In the Mets’ loss to the Nationals yesterday, several of the team’s most glaring deficiencies were on full display, but David Peterson and Sean Manaea, the team’s pair of struggling left-handed pitchers, stood out the most. Neither pitcher looks competitive at the moment, and while the team’s lineup might be its downfall anyway, it sure would be nice to see the Mets putting capable pitchers out there on a daily basis.
Across seven appearances, two of which came out of the bullpen, Peterson has thrown
30.1 innings with a 6.53 ERA. Manaea has thrown 22.0 innings with a 6.55 ERA. Combined, they’ve thrown 19.4 percent of the Mets’ innings so far, making their combined contribution to the team’s struggles fairly significant. And the underlying metrics on their Statcast pages don’t look good, even as metrics like FIP and DRA suggest that both pitchers have been better than their ERAs would suggest.
If there’s any hope remaining in the Mets’ season, the team can’t just wait to see if both of these pitchers end up finding better results. But with both pitchers no longer having options thanks to their considerable major league service time, there are only two ways to get them off the active roster: placing them on the injured list, which the team did with Kodai Senga this week, or designating them for assignment and exposing them to waivers. In the latter scenario, they’d have the option of declining an outright assignment to Syracuse even if they were to clear.
Manaea has the remainder of this season and all of next season remaining on his three-year deal with the Mets that pays him $25 million per year. Should the team go the DFA route and lose him, it would be eating even more money than it is on the failed Frankie Montas contract that paid $34 million over the course of last season and this season. Peterson wouldn’t require eating nearly as much money, as he’s earning $8.1 million this year before he’s eligible for free agency following the season.
If the team goes either route to get either pitcher off the active roster, there’s also the issue of replacing them. With Manaea, that’s really not too much of a concern, as he’s essentially been used as a mop-up man, and his diminished stuff has gotten exposed in a big way lately. The Mets might feel like they need to have at least one long reliever in their bullpen, but any potentially useful reliever—Austin Warren is the one who comes to mind at the moment—would be an upgrade.
And if a keeping a long reliever in the mix is a priority, that might mean Tobias Myers is kind of stuck in that role, even if it would be awfully tempting to move him into Peterson’s rotation spot as a full-on starting pitcher rather than having him open for Peterson like he did a couple of times recently.
As for pitching prospects in the upper minors, Jonah Tong doesn’t look quite ready to get another major league look just yet. His strikeout rate remains phenomenal thus far in Triple-A, but he’s still working on walk and home run issues and currently has a 5.68 ERA for Syracuse. Jack Wenninger, who’s slated to start one of Syracuse’s games in a doubleheader today, has a much shinier 2.16 ERA for Syracuse so far this year. But his walk rate is an issue, and his last start saw him lose some velocity in the third inning while totally losing the strike zone. At minimum, you’d think he needs a strong outing today to get considered for a call-up in the near future.
Whatever the case, though, it seems like the Mets really should try doing something. The team’s biggest roster moves thus far have all involved the injured list. At the time of this writing, the organization continues to support manager Carlos Mendoza, even as the Red Sox and Phillies have fired their managers for similarly disappointing starts to the 2026 season.
Exercising patience beats reacting in a knee-jerk fashion, but staying the course with a team that collectively has a broken GPS seems like a bad plan.
