When we woke up on Saturday, we held our breaths hoping for the best possible news about Kodai Senga. He exited his start on Friday against the Atlanta Braves only for us to find out early in the afternoon the New York Mets missing ace from 2024 is now expected to be out for the rest of the regular season.
The Mets will need to move forward and prioritize adding a starting pitcher before Tuesday’s trade deadline. No longer are back-end arms the most important. The Mets now need to consider leveling up what they’re willing to seek.
Divided into three categories, here is one emergency transplant, one tourniquet, and one Band-Aid the Mets should have under consideration.
Emergency Transplant: Trade for Jack Flaherty
Although it’s teammate Tarik Skubal who’d completely change the Mets, the much more reasonably priced rental Jack Flaherty would be pretty sweet to add to the rotation. Among all of the free agent pitchers who settled for one-year contracts in the offseason, one we should be most upset about the Mets not nabbing is Jack Flaherty. There wasn’t much of a hint of him being on their radar. Coming off of a weak finish after getting dealt to the Baltimore Orioles, he was a more youthful option for teams looking for short-term health.
The Detroit Tigers have benefited greatly from Flaherty whose $14 million is in the same ballpark as AAVs of multiple Mets starting pitchers. A pure rental but perhaps a candidate to return next season, he has gone 7-5 with a 2.95 ERA in his 18 starts for Detroit.
Flaherty has impressed with a career-high strikeout rate of 11.2 per 9 while limiting walks to only 1.6 per 9. For a Mets pitching staff that has issued more free passes than a theme park trying to cover-up how dangerous their waterslides are by welcoming residents fee free, he’d be a clichéd breath of fresh air.
The problem with this emergency transplant to the Mets roster is he’ll have a whole lot of suitors and should cost quite a bit more than some of the other available starting pitchers.