A look at the Mets' starting pitching

Longshot Roki Sasaki signing aside, the Mets are probably done adding starting pitchers to the mix for the upcoming season. This doesn’t make many fans happy. The question now becomes: How will Jeremy Hefner and Carlos Mendoza craft a rotation out of the pitchers on hand? Perhaps the biggest question is who will win the final rotation spot, the one that may be asked to bounce back and forth between starting and relieving, to allow Kodai Senga to pitch on extended rest whenever there’s no break in the schedule?

With Senga making just one start last year, we didn’t get to see how exactly he’d be utilized. But every indication is that they’ll look to give him the extra rest whenever possible. What we can glean from last year is what the Mets got from their starters, to form a sort of baseline for this season’s rotation.

Somehow, the Mets finished fifth in the majors in innings from their starters in 2024, with 892.2 IP. While that number is helped due to the fact that they didn’t use an opener, it’s still shocking if you remember the beginning of the season, when it seemed like Mendoza used any excuse to go to his bullpen. The first 17 games of the season, the Mets had just three times where a starter completed six innings, with two of those by José Buttó, who they bent over backwards not to use as a starter.

As with most seasons, the 2025 schedule has several off days at the beginning of the year. The Mets open with a three-game set in Houston and then have a day off. Then they play three in Miami and then have a day off. Then they play six straight days at home before their next day off. Knowing this, will they assemble their rotation so Senga pitches in the middle of that six-game homestand and not need the extra starter?

If Senga gets the Opening Day nod in Houston, it works out fine. If anything, they might want to juggle the second and/or third starter, who would wind up with six days off between starts. Here’s how the rotation would work the first two-plus times:

Senga, Sean Manaea, David Peterson, off day, Clay Holmes, Frankie Montas
Senga, off day, Manaea, Peterson, Holmes, Montas
Senga, Manaea

Perhaps Holmes starts the second – or third - game of 2025 and gets the six days off between his first and second start. Regardless, that takes us thru 4/9, with an off day on 4/10. And then comes the first stretch of the year where the Mets go an extended time without a break. Weather permitting, they’ll play 13 straight days between 4/11 and 4/23. Let’s continue the chart, starting on 4/9:

Senga, Manaea, off day, Peterson, Holmes, Montas
Senga, Manaea, Peterson, Holmes, Montas, 6^th starter
Senga, Manaea, Peterson, Holmes

After an off day, the Mets play 13 straight games. Picking up where we left off:

Senga, Manaea, Peterson, Holmes, off day, Montas
Senga, Manaea, Peterson, 6^th starter, Holmes, Montas
Senga, Manaea, Peterson, 6^th starter, Holmes, Montas

The SP6 was inserted after Peterson to give the additional rest to Holmes and Montas, with the rationale that Holmes needs the extra rest whenever possible and Montas pitched better last year on extended rest, too. Regardless of where the brain trust puts the sixth starter, that pitcher won’t be needed in back-to-back turns until the end of April and the first week of May.

Seeing how the schedule works out, the Mets won’t need the extra starter until the fourth week of the season. And that’s a good thing, as it will allow Mendoza to use the kid glove with his starters early in the year like he did in 2024, as they’ll have an eight-man bullpen as long as it’s a five-man rotation.

In the first 15 games of 2024, the Mets received 74 IP from their starters, an average of just under 5 IP per game. Contrast that with the last 15 games of the year, when the starters gave 85 IP, an average of 5.2 IP per game. And that came despite a four-game stretch where they totaled just 16 innings. In all, there were nine games where the SP gave at least six innings, three times as many as the first 15 games.

There are so many variables that we just can’t anticipate, with injuries and effectiveness at the top of the list. And you never know when the PoBO will get a wild hair inserted, where he goes off on some ridiculous tangent and just has to get Julio Teheran a start. So, let’s combat that by zooming out and looking at MLB as a whole last year. Sorting by games started, here’s how it worked out for the league:

SP1: 31-33 starts
SP2: 29-31 starts
SP3: 24-29 starts
SP4: 20-24 starts
SP5: 15-20 starts
SP6: 9-14 starts

Again, this is for all of MLB and it doesn’t mean that’s what all teams will have. The Royals had one pitcher with 33 starts and two others each with 32. But using this as a guide, we can hope/expect the average team to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 starts from their top six hurlers. Now let’s do the same thing with the MLB universe, except this time with innings pitched:

SP1: 175.2-208.2
SP2: 156.1-175.1
SP3: 130-151.2
SP4: 97.1-129.2
SP5: 74.1-96.1
SP6: 43.2-74

So, this means that the top six starters should give the average team somewhere in the neighborhood of 685 IP.

Of course, we hope the Mets are better than average. Let’s see how the top six starters did in GS and IP in 2024. We’ll combine both, even though it does not mean the same pitcher posted both totals on any given line:

SP1: 32, 182
SP2: 31, 181.2
SP3: 31, 170.1
SP4: 21, 121
SP5: 15, 76
SP6: 9, 47.1

The Mets, who had above-average SP last year, received 139 starts and 778.1 IP from their top six starters. That’s a handful of more starts and around 90 more innings than what we would expect from the average team.

How close can Manaea, Peterson and Senga come to the 534 IP that the 2024 club received from Manaea, Jose Quintana and Luis Severino? A betting man might expect fewer innings from the top three and more innings from the next three. But that doesn’t take into account how healthy the Mets’ top three starters were last year. It’s optimistic to expect 94 starts again from the top three.

Undoubtedly, the reason people who want David Stearns to add another starter is to compete with last year’s GS and IP totals. But just like there’s no guarantee that Manaea, Peterson and Senga will stay healthy, there’s no guarantee that whoever the team would import would do likewise. The prize starter of last year’s free agent class, 25-year-old Yoshinobu Yamamoto, made 18 starts and threw 90 IP. Blake Snell made 20 starts and tossed 104 IP. Jordan Montgomery as a starter had 21 games and 104 innings.

Jack Flaherty’s 162 IP last year were the second-most of his MLB career, bested only by the 196.1 IP he threw in 2019. He’s far from a slam dunk to give Manaea/Quintana/Severino level of innings next year.

For better or worse, Stearns and the Mets will be riding on the starters currently on the team for at least the first half of the season. He won last year’s calculated risks/gambles that Manaea would continue his effectiveness with the sweeper and that Severino could stay healthy for the first time in years. Now the gambles/calculated risks is that Holmes can successfully transition to a starter and that Montas can build on the improvement he showed in Milwaukee after the trade.

Some people don’t like those choices, especially combined with the unknown of how Senga will pitch this season. And that’s okay – it’s far from a fool-proof plan. But just like I had to eat crow with Severino staying healthy all year in 2024, it’s among the possibilities that others will have to acknowledge how they were wrong about Stearns’ pitching plans in 2025.