Sean Manaea’s 2024 season with the Mets has become a tough puzzle, and the cleanest answer may be the one that looks most unconventional: a piggyback setup.
There was a stretch in July that made it easy to believe the left-hander had found something. He put up a 3.77 ERA in five starts for the New York Mets, and for a moment it looked like the version of Manaea the club wanted might be arriving.
Then August hit. His first start in September brought the same old issue into focus, especially the challenge of pushing past five innings.
That’s where the numbers start to tell the story. Manaea owns a 4.54 ERA as a starter this year, which is only a half-run better than what he produced as a reliever. He is also under contract for another year on a deal that will be difficult to move, so the Mets are left trying to find a role that actually fits.
One possibility is to dust off a 2025 idea and pair him with Jonah Tong.
Tong was on the mound again Monday, and aside from one rough inning, he was solid. That’s been the pattern for him in the minors this season, much like the brief look he gave the Mets last year. Some outings are there, some aren’t.
On paper, the Manaea-Tong combination makes sense. Manaea has shown he can navigate 18 batters without much damage, but the third trip through the order has been where things break down.
Opponents are hitting .333 with a 1.098 OPS against him the third time around. The first two times through, the damage is much lighter: .246 and .731 the first time, .231 and .693 the second.
That lines up with a pitcher who can give you four or five dependable innings.
Tong is the bigger question. He has had early blowups and late ones in the minors this year, and he has shown a knack for letting games spiral.
That makes any piggyback plan harder to trust. You do not want Tong to ruin a strong four innings from Manaea, and you also do not want him to unravel early and waste a long-relief outing.
The Mets needed that sort of arrangement in 2025 at times, but as a season-opening blueprint, it comes with real risk.
There’s another path too: using Manaea as a multi-inning reliever. That could help even outside of any Tong pairing.
Christian Scott has struggled to get deep into games, and a two-inning bridge from Manaea after him would give the Mets something useful. His relief ERA this year looks worse, but that was shaped mostly by two bad outings, one against the Chicago Cubs in April and another against the Washington Nationals at the end of that month.
In May, while working strictly out of the bullpen, he posted a 3.75 ERA. The Mets shifted him back largely because David Peterson and Kodai Senga were not doing enough as starters.
That kind of defined bullpen role never really got fully put in place for Manaea in 2026. More likely, he opens the year competing for a spot in the rotation. The Mets were unusually healthy this season, and none of their projected starters went down before the year began.
So what should the plan be?
They should still listen on him, but the main idea ought to be simple: let Manaea compete with Zac Thornton and Jonah Tong for a rotation job, and make it clear that no one is entitled to innings. Salary should not matter. Performance should.
If he stays healthy, Manaea still makes sense as a way to cover the lack of length the Mets could get from other arms. Pairing him with Scott or Tong is workable, and Tong may be the cleaner fit because the Mets could always flip the duo later.
It is not a comfortable way to build a staff, but the Mets have already been forced into this kind of thinking. In 2026, too many starters failed and the bullpen did not have the flexibility to absorb it.
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