Tom Brennan - Did Stearns Do Enough With The Starting Rotation in 2025?

A nasty job, trying to figure how many starters you will need.

I will give you my answer to “Did Stearns Do Enough With The Starting Rotation in 2025?” right upfront: 

YES, he did enough, at least almost entirely so. Sometimes, avalanches kill seasons, though.

I’m on hiatus, but I thought I’d just throw this article in.

The Mets started the season with a planned rotation of Peterson, Holmes, Senga, Manaea and Montas.

Redundancy included Megill, Canning, and Blackburn.

The future included McLean, Tong, Sproat, and Tidwell, in that talent order, with Tidwell the most ready of the 4 for a call up at the start of 2025.

I add that up, and I have 12 guys that can start, Without getting into having to dip further down and one what I affectionately referred to in the past as” Subs and scrubs” starters.

Manaea and Montas in Spring training went down faster than a parachutist whose parachute wouldn’t open. But sliding Megill and Canning into the quickly badly damaged rotation was both doable and the obvious choice.

And, logically that worked well. After all, the parachutists were both supposed to be back by the beginning of June, so why go out and try to acquire more talent to start?

And not only logically, but in actuality, it did work out well - at least until early June, when Senga went down with a freak injury that was not supposed to be that lengthy, but which screwed up his season thereafter.

Then, almost immediately thereafter, the freak Injury to Canning. Tearing his Achilles tendon on a nothing burger play, and suddenly out for the season.

And Megill’s sudden arm issues after a strong April and May - and, of course, the delayed returns of Manaea and Montas.

Things got very dicey quickly. Very quickly.

Well, Manaea and Montas finally both Returned, and the two starters did not provide relief. Manny was lousy, and Montas gave the Mets a handful of crappy starts before his arm blew up. 

Senga,who had been stellar up to his bizarre injury, Returned but was lousy thereafter. 

Blackburn and Tidwell were both tried for a total of six starts and found to be very Crappy.

The crumbling starter cohort was frankly astonishing to watch. 

How could so many starting pitchers go so wrong so fast?

Stearns then decided to beef up the pen rather than the Starting rotation, probably for two reasons: one, he had the three young studs in the minors that were getting close, and two, he must’ve thought that the bullpen adds that he made, Helsley, Soto and the submariner, would give him a killer pen that he could minimize starter innings and maximize pen innings, so that he would be getting the team ready for the long haul in the playoffs with out burnt out starters. 

Then, Garrett got hurt and Helsley was gosh-awful. Can ANYTHING go right?

Then Peterson (3.18 ERA thru mid August) pitched really poorly after an 8 scoreless inning start. I guess going 8 was an unforeseeable mistake there.

The only real flaws that I saw in the Stearns unfolding strategic moves were that he could’ve called up McLean sooner, and should have definitely promoted Tong to AAA sooner, to put him up against more challenging hitters. When I was pondering things last Summer, it kind of hit me that AA hitters, were they to be promoted as an entire team wholesale to the major leagues, would probably hit about .120, while AAA hitters (if you promoted an entire team to the major leagues) would probably hit about .175. The disparity between AA hitting and AAA hitting as compared to majorly hitting four entire teams at each of those levels is quite drastic.

Tong only got three AAA starts against .175 guys, when he should have been promoted to AAA a month earlier and gotten 8 such starts, to be readier for a sudden call up to the Mets, where in the majors they hit .240, or twice as good as AA hitters. Stearns Should’ve raised Jonah’s treadmill sooner, in essence. Too conservative.

So, I don’t think Stearns with starters did a bad job. We have to realize that he didn’t have a crystal ball going into the trade deadline, but I repeat the one real flaw that I saw was just not pushing the astonishing prospect pitching trio along a little faster. McLean excelled, but Tong would have done better I did not been left in AA so long

Now, back to my hiatus.