The New York Mets put together a surprising season in 2024, sneaking into the third and final National League Wild Card spot with 89 wins and then racing all the way to the NL Championship Series where they came just two wins away from advancing to what would have been the sixth World Series since the Amazin’s joined the NL as an expansion team in 1962.
The Mets lost the NLCS in six games to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, but the 2024 season set the stage for high expectations in 2025. The Mets blockbuster offseason only raised those expectations further, highlighted of course by the record-shattering signing of Juan Soto to a 13-year, $765 million contract.
Even before signing Soto, the Mets signed former Milwaukee Brewers right-hander Frankie Montas to a two-year, $34 million deal. The Mets also re-signed their home run specialist, first baseman Pete Alonso to a two-year, $54 million pact.
With 226 home runs, Alonso ranks third on MLB’s all-time list for most homers in the first six seasons of a career. In Monday’s 10-4 win over the Miami Marlins, Alonso added one to his total with a grand slam, his first round-tripper of his seventh Major League season.
Mets’ Early Excitement Quickly Fading
But the good vibes are quickly fading. With a 4-2 defeat to the Marlins on Tuesday, the Mets are now below .500 at 2-3, certainly a slower start than they, or their fans, had hoped. Outside of Monday’s 10-run outburst, the Mets have scored a total of seven runs in their other four games.
But that was not the worst of the bad news.
In the offseason, the Mets re-signed their own free agent lefty starter Sean Manaea to a three-year, $75 million contract. But in mid-March, Manaea suffered a strained right oblique muscle and has not pitched since. Manaea had been projected to return midway through April.
On Tuesday, the Mets learned that they will have no such luck with their 33-year-old starter who was a first-round draft pick of the Kansas City Royals in 2013. Manaea reported feeling more discomfort in the oblique muscle on Sunday, and a subsequent MRI exam revealed new inflammation there.
On Monday, Manaea was given a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection to help heal the muscle, but the setback resulted in a new shutdown for the Mets starter.
âHeâs gonna go two weeks of no throwing, and then we’ve got to start building him back up again,â Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said, as quoted by MLB.com. âWe have to revisit and see where weâre at after that.â
Latest Blow to Battered Mets Starting Staff
Manaea compiled a 12-6 record with a 3.47 ERA and 187 strikeouts in 181 2/3 innings across in 32 starts is his first season with the Mets and was the club’s most effective starter down the stretch as the Mets made their playoff push. He is now not expected to return until May.
The setback is yet another blow to a battered Mets starting rotation. At the outset of Spring Training, Montas suffered a “high grade lat strain” that shut the 32-year-old, nine-year veteran hurler down for six to eight weeks, with no date set yet for his comeback. And on the eve of Opening Day last week, No. 5 starter Paul Blackburn was placed on the 15-day injured list with inflammation in his right knee.
Blackburn started his “throwing progression” on Monday, and his session “went well,” according to Mendoza.
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