The importance of starting pitching health
In Sunday’s article, it was pointed out what a deficit the Mets had compared to the Phillies in terms of starts received from their top six pitchers. In case you forgot, or missed it completely, the Phillies received 152 starts from the six pitchers with the most starts on the club. By comparison, the Mets received just 125. And by the end of the year, the Mets’ top six pitchers had two long out with season-ending injuries, another in the minors and one who was held out from starting Game 162 because he had been terrible down the stretch. Yikes.
As the end of the first paragraph shows, raw numbers don’t tell the full story. Still, we can get a pretty solid picture from raw numbers. With 152 starts, we know the Phillies had good health in their rotation. With 125 starts, we can imagine that the Mets had injury problems and/or quality issues with their top pitchers. With that thought in mind, let’s see how the Mets have done the past five seasons in starts received from their top six, as well as the team’s overall record:
2021: 122 starts, 77-85
2022: 141 starts, 101-61
2023: 130 starts, 75-87
2024: 139 starts, 89-73
2025: 125 starts, 83-79
It’s hard not to notice that the two seasons where the Mets received the most starts from their top six SP were also the season where they had the best records and made the playoffs. Now, let’s look at the other three years and see what we can find by looking deeper into those seasons. The numbers after the year are the starts made by the top six SP:
2021 – 33, 29, 18, 15, 15, 12
This was the year where Jacob deGrom was going to challenge Bob Gibson’s 1968, as he had a 1.08 ERA after 15 starts. But deGrom missed the rest of the season. Carlos Carrasco missed the first 60% of the year and was horrible when he returned. Things were so bad with the starters that the club traded for Rich Hill, figuring that getting 4-5 innings from him was an improvement. And it was. Finally, this was the year where Taijuan Walker was great in the first half and then imploded after the All-Star break.
2023 – 29, 25, 21, 20, 19, 16
Kodai Senga was tremendous and the rest left a lot to be desired. After Senga, the best performance came from Justin Verlander, who made just 16 starts before he was traded. Max Scherzer wasn’t as good as Verlander but was the next-best starter among the top six. He was dealt after 19 starts. Tylor Megill, David Peterson and Carrasco combined for 66 starts and a 5.39 ERA. The Mets waved the white flag when they dealt Scherzer and Verlander (and others) at the trade deadline. The decision to become sellers was reasonable. But no team among the Wild Card contenders played great after the deadline. The Mets went 2-10 immediately following the sell-off. Yet they played .500 ball over the remaining 42 games. Would they have had that same miserable stretch if they kept their old starters? It’s impossible to know. What we can say for sure is that they’ve dealt two of the three prospects they received in return for the old guys and there are questions if the remaining prospect can make enough contact to be successful in the majors.
2025 – 31, 30, 22, 16, 14, 12
The Mets got off to a great start, thanks to strong efforts by Senga, Peterson and Griffin Canning. But Senga and Canning got injured in June. Canning never returned and Senga was nowhere close to the dominating pitcher he had been before the IL stint. Sean Manaea was out longer than expected and when he did return, he was awful. Peterson was great thru 21 starts and then hit a wall. He was so bad down the stretch that despite being his turn to pitch, the manager skipped him on the final day of the season with the playoffs on the line and everyone thought it was the right decision.
Perhaps the biggest thing that these three seasons show us is the importance of having the guys you expect to be your stars to remain healthy. How different would 2021 have looked if deGrom made 32 starts? Or if they kept Scherzer and Verlander in 2023 and they made 25 or so starts each? And what if last year Senga didn’t have an injury derail his season and if Manaea had a healthy year like 2024?
Taking the raw numbers of starts for our 30 pitchers the past five seasons and organizing them from most to fewest, we get the following breakdown, with numbers rounded:
SP1 – 32
SP2 – 29
SP3 – 21
SP4 – 19
SP5 – 15
SP6 – 10
If this is how it works out, we hope that it falls this way:
32 – Freddy Peralta
29 – Nolan McLean
21 – Senga
19 – Manaea
15 – Peterson
10 – Clay Holmes
And not this way:
32 – Peterson
29 – Holmes
21 – Christian Scott
19 – Peralta
15 – Jonah Tong
10 – McLean
So, pour a drink and toast to good health for our starters. And that can begin with no major injuries in Spring Training. If you recall, the Mets lost Paul Blackburn, Manaea and Frankie Montas to injuries before the 2025 season started. And they were without Scott, too, who was sidelined for the year with TJ surgery.
I will say, that I'd love to see Tong and Scott force their way into the rotation based on performance rather than it just being an injury. I'd be fine with those two pitchers getting a lot of starts because they broke out.
It’s always good to keep in mind that health plays a major role in success and it may be the largest single factor. The counting stats show the ability to show up but they don’t tell the full picture. How often do we learn, after a period of poor performance, that the player had an injury? Brian’s article earlier this week about Lindor showed how poorly he did while playing through his injury. I hope our Mets do their stretching, take their vitamins, stay hydrated, and eat their balanced breakfast every day!