New Mets starter Frankie Montas heard only good things about club from former teammates
Sean Manaea, left, and Frankie Montas were teammates with Oakland in 2021. Credit: Getty Images/Michael Zagaris
Before David Stearns and the Mets were able to make their pitch to Frankie Montas, the newest member of their 2025 rotation, others made it for them.
It began months ago when the Mets visited Montas and the Reds during the second week of the season. Montas caught up with Luis Severino, his former Yankees teammate and sometimes rehab-mate.
Still quite new to the Mets, Severino raved about them — how much they already had helped him physically and mentally, how they helped him stay on the field, changes that yielded his best season in a half-decade.
More recently, on the brink of testing free agency again, Montas talked to Sean Manaea, whom he called “one of my best friends.” They played together on the Athletics and a still-young Manaea helped show Montas the way as he established himself as a starter. Now Manaea, too, spoke glowingly about the Mets and how they help pitchers make the most of their talent.
Montas, the Mets hope, is the next such success, a short-term reclamation project in the way Severino and Manaea were in 2024.
“That was one of the things that really caught my attention,” Montas said Friday afternoon during a video news conference after signing a two-year, $34 million contract. “[Manaea and Severino] have nothing but good things to say about the way they do things in there, all the resources they have to take your game to the next level.
“I got to see a little bit of it when I was in New York these couple of days, the way they do stuff, the way they prepare guys, the way they help with your recovery — all the resources they have to improve your game.”
Needing multiple starting pitchers this offseason, the Mets deemed Montas a worthwhile addition because he “has flashed some of the best stuff in the game” throughout his career, Stearns, the president of baseball operations, said in a news release this week.
Montas, who will turn 32 on March 21, had a 4.84 ERA and 1.37 WHIP in 2024, although his numbers improved somewhat after the Reds traded him to Milwaukee for the final two months.
Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook helped Montas make tweaks to his arm angle as well as his slider and splitter, Montas said. But the most impactful change was a mental one.
“The biggest adjustment that I made was probably just trusting my arm,” said Montas, who missed virtually the entire 2023 season with the Yankees because of major shoulder surgery. “It kind of took me a couple of months to trust my arm and myself and stop telling myself like, hey, you don’t want to get hurt.
“Telling my arm, hey, whatever you had in there is fixed. Just go out there and let it eat. I think that’s when you see the increase in velo. My arm angle was higher, all that, because I wasn’t afraid to throw.
“For the last two months when I was in Milwaukee, I was definitely getting back to my old self. When I say my old self, just throwing the ball and trusting my stuff and feeling good. Finally having a healthy arm, not having to worry about recovery.
“I’m trying to get back to just going out there and blowing people’s doors [off], to be honest. I want to go back to [being] that guy. I think the Mets definitely are going to help me to do that.”
Montas wants Manaea to be there with him. Severino recently signed with the Athletics, but Manaea remains a free agent.
“I know how hard he has worked to come back and be himself and show the world how good of a pitcher he is. He’s one of the guys who I absolutely look up to,” Montas said. “I wish him nothing but the best. I hope he can sign with us. He would be a guy who will help this team get to the next level and get to the promised land for sure.”
Notes & quotes: The Mets acquired minor-league righthander Sean Harney from the Rays for international bonus pool space. Harney, 26, was an eighth-round draft pick in 2022 and reached Double-A last season, working a lot as a reliever. The Mets didn’t give any actual money to the Rays but rather traded from their bonus-pool allotment — permission to spend money on international amateurs, basically. With that bonus pool space set to expire next weekend, the Mets gave up functionally nothing . . . The Mets signed righthander Grant Hartwig and outfielders Alex Ramirez and Edward Olivares to minor-league contracts with invitations to major league spring training. The Mets recently cut Hartwig and Ramirez from the 40-man roster.
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
