Sean Manaea won’t have the same NY Mets ending as his former Athletics teammate

Back for another round with the New York Mets on a three-year deal, Sean Manaea won’t have the same tearful conclusion to his tenure in Queens as one of his former Oakland Athletics teammates. An excellent regular season plus some highlights in the playoffs including a victory in the NLCS in his first start gave fans plenty of reasons to already want him back.

Unfortunately, the final pages of this rental from the free agent library included a coffee stain, some black highlighter, and profanities in the middle of words circled. In bright blue bold, circled were the last four letters of the seventh planet from the sun.

Manaea threw up a stinker against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Lasting just 2+ innings and surrendering 5 earned runs, he exited in the third after a single, a home run, and a walk only for yet another Mets playoff game to get out of hand. He wasn’t jeered the same way as Chris Bassitt was back in 2022 when something similar happened.

Sean Manaea will get his chance to have a chaser to clean out his last Mets start

I’m not sure anyone ever quite appreciated Bassitt enough in his one and only year with the Mets. A 15-9 record and 3.42 ERA for the 2022 Mets, he was a steady rotation presence and equally as important, a healthy one. He made 30 starts and logged 181.2 innings. It was the most of his career until the following season when he went to 200 with the Toronto Blue Jays.

It’s not always every frame of the film we remember most. In game 159, Bassitt was called upon to start against the Atlanta Braves with the NL East on the line. A shabby 2.2 innings and 4 earned runs across the board aided in the Mets falling into a Wild Card spot. Of course, Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer didn’t do any better.

The Mets still got into the playoffs. In the Wild Card series, Bassitt again came up too small for what the team needed. A 4-inning and 3 earned run performance versus the San Diego Padres was the last we saw of him with the Mets. There wasn’t much Bassitt could have done for the Mets that night. A Pete Alonso single to lead off the fifth inning was the only hit they mustered.

The Manaea and Bassitt final outings of their debut seasons with the Mets each ended the journey. Bassitt wasn’t able to rectify what went wrong late and chase off any ill-will. Manaea will get his.