Mets need Kodai Senga, Sean Manaea to give bang for their bucks
Mets pitcher Kodai Senga against the Phillies at Citi Field on Monday. Credit: Ed Murray
Starting with Kodai Senga Monday night, it’s about time for the Mets’ highest-salaried pitchers to put their money where the mound is.
President of baseball ops David Stearns has made a strategy of shopping at the bargain-rack for assembling a rotation, choosing not throw cash at the industry’s most fragile commodity. But that blueprint has backfired in unanticipated fashion during the season’s second half, as even the modestly-priced starters, at least by market standards, have failed the Mets while homegrown products like David Peterson and Nolan McLean are the current pillars.
Senga had his biggest test to date Monday, not only facing the Phillies in an NL East showdown, but doing so on regular rest instead of the extra day he typically gets. Based on the numbers since his July return from a hamstring strain, Senga is as enigmatic as ever, with a 5.23 ERA in his last seven starts, averaging 4.43 innings.
That’s not an ace -- it’s a liability. Senga isn’t on Stearns’ resume, as he got his five-year, $75 million deal from the previous GM Billy Eppler, but the Mets could use him to pitch up to his price tag as they try to patch together a rotation the rest of the way.
Stearns may get a pass on Senga, but not Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas, his two primary purchases during the winter. Manaea (3 yrs, $75M) has shown little resemblance to the workhorse that piloted the Mets all the way to the brink of the World Series last season, missing the first 3 1/2 months with an oblique injury and pitching to a 5.15 ERA in the eight games since coming back.
As for Montas, giving him a guaranteed two-year deal worth $34 million seemed like a bad idea from the jump, and he fulfilled those pessimistic projections. Montas was sidelined for three months with a lat strain, flunked out of the rotation after seven starts (6.68 ERA) and is now back on IL, awaiting a decision on possible Tommy John surgery.
Despite a terrible return on those investments so far, all is not lost for the Mets, and the past weekend in Atlanta illustrated why. That’s where McLean, Peterson and Clay Holmes pitched like a rotation for a contending $333 million team should perform, going deep into games and giving manager Carlos Mendoza a fighting chance with his bullpen.
The trio combined for a total of 19 innings, allowing 12 hits and six runs while striking out 19 with six walks. Overall, that’s a 2.84 ERA, so it’s not a surprise the Mets took two of three from Atlanta, and Mendoza was beaming about that part of the rotation. Before McLean’s seven-inning performance Friday, Peterson was the only Mets’ starter to complete six innings since June 7. Over the weekend, Mendoza got two back-to-back with McLean and Holmes, which was a game-changer for a team that had been averaging less than five innings per start since mid-June.
“It was huge, especially with what some of our guys in the bullpen were dealing with,” Mendoza said before Monday’s game. “You were trying to get extra outs from a starter or get an extra out from whoever the reliever was in there. We’ve seen it for the past eight weeks or so, where we were mixing and matching since the fourth or fifth inning.
“But having guys go a quality five, pitching into the sixth, going into the seventh -- you need that, especially when you’re playing 16 in a row the way we’re doing right now. At any point, throughout the year, starting pitching is going to be the key. So it’s good to see those guys doing that.”
Peterson has been doing it all season for the Mets. He’s averaged six innings (3.18 ERA) over his 25 starts, which puts him among MLB’s top 20 in that category. The revelations during that Atlanta weekend were McLean and Holmes, for different reasons.
In the case of McLean, it was only his second major-league start, and that’s tough to predict, even for a highly-regarded prospect that shined in his Citi Field debut. For Holmes, a converted closer, more than doubling his innings-workload this year figured to be taking a toll, as he routinely tapped out after five. On Saturday, however, Holmes trimmed his ERA to 3.60 with a 6 1/3-inning stint that was his second longest of the season, dating to a seven-inning start on June 1.
“It kind of becomes contagious,” Peterson said before Monday’s game. “I think we did a lot of it last year, where we had a good start, the next guy wants to go out and have a good start, and you kind of roll that momentum. It was great to see. We’ll just continue to try and pass the torch.”
Stearns will need to get creative, too. He passed on upgrading the rotation at the trade deadline, but has been rewarded so far with his call-up of McLean to replace the Montas failure. It would seem logical that Stearns goes the Triple-A Syracuse route again to add a sixth starter during this 16-game stretch, and McLean’s immediate success should give him more confidence to go with either Brandon Sproat, Jonah Tong or both.
If Senga and Manaea stay on their troubling trajectories, Stearns really won’t have any choice.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
