The Mets parted ways with Frankie Montas on Tuesday afternoon, designating the right-hander for assignment after a disappointing season.
The club is still on the hook for $17 million since Montas exercised his player option for 2026. Montas is currently rehabbing from September Tommy John surgery, so without him being available to play next season, the Mets decided to use his roster spot. Waivers were requested for his unconditional release.
Outfielder Nick Morabito was added to the 40-man roster. A speedy 22-year-old outfielder, Morabito could make it to the Major Leagues as soon as next season. This effectively protects Morabito from being exposed in the Rule 5 Draft next month.
There’s no sugarcoating the fact that this was a bad signing. At the time it was made last winter, it seemed like a low-risk deal even if two years and $34 million was an overpay for the veteran starter. Montas figured something out in the second half of 2024 with the Milwaukee Brewers, a club that current Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns is obviously very familiar with, and the right-hander has long been considered a fantastic clubhouse presence.
But he was injured early in camp with a lat strain, which sidelined him until late June. He struggled almost immediately and was demoted to the bullpen after only seven starts, only making it into the sixth inning in two of them.
The 32-year-old pitched in only nine games, going 3-2 with a 6.28 ERA before going down with the elbow injury in late August.
While the veteran wasn’t happy with the demotion, he took the assignment in stride. The Mets ultimately made the decision to call up right-hander Nolan McLean to take his rotation spot, and McLean was fantastic the rest of the way.
The Montas signing was the kind of signing that worked for Stearns and the Mets in 2024. He was a reclamation project of sorts, who saw good results when he started throwing his split-finger fastball in 2024. The Mets thought they could capitalize on this pitch by having him increase the usage even more, giving him a swing-and-miss pitch to offset his arsenal of ground-ball pitches.
For the most part, his splitter was good in 2025, but he wasn’t able to effectively use all of his pitches in most of his starts. Montas was inefficient at best, and downright ineffective at worst.
Stearns has been receiving heat from the fanbase to do away with the project pitchers in 2026 and go for a starter with frontline bonafides. It appears the Mets will try to do exactly that this winter.
“I don’t know how many true No. 1 starters are out there right now, I don’t know how many are actually going to be traded, I don’t know how many are truly available in free agency,” Stearns said last week at the MLB general manager meetings in Las Vegas. “But you’d always like to find that top-of-the-rotation guy that certainly makes building out the rest of the rotation, and the rest of the pitching staff, a lot easier. So if one of those guys happens to be available, we’ll be right there with them.”
