverage usage patterns, and reduce the need to stretch certain relievers beyond their comfort zone.

Pintaro’s optioning to Triple-A is the corresponding roster move that clears a spot while keeping the Mets’ pitching pipeline active. For a bullpen that can require repeated turnstops due to extended outings, weather delays, or simply the rhythm of everyday baseball, optioning one arm while recalling another is often the cleanest way to maintain available relief bodies without forcing a longer-term move.

The Mets’ decision also underlines a broader pattern across MLB bullpens in 2026: clubs increasingly treat the relief corps like a rotating group of specialists and situation-specific options. Even when a team does not publicly reassign roles, the internal goal is consistent, to keep the best arms for the highest-leverage moments and to avoid overusing any one pitcher.

New York will still need to manage Duarte’s usage carefully, particularly because recalls can bring “fresh innings” expectations that are not always matched by a pitcher’s command on any given day. The most telling follow-up will be how the Mets deploy Duarte in the game plan against St. Louis, including whether he is used as an early-inning bridge or reserved for a later setup window.

Because this report is based on a transaction update rather than a fuller team statement, some specifics that readers may want to know, such as Duarte’s expected workload or the Mets’ longer-term bullpen blueprint, are not yet confirmed here. What is clear is that the Mets are actively circulating bullpen options rather than settling into a static relief pattern.

The next watch item is how this recall-and-option move affects the Mets’ broader bullpen availability over the coming days, particularly whether more roster churn follows or whether Duarte stabilizes one of the team’s late-inning paths. In bullpen-centric games, even small personnel changes can ripple across innings and reshape who pitches the cleanest matchups when the game tightens.