Sean Manaea gave the Mets exactly the kind of start they’ve been chasing, and he did it with a performance that looked a lot more like the pitcher they remember.
On Thursday, Manaea worked seven innings in the Mets’ 7-3 win over the Royals, helping seal the series. He opened the game by allowing a home run to Lane Thomas on the first pitch, but settled in from there and gave up just five more hits while striking out six the rest of the way. It was his best outing of the season, and the longest start by a Mets pitcher this year.
For Manaea, it also felt like a release. After a rough spring training, he began 2026 as a low-leverage long reliever, then moved into a bulk role behind an opener before finally getting another shot in the rotation in mid-June. That’s a long way from the dominant version of Manaea the Mets rode in the second half of 2024, when he helped carry them to an NLCS run.
“The year did not start out the way he wanted,” Mets interim manager Andy Green said postgame. “I obviously was not around to watch him walk through that chapter, but I heard he attacked his training relentlessly.
He accepted his role. Was a great teammate.
All this does not surprise me from my short time with him.”
Thursday’s outing also fit into a larger rebound arc. Manaea’s 2025 season was derailed by an injured list stint that lasted until mid-July, and he finished that year with a 5.64 ERA as the Mets slipped out of contention. This season has been uneven too, but his last six appearances have all come as starts, and he’s posted a 3.94 ERA over that stretch.
“It’s the culmination of a lot of hard work and people believing in me, me believing in myself,” Manaea said. “It feels really, really cool to do something like that again, and just proud of all the work that we have.”
The numbers behind the turnaround matter for the Mets, too. Manaea’s 3.47 ERA in 2024 earned him a three-year $75 million extension, and while he’s sitting at a 4.56 ERA this season, his recent run has put him back in the rotation picture. He is the club’s highest-paid pitcher and the only left-hander under contract for 2027.
That matters even more with the Mets sitting at 40-54 and 12 games back of a playoff spot. The focus is already shifting toward next season, when they have just two other starters - Nolan McLean and Christian Scott - under contract. There is also an extension for injured starter Clay Holmes on the table according to The Athletic’s Will Sammon.
For now, though, the Mets can at least point to one thing they’ve been missing: a starter who can go deep and take pressure off everyone else.
“We need length out of the rotation,” Green said. “We’re desperate for that.
That’s huge for everybody. Outings like that set you up to win tomorrow’s baseball game, and that’s what we’ve been missing to some degree is having multiple of those outings in a week, so that’s huge for us going into tomorrow to be able to rest the vast majority of our pen arms.”
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