Consider this a mea culpa to David Stearns.
I admit I was highly critical of the Mets’ head of baseball operations for what I perceived as a short-sightedness when it came to reconstructing the Mets starting rotation on the cheap over the winter. After investing $765 million on Juan Soto, Stearns allowed Luis Severino and Jose Quintana, two of the Mets’ best starters last year, to walk as free agents and risked losing Sean Manaea, their top winner last year, in a hardball free agency negotiation before finally capitulating to his demand for a third year in his contract.
In the meantime, Stearns’ solution for filling out the rotation was not to sign a proven No.1 in Max Fried, Corbin Burnes or Blake Snell, but rather to sign demoted Yankee closer Clay Holmes to an eyebrow-raising three-year, $38 million deal with the idea of converting him to a starter.
How do you spend $765 million for one player in Soto, I asked, and then spend a fraction of that (actually $151 million) on the most important ingredient of any team, the starting rotation, minus a bona fide No. 1, and expect to go to the World Series? In the course of my criticism of Stearns, I couldn’t help but point out one of the unwritten tenets of analytics (of which he is a leading disciple) is to limit long-term contracts to pitchers — a tenet he stuck to in filling in the rotation around Manaea, Holmes and Kodai Senga with a two-year, $34 million contract for the much-injured and much traveled Frankie Montas, and a one-year, $4.25 million deal for ex-Angel Griffin Canning.
And then both Manaea (oblique) and Montas (high grade lat strain) got hurt in spring training (perhaps proving the analytics credo about the need for clubs to limit their liability with pitchers) and Stearns was faced with digging further into his limited starting pitching depth, while at the same time hoping (praying?) for a fully recovered Senga, a possible ace after his 12-7, 2.98 season in ’23, who missed almost all of last year with shoulder and calf injuries.
Although Senga pitched extremely well throughout the spring, the starting pitching outlook still looked rather bleak when the Mets opened up shop at Citi Field back in the beginning of April. Yet here we are four weeks later and the Mets are starting to pull away in the National League East — largely on the strength of their starting pitching!
Who’da ever could have foreseen that? Well, maybe David Stearns.
As of Friday, the Elias Sports Bureau reported the Mets’ starters leading the majors with a 2.33 ERA with their 9.82 strikeouts per nine innings second in the majors. And their five home runs allowed were the fewest in the majors — by a long shot as the next team’s lowest was 10.
So far the Mets starters are averaging only 5.1 innings per start — 21st in the majors — but the Holmes conversion experiment has nevertheless been an unqualified success. After a shaky first start March 27 vs. Houston when he was able to go only 4 2/3 innings, surrendering five hits and four walks, Holmes has steadily pitched better, yielding just one run over six innings in his last start against the Cardinals, and it figures that the Mets’ starters’ innings-per-start percentage will improve.
Manaea, meanwhile, has not been missed thanks in large part to Senga’s re-emergence as one of the most unhittable starters in the majors so far — a 1.26 ERA that included a scoreless streak of 19.2 innings that was broken Friday night in Washington. And at the back end of the rotation, it’s a wonder if even Stearns could have envisioned Tylor Megill and Canning combining for six wins and a 2.25 ERA at this juncture.
To that point, it is worth noting that Burnes, who signed a six-year, $210 million contract with the Diamondbacks over the winter, has yet to win his first game this season while pitching to a 4.05 ERA over his first five starts, and Snell, who signed a five-year, $182 million deal with the Dodgers, has made only two starts before being shut down with a shoulder issue.
Much as I thought Stearns was short-sighted last winter when it came to putting together a starting rotation on the cheap — he’s still gotten nothing from Manaea and Montas — his belief in Holmes as a starter and Canning as a worthwhile low cost, back-of-the-rotation investment are paying off in the hands of pitching coach Jeremy Hefner and his assistant Desi Druschel. Nobody is getting more bang for their starting pitching buck so far this season than the Mets.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
The flip side to the Mets starting pitching success this year is the Yankees who have somehow held onto first place in the AL East despite a decimated “2 ½ starter” rotation of Max Fried, Carlos Rodon and Will Warren. And it’s not as if the Yankee lineup has been overpowering opponents as Aaron Judge, Paul Goldschmidt and Ben Rice are the only hitters having standout seasons. The Yankees are fortunate that none of their AL East rivals have played that well either. Said an American League scout who was following the Yankees last week: “I have to say, the Yankees might be the worst first place team I’ve ever seen.” … One of the most surprising (and delightful) developments of the early season was the Giants’ 33-year-old Wilmer Flores, onetime Citi Field fan favorite, leading the majors with 27 RBI going into the weekend, one more than he had all of last year in 71 games. … Apparently the Yankees’ scoreboard operators are doubling down on the loud obnoxious music and noise between pitches and innings. Why?
