So with the 2024 baseball season for the New York Mets finally underway, it’s time to project what could be good, bad and otherwise for the coming season. Let’s have a look first at what the Mets offer up in starting pitching.
When the prospective number one starter drops out of the preseason prior to the start of the 2024 season, it caused flashbacks of Justin Verlander, Jacob deGrom, Pedro Martinez, Johan Santana and many other Mets hurlers from the past who gave an unintended and unexpected gut punch to the team, the fans and the media who had already projected what quality innings from that hurler would mean for the team’s chances.
Kodai Senga rapidly ascended from unknown foreign import into the ace of the staff in a single Mets season. Supporting Senga were a number of pitchers who had moments in the sun and also moments on the dark side of the moon.
No one was doing cartwheels nor popping champagne when David Stearns reached out to secure the services of oft-injured and the horrific 2023 version of Luis Severino. He’s thus far been a pleasant surprise with a very solid Florida tenure, but we know that leading your team in anything in the Spring is not a guarantee of a trip north. Ask Mark Vientos.
The addition of Sean Manaea was a bit more warmly received as he has had more good than bad in his career and the price paid for the man was eminently reasonable in today’s baseball dollars. It would seem that the thinness of the starting rotation made the prospect of a more than one year pitcher was pretty appealing.
His Spring pitching has also been more good than bad and the new look Manaea missing the beard and extended locks seems to be making a fresh approach to his New York Mets tenure.
More unknown to the New York fans was the trade that brought in starting pitcher Adrian Houser. Nothing about his stat sheet jumps out as eye popping, but obviously former Milwaukee Brewers head honcho David Stearns knows him far better than anyone associated with the Mets.
Returning southpaw Jose Quintana got off to a late start last season due to injury but from his late arrival to year’s end he delivered. He only made 13 starts with an uninspiring 3-6 record, but the 3.57 ERA was terrific and better than his career mark of 3.74. The Mets own Quintana for this full season and then he once again becomes a free agent as he enters his age 36 year.
Then comes the man known more for his AAAA tenure the past three seasons than his pitching talent, Tylor Megill. The big man started out like a house afire in Florida and everyone was almost ready to question, “Kodai who?” Unfortunately, the previous Tylor Megill returned for his last three appearances and it drove his ERA up to a good-for-Megill 3.92 level after having looked unhittable.
The good news is that Senga is due back soon and Megill may indeed with his new pitch upped his game a bit, but for his career he’s a 4.72 ERA pitcher who yields a .268 batting average to opposing hitters. Here’s hoping that’s all a thing of the past, but history is what it is.
Next time around we’ll look at the bullpen built to hold things down for Edwin Diaz and the rest of the Mets. After that the somewhat offensive collection of hitters who appear as if they’re continuing the 2023 inability to get on base.
