Is the Mets pitching staff a ticking time bomb?

The Mets finish off their West Coast road trip with an 8-2 win. Plus, how much longer can the club's pitching staff keep this up?

Rich MacLeod

Apr 25, 2024

What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️

The Mets halted their three-game skid with a blowout victory to close out their West Coast road trip, beating the Giants 8-2 (box)
SS Francisco Lindor went 4-for-5 with two home runs (3, 4), four RBI and two runs scored
LHP Sean Manaea allowed just one run with six strikeouts but only lasted 4.2 innings
RF Tyrone Taylor went 2-for-5 with a home run (2), double, three RBI and two runs scored
2B Jeff McNeil went 2-for-4 with a double and an RBI in the victory
RHP Reed Garrett earned his fourth win of the year in relief, striking out four more batters while allowing one run in two innings
New York completes their West Coast road trip with a 3-3 record

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Roster Moves 🗞️

LHP Kolton Ingram claimed off waivers by the Texas Rangers

Down on the Farm 🌾

DH J.D. Martínez (Triple-A): 2-for-4, 2B, 2 RBI, run scored
RHP Dom Hamel (No. 14 prospect, Triple-A): 5.1 IP, H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 8 K (win)
C Kevin Parada (No. 9 prospect, Double-A): 1-for-4, HR (2), 3 RBI

Today’s Game 🗓

The Mets (13-11) have an off day on Thursday. New York will be back in action on Friday, when they play the first of a three-game set against the Cardinals at Citi Field.

How much longer can the Mets pitching staff keep this up? ✍️

As the Mets enjoy an off day and head back home after a solid .500 road trip on the West Coast, it felt like a good time to zoom out a bit and look at the larger picture of this team thus far.

24 games in, New York has fought hard to give themselves a season to look forward to after the most infamous 0-5 start that we’ve seen around these parts in quite some time. They’ve been up, they’ve been down and in a lot of ways, they’ve performed even better than a lot of people would have expected – especially when it comes to their pitching staff.

The one question that remains, however, is how long can the pitching staff keep this success going without something changing?

Entering this season, the starting rotation was the largest question mark on this team by far. Without Kodai Senga to start the season, a starting five of José Quintana, Luis Severino, Adrian Houser, Sean Manaea and Tylor Megill (who has since been replaced by José Buttó) was definitely worthy of quite a few question marks by the skeptics.

Buy and large so far this season, that group has mostly exceeded expectations… but there have been cracks.

Even in their best starts, these pitchers simply are not giving the Mets enough innings right now. And while our expectations for how deep starting pitchers go into games need to adjust as the sport slowly changes year-after-year, all you have to do is compare them to the rest of the league to see how far behind they still are.

Nearly a full month into the season, New York has only gotten five quality starts over their first 24 games, which ranks 25th in all of baseball. They have yet to have a starting pitcher throw a single pitch in the 7th inning this year.

Entering Wednesday afternoon’s game against the Giants – which the Mets won despite only getting 4.2 innings from Manaea – New York ranked 26th out of 30 teams in the league with 114.2 innings pitched from their starters. For those wondering, that is an average of 4.99 innings per start by this rotation.

A large part of that struggle to complete innings has been the bases on balls as Mets starters rank as the worst team in all of baseball with 4.79 walks per nine innings.

For some time, the Mets were mostly able to work around those issues as the rotation was providing quality performances more often than not. The issues have begun to catch up with them, however, as the club has seen Houser and Quintana get beat up in their most recent starts, along with more short stints by Severino and Manaea. Just one week ago, Mets starters had a 3.39 ERA which would rank as the fifth best mark in all of baseball today. Now, New York’s starting rotation has fallen to 19th in baseball with a 4.16 ERA.

You also have to wonder the effect that so many innings is going to have on a Mets bullpen that has been largely stellar to start this season. Because New York’s rotation has pitched the fifth-least innings in the league, it means that they have had to rely on their bullpen extremely heavily over this first month of the season. And as we’ve learned in season’s past, that can only last so long.

While there have been wonderful stories in this ‘pen thus far, the Reed Garrett’s of the world can come crashing back down to earth if they get run into the ground in an early season. We’ve already seen Brooks Raley, the club’s number one left-hander, land on the injured list due to elbow inflammation, and Drew Smith has begun to hit a slight rough patch after a great start himself.

At the end of the day, things are not going to be sustainable for the Mets pitching staff if this rotation can’t start limiting all of these extra pitches due to walks and work deeper into games. You hope that Kodai Senga will be able to help with that, but he isn’t even eligible to return to the club for another month and will be coming off of an injury and a 2023 season that saw him pitch more frequently than he ever had in Japan.

Christian Scott, New York’s fifth-ranked prospect, is the likeliest next man up for this team, but still has work to do in the minor leagues with limiting the home run ball and working deeper into games himself. One thing Scott really has going for him, however, is that despite his elite strikeout stuff he does not hand out free passes, and has just issued just four walks in four starts this season. Another encouraging sign? Scott did pitch 6.1 innings on Tuesday night, the longest start of his short Triple-A career.

Still, while there may be some reinforcements in the early summer with Scott and Senga, the Mets are going to need the pitchers that make up the rest of the rotation to make the adjustments to work through this. They’re going to struggle to survive otherwise.

Around the League 🚩

The Dodgers tallied 20 hits during their 11-2 blowout victory over the Nationals
Orioles SS Gunnar Henderson reached base safely five times, drove in three runs and was a triple shy of the cycle in Baltimore’s 6-5 win vs the Angels
Yankees outfielders Aaron Judge and Juan Soto both homered in the club’s 8-3 win over the A’s
Braves CF Michael Harris II delivered a walk-off double in the 10th inning to complete a sweep over the division rival Marlins
The White Sox lost to the Twins, 6-3, for their sixth straight loss to give them a hideous 3-21 record on the season