So if the season started today, the Mets would offer up a pitching rotation consisting of an injury rehabbed starter Kodai Senga, the comeback kid Sean Manaea, the closer turned opener Clay Holmes, can he do it again David Peterson, and the well traveled but seldom successful Frankie Montas. Behind them available as plans B, C, D and E would be Tylor Megill, Paul Blackburn, Max Kranick and Griffin Canning.
What David Stearns has achieved here is quantity, but there are certainly questions about quality. Even if you assume Manaea found the magic touch last year and is now among the better starters in the league, you still don’t know about the others between health, workload and the out-of-left-field season from Peterson was a one-off performance or has he finally reached his full potential?
As a result, it comes as no surprise to see that the Mets are expressing interest in other starting pitchers. After all, would anyone other than his family shed tears if the Mets sent a guy like Paul Blackburn over to LaGuardia airport to fly to his new team?
So the names that keep coming up are Max Scherzer, Dylan Cease and Michael King. Nick Pivetta’s pitching track record and compensation draft pick for signing him pushes him off this top group and Jack Flaherty’s potential attachment to the Mets never got much traction. Let’s take a brief look.
(Take this whole section with a grain of salt. Scherzer just signed with Toronto at $15.5 million, very close to my prediction for $15 million) Everyone who follows the game of baseball thoroughly knows what kind of pitcher Max Scherzer is. In his long career in both the American and National Leagues he has earned three Cy Young Awards for the Tigers and Nationals while also garnering eight All Star Game appearances. His career record is 216 and 112, winning more than twice as many games as he has lost. He’s fanned over 3400 batters in just over 2800 innings. Yeah, the guy can pitch.
Unfortunately, the past few seasons have not gone well for the future Cooperstown honoree. Back in 2021 playing for both the Nationals and Dodgers Scherzer did pitch in 30 games which is just under a full season. Then in 2022 for the Mets he made it to 23. In 2023 split between New York and Texas he was in 27.
Then last season it was just 9 games. During that 2022 to 2024 interval he has pitched to a combined winning record of 26-15 matching his career ERA of 3.16. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that he should have appeared in about 96 games over a three year period. He made it into about 1/3 less than that. The strikeout dominance was still there but reducing a bit.
MLB is suggesting that the now 40 year old hurler is worth about $15 million which coincidentally is what his former teammate Justin Verlander agreed to for 2025. Maybe you can kick it up another $1-$5 million given his slight age advantage but the days of being well over $30 million are behind him. Right now most sources cite the Blue Jays as the front runners which could parallel them falling out of the Pete Alonso free agent bidding.
While obtaining Scherzer to buttress the OK but not dominant pitching staff only requires more of Steve Cohen’s money, the other Padres pitchers would require both an investment and sacrificing some of the current or future Mets players to make the deals appealing to the spinning-out-of-control Padres ownership.
Dylan Cease is a starter turning age 29 who has put up solid if not eye popping numbers during his relatively brief career. His aggregate stats include a 57-46 record with a 3.75 ERA and an impressive 1016 Ks in 847 IP. Between the Padres and White Sox he’s finished in the top 4 in Cy Young voting twice.
His teammate Michael King may be even more appealing. He’s another reliever turned starter who went from the Bronx to the Pads. In his first year as a frontline starting pitcher he was in 30 games, going 13-9 with a 2.95 ERA.
Either of the two Padres pitchers would vault to near the top of the Mets rotation, though it would likely cost less to acquire King than Cease due to his limited starting history and the fact he’s a year older. For the Mets he has big city experience having played most of his career in New York for the Yankees and his salary level certainly would make the front office happy.
Any of these three pitchers would be welcome, but I think they are presented in reverse order of their potential appeal as guaranteed one-year solutions for the Mets.
11 comments:
It would be great to add another very solid arm. Each season has its successes and flops. You want to anticipate flops.
As Cohen doesn’t want to just spend like crazy, we need to respect his efforts for four years so far to bring us a winner. It appears the Mets are in the Cease and King talks, but not so much the Flaherty discussions. There has to be something that is keeping some club from jumping on this “ace” type pitcher that doesn’t have a QO attached. I’m pretty sure there is something up with Flaherty’s demands.
good call there . .ya gotta think there is something behind the scenes. It is surprising that Detroit is not mentioned anywhere for him and LA didn't seem to want him back.
Flaherty threw 22 innings in the playoffs and surrendered 18 runs on 24 hits, 9 walks, and 6 HRs. That is awful bad. There was a guy who would have been a lot better off missing the playoffs.
I guess my problem with this whole discussion is that the Mets already have a full staff unless you are counting on injuries. Even going to a 6 man rotation, they went out and signed them earlier. Assuming Senga is healthy, Manaea is #2, Peterson is not going anywhere, they didn't sign Montas to DFA him and they made a big deal out of making Holmes a starter. Even Canning was a free agency signing as a back end (#6 signing). If you don't care for Canning's numbers, the big one to look at is the number of innings the guy throws. They also have Megill and Blackburn as their #7 and 8, both whom have had some successes.
The fact is that starters are not as important as they used to be and to pay guys premium prices as a "starter" is a waste of money. (See Tom's later article this morning). The Mets have assembled quite a deep staff overall and I am comfortable with their #1 through #8 starters.
One thing to remember here
The Mets current 2025 salary is around 50mil BELOW LAST YEAR
plenty of money left to do add ons
Sounds like enough to sign Pete and lengthen that lineup
I wonder how many of these SPs are optionable. Even if overpaid for a AAA role, they could prove valuable there.
On another note, I'm not sure Senga should be the Ace on Day One. IMO,Manaea deserves to be the OD starter.
The Mets already messed up when putting together this pitching rotation. Holmes and Montas have major questions attached to them. Then you have to add the "what can we expect from Senga" on top of that. Hopefully you get the expected performance from Manaea and Peterson.
Trying to fix this lack of judgement, in my view, will cost the Mets dearly in prospects which are too important for the future the Mets are trying to put together.
What do the Mets need going forward into 2025/2026?
Get younger, faster, cheaper.
Need pitching help in 2025? wait for Sproat, Scott around the all-star.
Need to get faster? Acuna, Mauricio and others.
The pitching aces are all taken and the ones available would require prospects the Mets can't afford to give up if the are indeed planning to have a top minor league system that can replace departing players.
Mets are obviously not done.
Very busy on the phones
Pitchers know that a reckless arm blow out could ruin their career and have perhaps tens of millions fly out the window. Teams know that most TJS guys miss 1.5 to 2 years, and hw many end up in surgery every year, so losing a stud starter for 2 years is very hard to deal with. My guess is that is the primary source of innings drop. Secondly, hitters are encouraged to work the pitcher. That drives down innings by driving up pitch counts. As successful as Manaea was last year, 13 of his 32 starts (40%) were 5.0 innings or less. Not a pussy...Mets were 23-9 in his starts.
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