Signing Frankie Montas to a one-year deal worth $17 million felt like an overpay for a guy who has struggled to stay on the field. Even in a market where pitching comes at a high cost, it felt like a reach for the New York Mets to help set the market. He isn’t coming off of an extremely good season. Adding him so early on in the offseason was overly ambitious, but David Stearns earned the benefit of any doubts with how well he crafted last year’s roster. Maybe Montas could, in fact, be this year’s Luis Severino.
Maybe he still can be but an injury in the preseason before a game was even played will cost him at least the first few weeks of the season. A mid-May but more likely June return is what we’re staring at. It’s a bad situation made worse by the details of Montas’ contract.
This wasn’t just a one-year deal worth $17 million which in itself feels a little unsatisfying. To ensure he’d sign, the Mets gave him a player option for 2026 that, if allowed, he’d probably opt into today.
The Mets have another player option trending toward backfiring on them
Of course, just because Montas is missing some time to begin 2025 doesn’t mean he can’t come back midseason and look like a stud. If he’s tremendous, having him around at any rate in 2026 is a win. But let’s not get our hopes up too high before he finishes his rehab and actually throws a pitch.
The player option turned this deal with Montas into less of a replication of what Severino got last year and more into a clone of the Sean Manaea contract. Manaea had several questions when the Mets signed him. Health wasn’t a main concern. He was just pitching much more poorly than he did early on in his career. Montas has a little bit of both.
From the start, the Montas contract felt different from even the Manaea and Severino deals. Previously compared to the Omar Narvaez contract, his injury confirms it. Narvaez never should have been anything more than a one year player. The same applies to Montas. The team has multiple starting pitchers under team control for next season along with several younger arms we could see enter the rotation. Montas might be handcuffing them on the roster as well as financially.
As endless as the wealth of Steve Cohen may be, paying into the tax at 110% is a bad plan and not something a prideful man like he or even a smart baseball mind such as David Stearns would like to have on their blueprints for the season. They can survive it, but they’ll do everything they can to avoid paying the penalty.