Mets facing early stress test to David Stearns' ideology that worked so well last year
Mets starting pitcher Griffin Canning throws against the Houston Astros during the first inning of a game Saturday in Houston. Credit: AP/David J. Phillip
HOUSTON
The Mets showed up for Opening Weekend carrying the second-highest payroll in baseball, at $325 million, but an entire rotation with a sticker price of $38.8 million.
That’s five starters for less than one season of Zack Wheeler, who earns $42 million this year, or Jacob deGrom’s $40 million paycheck for 2025. How ironic that two former Mets, developed by the Mets, are the sport’s highest-paid pitchers by annual salary (two-way unicorn Shohei Ohtani, with his heavily deferred contract, belongs in his own category).
This wasn’t the original plan, of course. It just so happens that two of the Mets’ most expensive winter acquisitions — Sean Manaea (three years, $75M) and Frankie Montas (two years, $34M) — currently reside on the injured list after going down early in spring training. Both were lost in February, followed by Paul Blackburn’s knee issue popping up on the eve of Opening Day, which immediately put pressure on the depth strategy followed by president of baseball operations David Stearns.
“We’re fortunate that we believe these dings to our starting rotation are pretty temporary,” Stearns said, “and we’re really not overly concerned about any of them.”
What the Mets are facing now, and likely will endure into May — at a minimum — is a stress test for the Stearns ideology that worked so successfully en route to the NLCS last October. Can there be strength in numbers this time around?
After converted Yankees closer Clay Holmes and the enigmatic Tylor Megill, who’s constantly straddling Syracuse and Flushing, the next man up for Saturday night’s finale was Griffin Canning, the kind of low-cost ($4.25 million), high-upside arm that potentially could maximize his value under the Mets’ pitching supervision, much like last season’s group of walk-year wonders.
The early returns on Canning were promising as the Mets stumbled to a 2-1 loss to Houston, primarily because of their malfunctioning offense. Canning flashed more velocity than he did in the Grapefruit League, with a fastball that maxed out at 96, and his slider — which he threw a whopping 54% of the time — generated seven of his 11 swings and misses on the night.
The bad news? Canning’s two biggest misses with the slider essentially cost him the game. In the fifth inning, he left one up to Jeremy Pena, who deposited it into the Crawford Boxes in leftfield for a 1-0 Astros lead. The next one came with two outs in the sixth, when manager Carlos Mendoza chose to stick with Canning against the fearsome Yordan Alvarez.
The plan was to play it safe with a man on first, maybe get Alvarez to chase a slider with two strikes. But Canning didn’t bury the pitch, instead scraping the bottom of the zone, where Alvarez could drop the barrel and smoke an RBI double to centerfield.
“It’s unfortunate to end it that way,” Canning said. “Felt it was the right pitch there. Just didn’t execute it.”
Otherwise, Canning looks like he could be a W for Stearns’ rotation-building philosophy, and now the Mets have last year’s breakout star, David Peterson, for Monday in Miami, followed by Kodai Senga on Tuesday. They basically flipped the rotation’s order to stay righthanded against the Astros and give Senga extra ramp-up for his 2025 debut after a winter of kid-glove treatment.
Aside from Canning, this Houston visit was a mixed bag for the rotation. The Mets never imagined using Holmes as their Opening Day starter, and even he acknowledged the transition from the bullpen could be bumpy after Thursday’s uneven performance. As for Megill, if the rotation were fully healthy, he likely would’ve been with Triple-A Syracuse on Friday instead of on the mound at Daikin Park. But Megill continued to show promise with a solid five-inning performance (the bullpen had to rescue him after he failed to get an out in the sixth).
This season-opening trio hardly was the group we envisioned for a Mets team that finished two wins short of the World Series last season. Still, that’s where Mendoza & Co. find themselves, needing to navigate this early flurry of injuries.
“We got the guys in there,” Mendoza said. “They’re going to give us a chance to win a baseball game day-in and day-out, so we feel good about that.”
It’s possible the biggest impact arms for the Mets this season aren’t even on the major-league roster — yet. Waiting for Manaea, Montas and Blackburn to get healthy is Plan A as the calendar flips to April. That’s how Stearns designed the rotation during the winter. But after what the Mets witnessed from a pair of top pitching prospects in spring training — Blade Tidwell and Brandon Sproat — those two are definitely on the radar.
Mets officials were impressed by Tidwell’s debut for Triple-A Syracuse on Friday, when he struck out five and allowed one run in five innings at Worcester. Sproat will make his 2025 debut in Sunday’s series finale. Both flashed triple-digit fastballs in the Grapefruit League, and despite struggling in their first seasons in Triple-A last year, the Mets believe the progress they showed in camp could make them fast movers if the need arrives at the major-league level.
It’s not as if the Mets have a ton of healthy options early on. While development is the immediate priority for Tidwell and Sproat, there is an urgency to win at Citi Field, and being in Syracuse puts both a phone call away if the rotation springs any more leaks. In the meantime, the Mets can only stay the course — and trust in Stearns’ process.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
