Reese Kaplan --- Were Stearns' Pitching Choices Any Better?

Let’s continue with the David Stearns positives...

Buckle up as we will skip over the Jorge Polanco and Marcus Semien moves and shift our attention to pitching. Here we have to take our hat off in deference to the Stearns strategy, right...?

Well, topic number one would be the horrific contract for Sean Manaea.  As a refresher, Manaea is an eleven year veteran southpaw who actually owns a winning record of 85-74 with a middle of the road ERA of 4.16.  He has a moderate WHIP and generally exhibits good control.  

When he was brought on board for his first Mets season he turned in a good one.  He finished the year with a 12-6 record, a 3.47 ERA and finished 11th in the NL Cy Young voting.  

For that  effort he was paid $14.5 million on a single year free agent contract though it only cost the Mets $12 million as $2.5 was covered by an option paid by the San Francisco Giants.  His final number was a 2.9 WAR, a level he’d reached three other times in his career.  That turned out to be a good Stearns move.

Then came the 2025 off season.

Stearns bid against himself, more than doubling the salary to be paid to Manaea. Then to make matters worse he was going to take home his $25 million annual salary for not a single year but for three of them

How’d he do?

Let’s put it this way.  He was so bad when healthy that he was booted out of the starting rotation.  Between 2025 and 2026 Manaea has a losing record of 8-12 with a 5.03 ERA. That certainly does not look like $50 million well spent.  (And remember there’s another $25 million owed to him for 2027).  Stearns won’t make it to the World Series like his former employer making deals like that one.

Clay Holmes was a solid Stearns addition particularly when he made the successful transition from effective reliever to effective starter.  The same cannot be said of now Rays starting pitcher Freddy Peralta who crumbled horribly in New York.  That’s yet another negative outcome of a Sttearns roster decision.

Now Kodai Senga’s foibles as a starting pitcher cannot be blamed on Stearns as his contract was signed prior to the flight to the Big Apple for the former Brewers head baseball honcho.  

The way the season ended with Nolan McLean, Christian Scott and Zac Thornton turning in credible performances on a regular basis.  Some of the other younger pitchers are still works in progress.   

The bullpen was another up and down part of the Stearns roster construction.  On the up side were most definitely Brooks Raley, AJ Minter, Luke Weaver and Huascar Brazoban.  Naturally none of them are Mets anymore.

On the down side you had Edwin Diaz replacement Devin Williams who turned in his second consecutive subpar season, as well as a revolving door of AAAA personnel who were not able to fill the housecleaning vacancies created by the trade deadline moves.