Sean Manaea has turned into a NY Mets pumpkin, here’s a glass slipper that can fit

A satisfying July where he pitched to a 3.77 ERA in 5 starts for the New York Mets had many of us thinking that maybe the 2024 version of Sean Manaea was on his way. He stumbled in August and his first start in September had the obvious problem of trying to go beyond 5 innings.

His Cinderella story looks more Grimm than Disney. An ERA of 4.54 on the year as a start is only a half-run better than what he did as a reliever. Under contract for another year on a contract that’ll be difficult to move, finding a glass slipper that’ll fit is a tall order.

How can it work? The only way through might be to revisit a strategy from 2025. Tighten your core and stretch out your back. Jonah Tong might need to hop on.

The Mets may need to revisit a piggyback for Sean Manaea to get the most out of him

Jonah Tong pitched again on Monday and other than one bad inning, he was pretty good. Throughout this season in the minors, Tong has been kind of the pitcher he was in his brief time with the Mets last year. There are days when he has it and those when he doesn’t.

The lefty-righty matching of Manaea and Tong works well on paper. Manaea has shown he’s good enough to get through 18 batters without too much damage. It’s the dreaded third time through when the wheels fall off. Batters are hitting .333 with a 1.098 OPS against him when seeing him for a third time. It’s at .246 and .731 then .231 and .693 the first and second time against Manaea. For anywhere between 4 and 5 innings, he is dependable.

What about Tong? It’s not so clear to know with him. He has had early blowups as well as later ones in the minors this year. He has the tendency to let games get out of hand. This makes it a little more difficult to trust him in any plan which involves another pitcher’s workload. You don’t want Tong to blow a strong 4 innings out of Manaea nor do you want him to implode early and waste a long relief appearance. In 2025, this was necessary to get the staff through certain games late in the season. As a plan to begin the year, it’s questionable.

Making Manaea a multi-inning reliever has benefits beyond getting paired with Tong. Christian Scott has had his issues getting deep into games. A two-inning punch from Manaea after him doesn’t sound so lousy. Manaea may have the inferior ERA as a reliever this year but that was made up of mostly two bad appearances, one against the Chicago Cubs in April and another versus the Washington Nationals at the end of the month. He had a 3.75 ERA in May working exclusively as a reliever. Largely because David Peterson and Kodai Senga weren’t cutting it as starters, the Mets shifted him back.

A more scripted or at least defined bullpen role for Manaea is something they never seemed to fully implement for him in 2026. Of course, the season will more likely begin with him in competition for a starting rotation role. The Mets got unusually lucky with health this season as none of their projected starting pitchers went down with an injury before the year began.

So, what should the Mets plan for Sean Manaea?

Outside of shopping him around, which they should still do, the plan should be for Manaea to battle alongside Zac Thornton and Jonah Tong for a rotation spot and an understanding he’s teeing off from the same spot as those two. It doesn’t matter how much money he makes. Playing time must be performance based.

If able to get into the season unscathed, Manaea fits well as the solution to the lack of length they could receive from others. Tying him specifically to Scott and/or Tong works, maybe more ideally with the latter because the Mets may always be able to flip the duo.

It’s not always a fun game to play with your pitching staff, but that may only be because when the Mets have done it in the past two seasons there was some desperation. In some ways they still are with this plan. However, the rest of the roster around them can always more favorably match. Their problem in 2026 was they had too many starting pitchers fail and lacked flexibility in the bullpen as a result.

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