Here Today, Gone Manaea

Morning Dose: Tuesday, February 25

☀️ Good Morning:

It only took a few hours after I wrote about the excitement of baseball returning for news to drop that Sean Manaea would join Frankie Montas among the starting pitchers who are supposed to be key cogs in the rotation this season, but will be doing anything but throwing for the next several weeks.

The left-hander who was brought back to Queens on a three-year, $75 million deal has a right oblique strain that will cause him to miss Opening Day.

“I thought I was doing everything I could this offseason to train, and it just kind of popped up,” Manaea said. “But all that being said, I’d rather miss a couple weeks now, the beginning of the season, instead of doing something and then missing a significant amount of time.”

The Mets aren’t exactly sure how long he will need to recover — “It could take 7, 14, 21 days to heal,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. However, they feel, at least publicly, that this isn’t a serious injury, hoping he will only miss a few starts in April.

If Manaea can quickly overcome the type of oblique injury that often gives misleading timelines, the Mets will reportedly stay the course with their depth options to temporarily replace him.

But for a rotation built like a wobbly Jenga puzzle, this injury feels like pulling one of the few stabilizing pieces along the bottom.

🥱 A weary group: David Stearns is counting on a rotation that carries a lot of stress and uncertainty into the new season.

• The 33-year-old, Manaea, threw a career high 181.2 innings last year, while adjusting his delivery midway through the season. He made four starts in October, throwing another 19 innings of high-intensity baseball.

• Keep in mind that Montas is also returning after a rapid uptick in starts, having made 30 for Cincinnati and Milwaukee after missing almost the entire 2023 season (and also pitching into October).

• Meanwhile, Stearns is looking to a heavily-used reliever who nearly pitched into November, Clay Holmes, to transition into a starter.

• Of course, Kodai Senga is trying to return after making only one start in 2024.

None of these facts are new on this February morning. But with two starters already expected to start the season on the IL, it’s hard to brush aside the worst fears.

On a day Manaea was shutdown, Nick Madrigal found the 60-day IL and the team announced a late trade for an outfielder, we have plenty to talk about.

☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!

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Before you ask why we haven’t received a tweet from one of the newsbreakers telling us Jose Quintana is set to sign with the Mets, consider this:

Perhaps Quintana was pulled for an unrelated reason, but it’s something worth monitoring.

Why might Stearns stay the course?

If you’re wondering why the Mets haven’t acquired another starter to at least replace Frankie Montas, it’s because they already did, and his name is Griffin Canning.

If you think about it, Canning’s role never made much sense on the active roster unless an injury occurred. He’s not a long reliever. And if the club was sold on a six-man rotation, it would be easy enough to pick from a list of optionable arms in the organization to fill that role.

Canning is the cheaper and younger alternative to Quintana, a classic high-deductible insurance plan that’s objectively worse than other options, but at least gives you some coverage if you need it.

Beyond Griffin, the Amazins obviously still have Tylor Megill (perhaps the most overlooked starter in the entire organization), along with Max Kranick, who we discussed yesterday, and suitable short-term solutions, such as Justin Hagenman. It doesn’t appear as if José Buttó will reenter the starting conversation under these pretenses.

Still, why not Quintana?