As the New York Mets search for multiple starting pitchers, it’s worth remembering how president of baseball operations David Stearns operated last year in constructing a successful rotation. Instead of outbidding other clubs for the top veteran starters, Stearns bet on bounce-back performances from Sean Manaea and Luis Severino. The method worked; the rotation emerged as a second-half strength and both pitchers returned to free agency anticipating multiyear offers.
The Mets had success with the short-term deals. Stearns is not naturally inclined to go long-term with starting pitchers. So it would seem their preference would be to find the next Severino and/or Manaea, those types.
The free-agent market contains a bunch of pitchers fitting such profiles. Generally and not necessarily specific to the Mets, Walker Buehler, Michael Soroka and Matthew Boyd come to mind, and there are plenty more.
“I think those types of deals are always going to be part of our strategy,” Stearns said at his end-of-season news conference last month. “And so we’ll see, we’ll see what’s out there this year.”
To what end those types of deals are part of the Mets’ plan remains unknown. They’ve also explored trades. And in the free-agent market, other tiers of starting pitchers exist. As Stearns has said in consecutive offseasons, successful rotations can be built in various ways.
How important is a bona fide ace such as Corbin Burnes, Max Fried or Blake Snell, the three top pitchers on the free-agent market?
“Having a horse at the front end of your rotation always helps,” Stearns said when talking generally about front-line pitchers and not specific free agents at the GM meetings in early November. “I think Sean served that this year. He had a heck of a year. There were points during this year where Sevy did that for us. So you need starting pitchers to pitch well. I don’t know that I’m going to go into it has to be sort of the name-brand ace, but you certainly need starting pitchers who can carry the load for you.”
There they are again: Manaea and Severino. Privately, some executives at different clubs loathe handing out long-term deals for starting pitchers because of the injury risk involved and the accompanying high price tag. But not every club can squeeze a lot of value out of less accomplished players or pitchers coming off a down year. Regarding the Mets, Manaea and Severino deserve most of the credit for their performances, but New York, under Stearns, demonstrated it could certainly help. And that matters.
“The ability to have pitchers come in and experience success here is important, not only because it reinforces some elements of our processes and maybe helps us understand player identification or keeping players healthy,” Stearns said, “but also proves to other players that we have a system here that potentially can help them bounce back, stay healthy, whatever it is for that particular player.”
It all worked well for the Mets until it didn’t. New York, and especially its pitching staff, ran out of gas by the time they reached the National League Championship Series, which is where the team’s season ended. If they had a pitcher more used to consistently logging a lot of important innings down the stretch, would the Mets have been able to last a little longer? Club officials would probably push back on that criticism, accurately pointing out that the Mets needed to push their pitchers hard from the start of June on because of the team’s poor start. Regardless, because like Manaea and Severino, Jose Quintana is also a free agent, the Mets are now left with as many as three openings in their rotation.
The best way for any club to avoid significant yearly turnover and carry multiple, productive top-tier pitchers is to develop them. The Mets are improving in that area, but they’re not quite there yet. David Peterson is coming off his best season, but Christian Scott is out until sometime in 2026. Down in Triple A, Brandon Sproat stands out as the Mets’ best pitching prospect, but similar to their other arms at Syracuse, he hasn’t yet demonstrated success at that level. Until the Mets can churn out homegrown pitchers, they’ll have to look elsewhere for help.
Thus, the upside and flexibility of short-term pitching deals might again be especially enticing for the Mets. That doesn’t have to mean they end up with true bounce-back candidates, it’s just that some are. And when operating that way, bounce-back performances are not a given. It’s a risk. Previous Mets regimes avoided such risk as much as possible. This one showed it can work.
(Top photo of Sean Manaea: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
