The Mets Need More Pitchers Already

You have to hand it to the Mets. There really does seem to be something ineffable that brings drama to Queens. No, I don’t mean the LOLMets meme, the belief that things will find a way to break every year, because I don’t really think it’s true. The Mets aren’t cursed. But they do have a way of making things interesting. It’s never all smooth sailing, but they’re never completely down and out either. There’s always a little more to explore at Citi Field, and this offseason is no exception. The Mets are on top of the world, because they signed Juan Soto, one of the biggest free agent prizes of all time. And they have their backs to the wall, because two pitchers they signed to assemble a playoff rotation are already injured.

Frankie Montas was the first casualty. He felt discomfort after his very first bullpen session of spring training, and a lat sprain means that he won’t be able to throw for another 5-7 weeks. Given that the regular season is five weeks away, and that Montas had done essentially no buildup before his injury, we’re talking about multiple months of absence.

The good news is the Mets built their rotation this offseason to withstand injuries. After all, Montas wasn’t the most prominent starting pitcher they signed this winter. Sean Manaea holds that distinction; he was the best pitcher on last year’s team, and though he hit free agency, he signed a three-year deal worth $75 million to come back. That’s not quite ace money in today’s game, which is perfect: Manaea’s not quite an ace, just a solid playoff starter with upside. Except, he’s also hurt now. After feeling some discomfort of his own, an MRI revealed a right oblique strain.

The prognosis doesn’t immediately sound as dire for Manaea. But will he miss time? When asked, manager Carlos Mendoza was realistic: “[H]e’s going to be shut down for a couple of weeks – and then we’ll reassess after that. We’ve gotta build him back up again. Safe to say that he’s probably gonna start the season on the IL.” That’s a rough blow considering how much time there still is before the season starts for more body parts to bark, more ligaments to tweak.

Here’s where the New York rotation stands today, per RosterResource:

That’s a motley crew, though not one without upside. Senga was spectacular in 2023, then missed basically all of 2024 with injury issues of his own. Peterson missed the first two months of last season himself. That’s just the way of modern rotations, but the risk in having those two as the best two starters is meaningful. If you told a random GM in baseball that those were his top two guys, he’d surely want to have strong depth behind them to compensate.

That’s not the case here. Holmes is notable in the no. 3 spot. Observers with a pulse and a television will surely remember that Holmes just got done with a lengthy stint as a high-leverage reliever. The last time he started a game was 2018, his rookie season, and he’s averaged fewer than one inning per appearance for the past five years.

That’s not to say he can’t do it, of course. You don’t have to look very long to find examples of conversions like this working out. Last year was a banner year for it, in fact. Garrett Crochet went from power reliever to one of the best starters in baseball. Reynaldo López was spectacular in his return to the rotation. Jordan Hicks started strong before the workload caught up to him and he had to return to bullpen duty, and he’s coming back as a starter this year. A.J. Puk – well, OK, they can’t all be success stories.

Trying out a conversion like this makes a lot of sense, particularly for a team like the Mets. The upside is high, the risk is manageable (Holmes would still be a great reliever), and there are enough other pitching options that the team doesn’t need him to successfully make the switch. Or that was the case a few weeks ago, at least. Now, Holmes is the third starter for the short term rather than the no. 5. The risk has grown to match the reward; a converted reliever as your fifth or sixth starter just doesn’t feel the same as having the same name in the top three.

Think of it this way: In January, the short-term plan if Holmes couldn’t hack it in the rotation was to use whichever of Blackburn or Canning looked better in the spring. Now, those guys are both in the rotation already. They can’t replace Holmes, because they’ve already been enlisted to replace Manaea and Montas. Think of it as the difference between bowling with bumpers or without; a gutterball feels a lot more devastating without support.

That’s unquestionably a bummer. But there’s good news here, too, if you know where to look. For lots of teams, losing two of your top three projected starters, both for an extended time period, would mean turning to some downright dire options. But from my perspective, Blackburn and Canning are pretty great as emergency replacements, and the Mets have other options besides.

Blackburn was a deadline acquisition last year, and he’s the very model of a modern fifth starter. He’s not particularly durable; he’s returning from offseason back surgery. He’s not someone you want starting a key game in October or even down the stretch. But as someone to throw five professional innings every fifth day? I’m completely on board, which is more than you can say for a lot of sixth starters across the league.

Canning feels like a more speculative option to me. He looked diminished in 2024, with every one of his pitches flashing worse metrics by both pitching models we host here, and he had worse results at the per-pitch level and also by ERA, FIP, and pretty much everything else. But even then, he delivered better-than-replacement value while making 31 starts. That’s exactly what I want out of my seventh starter – the ability to become a fifth starter when necessary without being a true liability in that spot. If Canning is still in the rotation in June, something has probably gone wrong. But six starts in a pinch? You could do worse.

“You could do worse” is a double-edged sword, though. Because if Canning is the fifth starter now, that means he can’t be the injury fill-in. What if Holmes gets hurt? What if Canning gets hurt? What if one of Montas or Manaea misses more time than expected? What if they both do? It’s irresponsible to have only five starters you like, even for a month, and the Mets are going to have to find some others, either from their own farm system or in free agency.

On the prospect front, there’s always the option to bring up your best minor leaguer and see if things click right away. Brandon Sproat just checked in at 24th on our Top 100 Prospects list. Eric Longenhagen lauded his six-pitch mix and fastball that touches 100, and penciled him in for a 2025 debut. Well, guess what: Opportunity has come knocking. At this point, it’s hard to count on a guy who was still in college in 2023 to deliver important major league innings in 2025, but that’s what spring training is for: If Sproat looks ready for a shot, the path is clear for him to get one.

Behind Sproat, things get meaningfully thinner. Maybe Nolan McLean can make the leap, but he hasn’t shown it just yet. Maybe Jonah Tong is more of a starter than a multi-inning reliever, and also ready sooner than expected. Maybe the spectacularly named Blade Tidwell will bounce back after a rough 2024. But I don’t expect much out of anyone aside from Sproat; anyone else from the farm who can eat innings is just a bonus.

This being the Mets, there’s always the option of using money to solve the problem, and there are a smattering of interesting free agent starters still out there, among them Jose Quintana, who spent the last two seasons with the Mets, Spencer Turnbull, Lance Lynn, and Kyle Gibson. Jay Jaffe is covering that quartet and other remaining free agent pitchers in a separate piece today, so I won’t go into depth on them here. They’re the kinds of guys that, should they turn out just a little worse than expected, might end up DFA’d a month into the season. But that seems like a perfectly acceptable outcome given the respective timelines of Manaea and Montas.

If I were the Mets, I’d opt for all of the above in this case. You don’t go sign Soto to a gargantuan deal and then cheap out at the bottom of the rotation. If Sproat has the juice to pitch in the majors right now, he should be doing it. We’ll know a lot more about that in a month – but by then, it’ll be much harder to sign another veteran as insurance. And what if someone else gets hurt? Sure, three-fifths of your starting rotation getting injured before Opening Day sounds unlikely – but conditional on two of them already being injured with more than a month still to go, the odds go up meaningfully.

David Stearns and the Mets front office know this. It’s why they guaranteed Canning $4.25 million to be a seventh option. It’s why they’re giving Holmes a chance to start even with Sproat in the high minors. There are some failures the Mets can’t feasibly plan around — their stars don’t have easy replacements. But short-term pitching injuries to two good-but-not-dominant starters? That’s not an acceptable point of failure; it makes no sense to let such a relatively small bump in the road risk tipping the cart over, particularly when the cart is so loaded with expensive, delicious apples. (The apples here are hitters, please don’t mind my horribly mixed metaphors.) So my conclusion is that they won’t give it a chance to break this way; they’ll sign someone new, push Sproat, and happily move on from the back-of-roster options in favor of trying something new if the first few attempts don’t pan out. That’s just good business. And the Mets, these days, are increasingly doing good business.

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