The Mets have agreed to a three-year, $75MM contract with left-hander Sean Manaea, in response to a report from Jeff Passan of ESPN. As famous by Jon Heyman of the New York Put up, the deal is pending a bodily.
Manaea, 33 in February, is now poised to signal with the Mets for the second consecutive offseason. Within the first week of January earlier this yr, the southpaw landed with New York on a two-year deal that assured him $28MM and included an opt-out following the 2024 marketing campaign. It was the second winter in a row that noticed Manaea signal a two-year cope with an decide out after he signed with the Giants on a $25MM assure through the 2022-23 offseason.
That first contract in San Francisco was inked on the heels of a brutal 2022 season in San Diego that noticed Manaea wrestle to a 4.96 ERA (76 ERA+) with a 4.53 FIP in 158 innings of labor. His time with the Giants went higher than that; whereas his 4.44 ERA (94 ERA+) was nonetheless under common however he nonetheless entered the offseason boasting a lot stronger peripherals (3.91 FIP, 3.83 SIERA) and a stable run of begins down the stretch that September the place he posted a 2.25 ERA and three.21 FIP.
The Mets clearly believed that portended higher days in Manaea’s future, and it actually did. The lefty emerged as a high quality mid-rotation possibility for New York in 2024 as he posted a 3.47 ERA (114 ERA+) with a 3.83 FIP in a career-high 181 2/3 innings of labor throughout 32 begins. With a profession yr within the books forward of his third consecutive journey to free company, it appeared as if Manaea was searching for longer-term safety. The Mets opted to tag the lefty with the Qualifying Supply on the outset of the winter, but it surely was hardly a shock when Manaea rejected that one-year, $21.05MM provide and entered the open market anyway. In spite of everything, the lefty got here into the winter ranked by MLBTR because the #10 free agent obtainable on our annual High 50 MLB Free Brokers checklist and the #5 starter behind solely Corbin Burnes, Blake Snell, Max Fried, and Jack Flaherty.
Early within the offseason, the truth that Manaea was encumbered by the QO led various golf equipment that doubtless would’ve had curiosity in a mid-rotation veteran like him to show in direction of different choices. The Angels, Dodgers, and Cubs turned within the early days of the offseason to unencumbered free brokers like Yusei Kikuchi, Snell, and Matthew Boyd reasonably than delve into the markets of certified free brokers like Manaea, Nick Pivetta, or Luis Severino.
That’s not a consideration for the Mets, nonetheless, as reuniting with Manaea solely prices the hypothetical draft decide they’d’ve acquired had he signed elsewhere. That’s allowed Manaea to land a wholesome assure regardless of a reasonably small checklist of groups related to him this winter: his three-year, $75MM deal exceeds the three-year, $60MM assure MLBTR predicted for him on the outset of the offseason however that’s hardly a shock provided that just about each beginning pitcher’s contract has exceeded expectations.
For New York, a reunion with Manaea serves as a possible capstone on the membership’s efforts to reconstruct its beginning rotation after he, Severino, and Jose Quintana all hit the open market final month. The membership added Frankie Montas and Clay Holmes to their rotation combine earlier this winter, however that duo affords little stability given Montas’s struggles in 2025 and the truth that Holmes final began a recreation within the majors again in 2018. Manaea offers that much-needed stability whereas slotting in direction of the entrance of a rotation that additionally contains gifted right-hander Kodai Senga and younger southpaw David Peterson. With depth choices like Paul Blackburn, Tylor Megill, and Griffin Canning all within the wings to assist cowl for potential accidents, it might hardly be a shock if Manaea’s return wrapped up the group’s rotation additions for the winter.
Extra to return…
