As the Rotation Turns
Morning Dose: Friday, February 16
☀️ Good Morning:
Edwin Díaz faces live hitters for the first time. Francisco Lindor reveals he battled through an elbow injury last season. A closer look at the rotation beyond 2024.
☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!
Happening now: Edwin Díaz took the mound to face live hitters for the first time since undergoing knee surgery last March.
Big step: Facing Omar Narváez and Tomás Nido, perhaps anyone would look good, but more importantly, Díaz was doing what he does best, showing early-spring velocity (96 mph) on his fastball and mixing in his patented slider.
Díaz: “That was my biggest step, to come here and face hitters,” he said, via Newsday. “I know I’m good. My leg is good. But that was on my mind: I want to face hitters, I want to face hitters. Finally, I did it.”
🍎 A longer view of the rotation
It’s the middle of February, pitchers & catchers just reported, so let’s take an optimistic tone and analyze the trajectory of the Mets’ rotation assuming everyone pitches well this year.
While that would be great news for 2024, unfortunately, it could create more long-term holes in a rotation that is already thin.
Pending free agents:
Three of the five starters slated to start the season in the rotation are due to become free agents after this season.
José Quintana’s two-year, $26 million contract expires.
Luis Severino is on a one-year “prove it” deal that could make him expensive to retain if he finds success again in 2024.
And Adrian Houser needs 162 days of service time to become eligible for free agency.
Potential free agents:
That leaves Kodai Senga and Sean Manaea, two pitchers who could expedite their path to free agency if they pitch well over the next calendar year.
Manaea has an opt out after the 2024 season. If he proves he can translate his stuff into a starting capacity, he will have the chance to cash in on a multi-year deal instead of returning to the Mets for $13.5 million.
Senga has already expressed a desire to contribute on a more regular schedule after being treated with kids gloves during his debut campaign. Despite that, he still tossed 166 innings. If he throws 180 in 2024, that would leave him only 54 short of triggering an opt out in his contract after the 2025 season. He would only be 33 at the time and could surely find a more lucrative payday than what is offered in his current deal.
What this means: It means if everyone pitches well, the Mets could be left with only one of their current starters signed through 2025.
And that means the development and progression of Mike Vasil and Christian Scott, two pitching prospects with the highest near-term ceiling, becomes one of the most important things to track this season.
Scott has found himself on several Top-100 prospect lists after a strong showing in the low minors. 2024 becomes an important year for him to boost his workload and prove his stuff translates against tougher competition.
Vasil is closer to major-league ready after throwing 73 innings with Syracuse last year. His Triple-A results weren’t great, but that could be a product of adjusting to the ABS system. Some believe he might be better served in the bullpen, but he has the profile of a back-to-middle-of-the-rotation starter if he can stitch all of his pitches together.
Of course, David Peterson, Tylor Megill and José Butto remain filler pieces under team control. Dominic Hamel should take a step towards the majors. Blade Tidwell is a little farther away.
How we get here: The Mets are in this position because they failed over the past several winters to identify veteran starters who could truly bridge the pitching gap in their farm system. Opting for high-priced, short-term deals, and trading those pitchers away for positional prospects, while avoiding new multi-year deals this past offseason so they can reset their payroll, has left a gap in the rotation.
Looking ahead: If Manaea ultimately opts out, the 2025 rotation projects to look something like this:
Kodai Senga
David Peterson
Christian Scott
Tylor Megill
Mike Vasil
Even if you are bullish on Scott and Vasil, a lot would have to fall in place for this to be a top-end rotation in 2025.
So the question becomes: where do the Mets look to get better, and when?
Are they going to be in play for pending free agent Max Fried, or is he destined to return home to the Dodgers?
Zack Wheeler is already discussing a new contract with the Phillies.
Corbin Burnes? There’s history there with David Stearns. Will the Orioles, under new ownership, gain an advantage in keeping him after trading for him this offseason?
Opportunistic: It leads us back to the current free-agent class that offers intrigue for an opportunistic signing.
Jordan Montgomery is still sitting out there without a qualifying offer attached to his name. Texas GM Chris Young revealed on Thursday the Rangers aren’t looking to add at this point. You would think a deal is there to be made.
A trade always remains a possibility, even if the Mets remain reluctant to part with their young prospects. Would the Marlins deal Jesús Luzardo within the same division? Is there a trade out there we aren’t thinking about?
Reality: The Mets seem content with the current rotation heading into the 2024 season. They will see how their young arms develop to better understand where they might slot in a future rotation. They will also let the payroll return to a sustainable baseline. But then it’s Showtime for David Stearns under Steve Cohen. If this team wants to be serious contenders within the next few seasons, they need to find more pitching, someplace, somehow.
📬 Reader Question
Does Justin Verlander’s vesting option include postseason innings?
No. His 2025 player option is only triggered if he pitches 140 regular-season innings in 2024. However, Verlander can earn some additional cash in 2024 if he were to win LCS MVP ($100,000) or World Series MVP ($150,000), both of which would be covered by the Astros.
Health: A day after Verlander said he was a bit behind schedule due to a shoulder issue, he was seen throwing off a mound in Astros camp.
“I’m a couple of weeks behind,’’ Verlander said. “I guess my body doesn’t respond at 40 as it does at 25.” The 41-year-old missed the first month of the 2023 season due to shoulder inflammation, but went on to make 27 starts and complete 162.1 innings.
Payroll implications: The Mets only have $133.7 million in guaranteed contracts on the books for 2025, a number that shrinks if Sean Manaea opts out of his two-year deal. When factoring in arbitration and pre-arbitration salaries, along with CBT accounting, the Mets could find themselves more than $60 million below the 2025 initial tax threshold if they escape paying $17.5 million towards Verlander’s 2025 vesting option. Either way, they will have money to burn, a topic we will discuss in much more detail soon.
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🔹 PLAYING HURT: Francisco Lindor revealed that he played the entire 2023 season with an injured elbow. Pretty incredible when you consider he was a Silver Slugger winner, stole 31 bases, played stellar defense and finished in the Top 10 of MVP voting. He had surgery in October to remove a bone spur from his right elbow.
“It was day five of spring training,” Lindor said Thursday at Clover Park. “I swung and missed and I felt it right away and the swelling never came down. We have really good trainers here and they did an amazing job of trying to keep me in line. They educated me throughout the process. I kind of had an idea what was happening, I just didn’t want to do an MRI and an X-ray because I knew it was going to show something that they weren’t going to let me play through.”
🔹 NEW MINDSET: Brett Baty is focused on having a positive mindset as he looks to rebound off his disastrous 2023 season: “It’s just coming to the field and knowing you are the best person on the field every day, knowing that and believing that.”
🔹 TOP PROSPECTS: Four Mets landed in FanGraphs’ 2024 Top 100 Prospects list: Drew Gilbert (52nd), Jett Williams (54th), Jeremy Rodriguez (96th) and Christian Scott (98th).
Acquired in the Tommy Pham trade, it’s good to see Rodriguez’ name on the list. The 17-year-old is considered a “high-floored” shortstop prospect.
◾️ Former Met Eduardo Escobar has reportedly signed a deal with the Blue Jays. Escobar was the first veteran piece to be traded last summer for prospects, netting the Mets Coleman Crow and Landon Marceaux. Crow was later used in the trade to acquire Adrian Houser and Tyrone Taylor from the Brewers.
◾️ Rob Manfred announced he will step down from his commissioner role in 2029.
◾️ Former Met Lenny Dykstra is recovering from a stroke he suffered this week. Teammates Darryl Strawberry and Kevin Mitchell say he is in good spirits and under further evaluation at UCLA Medical Center.
◾️ The Orioles had a tough day on Thursday, revealing right-hander Kyle Bradish will start the season on the injured list with a sprained UCL in his pitching elbow, star infielder Gunnar Henderson is dealing with an oblique injury and left-hander John Means is a month behind schedule.
🔗 Why Francisco Lindor’s leadership is a big asset to the Mets, by Will Sammon, The Athletic ($): “For the Mets, Lindor’s brand of leadership — playing hurt, playing every day, being approachable to everyone, buying into the organization’s direction and mentoring young players all while producing — warrants acknowledgment as an asset to a club in transition with a first-year manager.”
🔗 2024 Season Preview: New York Mets, by Justin Klugh, Baseball Prospectus ($): “Outside of their stars like Alonso, Lindor, Nimmo, and Díaz, the Mets have a lot to fill in around the edges, and will be using playing time in the spring and summer to answer big questions like, “What is this?” and “Who is that?” But they’re not so far gone to count them all the way out. This isn’t a teardown/rebuild, it’s a brief restock/restructuring. You never know how far an intense hiccup of success in midsummer can send you hurtling toward a wild card spot.”
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We are lucky to have Lindor. Just an excellent all around player, and leader. To think he played hurt the entire year and still put up a 30/30 season is remarkable.
Say what you will about Billy Eppler, he did a first-rate job with those July trades. A pleasure to read about Jeremy Rodriguez (Pham) and, in other places, Vargas (Robertson), along with the more hyped returns of Acuna, Gilbert, and Clifton. We don't know how any of these guys will turn out -- no one knows -- but I agree with the process that says you stockpile as much talent as possible and hope that a few will make an impact, for surely some will disappoint. Each one of those trades was handled professionally with solid returns.