Nobody seems in any rush to sign NY Mets free agent who showed there’s fuel left

At the end of every season, we can sort free agents like clothing during spring cleaning. There are the keepers like Pete Alonso. There’s a maybe pile usually reserved for a reliever like Ryne Stanek. And then there are those we’re definitely donating. The New York Mets had a couple of those.

Someone who probably fell somewhere between the maybe and definitely donating was Jose Quintana. Most of us were delighted to see the Mets sign him ahead of the 2023 season. A strong performance in a short sample down the stretch after coming back from injury suggested he’d be a solid member of the rotation in 2024. 

Through several beatings dished out to him but also multiple ones he delivered, the final bell rang with Quintana punch drunk but standing. He was an even 10-10 with a 3.75 ERA with 31 starts and 170.1 innings. Ask most fans if they would have accepted this when the season began, they’d take the pointy end of the pen, prick their finger, and sign in blood.

Jose Quintana was amazing in the final weeks of the 2024 season but no one seems eager to sign him

Because he got knocked around so hard against the Los Angeles Dodgers in his one and only NLCS start, it’s easy to overlook how well he did in his two previous outings. Quintana tossed 6 shutout frames against the Milwaukee Brewers. He allowed an unearned run in his 5 innings versus the Philadelphia Phillies. It continued a trend he began in late August. Quintana caught fire, putting together a final month of September where he allowed only 2 earned runs in 25 innings to give himself a 0.72 ERA.

This wasn’t just a one-month wonder season for Quintana. As pedestrian as the overall totals were, he was effective for longer stretches than he wasn’t. A terrible May with a 7.20 ERA and then an August with a 5.63 ERA were his weak points. He had a 3.48 ERA in March/April, a 3.38 ERA in June, a 2.05 ERA in July, and finally the unhittable month of September to preview two very good postseason starts.

Teams know better than to fully buy into Quintana being a rotation savior. He’ll turn 36 later this month, putting him in the category of pitchers looking for one-year deals. He’s not a reclamation project like Walker Buehler, though. Quintana is a talented veteran lefty who got the job done last year but with warning signs.

His home run rate doubled, his walks went up, and his strikeouts remained low where it has been for several years as he has turned into more of a pitching artist to get by. Since his 2022 renaissance, Quintana hasn’t had a stint with any ball club where the strikeout total was better than 7.8 per 9. He needs contact to get outs. This isn’t the most appealing trait for teams.

Martin Perez signed a one-year deal worth $5 million to join the Chicago White Sox. A weaker version of Quintana in many ways, it does help some sort of a base of what Quintana could expect to earn. He should get more. However, with the pool of free agent starters pretty dried up at this point and no widely reported rumors of interest, he looks to be nothing more than a Plan-B, C, or D for anyone out there still looking to add to the rotation.