This Week in Mets: One turn through, how does the Mets rotation look? (2024)

“Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly possible once more.”
—“The Writing Life,” Annie Dillard

The New York Mets have reached their first off-day of spring training, the first time to exhale after playing 10 Grapefruit League games. They’ve now seen each member of their likely Opening Day rotation at least once, with the group trying to step up in the absence of Kodai Senga.

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With Senga likely to miss at least the first month of the season, those other starters could feel some pressure to fill in that gap — to go deeper into games than otherwise, to pitch more on regular rest, to amp up and try to be the ace.

“There could be a little bit of pressure because he’s really good,” Luis Severino said. “But there are a lot of good guys who can go out here and help.”

But pitching coach Jeremy Hefner wants them to avoid feeling that way.

“They’re on their own journey, and they need to pitch their game,” Hefner said. “That’s why it’s a team sport.”

With Senga out, the Mets don’t have to go to a six-man rotation during a two-week stretch without an off-day in mid-April. They still might mix in an extra starter there to help out the rest of the rotation.

Two spring innings don’t necessarily represent a meaningful sample for analysis. But let’s examine how the Mets’ likely starting five have looked and felt to this point.

José Quintana has experience as an Opening Day starter and might get the nod again: “It would be an honor.” (Jim Rassol / USA Today)

José Quintana

Quintana appears slated to be New York’s Opening Day starter. He’s made an Opening Day start before, in 2017 with the Chicago White Sox. In that game, he allowed three homers and six runs in a loss to Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers.

Luis Severino

Severino is lined up right behind Quintana. He looked sharp, for the most part, in his spring debut Friday. He touched 98 mph on his final pitch and showed good ride on his fastball early.

“The pitches, the shapes, everything was what I expected. I was very happy,” Severino said.

"I have some in the tank… just waiting for the perfect time to do it."
– Luis Severino on his 98 MPH last pitch pic.twitter.com/c1or7rTLYd
— SNY (@SNYtv) March 1, 2024

Severino’s mechanics got a little out of whack in his second inning, and his four-seam fastball lost some of that ride, Hefner said. That’s not a concern at this point in spring when the primary focus is building up.

Severino’s other emphases on Friday were consistency in his mechanics — so as not to tip his breaking pitches — and the sinker he added late in 2023. On Friday, that sinker was moving more down than in to right-handed hitters, and Severino is working on getting more of that arm-side run to make the pitch effective.

“The hitters are too good,” Severino joked. “I need to figure out ways to get the hitters out.”

“Now it’s just compounding good days,” Hefner said. “He’s a hard worker. You not only pull for those guys, but it’s what fires you up and makes you want to come into work.”

Sean Manaea

One key for Manaea’s spring will be acclimating to his evolving pitch mix and deciding on the best way to deploy it all. He’s brought in a cutter, renovated his changeup and continued working on the sweeper he introduced last season with San Francisco.

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“The arsenal’s complete, at this point,” Hefner said. “Now it’s just optimizing it and refining. … My goal for him is by the end of spring training we have a really good plan of how he’s going to deploy these weapons and we’re going to go to war with it.”

Manaea threw all those pitches in his first spring outing Saturday. He got hit around a little in the first inning by the Miami Marlins before recovering in the second and third innings. The changeup, in particular, looked good. Manaea’s grip on the changeup is similar to last year but he’s aiming to get a little different movement on it.

That pitch and Manaea’s cutter loom as critical weapons for Manaea against right-handed hitters; last year, opposing righties posted a .774 OPS against him compared to .570 for lefties.

“It was the first time I’ve used all these pitches in an actual game,” Manaea said. “From an overall feel standpoint, everything felt really good. I was attacking guys and not falling behind in the count.”

Adrian Houser

Houser’s second start on Sunday did not go as smoothly as the first one had. Facing a righty-heavy Houston lineup without any regulars, Houser allowed a bunch of hard contact in 1 2/3 innings.

That didn’t much bother Houser, who was using the afternoon to familiarize himself with a tinkered grip on his changeup and a mechanical tweak to his slider. Houser had been unhappy with his slider in his first start, and he’s been working on a more direct path with his arm to keep the slider from getting loopy on him. Sunday was better, but he still couldn’t land it in the strike zone the way he wanted to. (Just five of his 13 sliders Sunday were strikes, and he didn’t get any swing-and-misses on it.)

“It feels like it’s coming out a little harder and a little sharper,” Houser said of the slider. “It’s just trying to make it track a little bit better and we’ll be right where we want to be with it.”

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Tylor Megill

The Mets came into spring talking excitedly about the work Megill did in the winter, and it’s paid off to this point in spring. In five innings, Megill has allowed one run and has struck out seven without issuing a walk. Remember, last spring he walked 13 in 17 innings.

“I couldn’t be prouder of Tylor and his offseason and how he took ownership of it,” Hefner said. “It goes back to his mentality toward the end of the season going into the offseason — a real clear view of who he is, what he’s trying to do, what his pitches do, how to use his pitches. For me, that’s empowering.”

Tylor Megill strikes out Jose Altuve and Yordan Álvarez 😤 pic.twitter.com/l5foZIE7YS
— SNY (@SNYtv) March 1, 2024

Getting ahead of hitters as he did in his second outing Thursday permits Megill to use his whole mix, including his new splitter. He threw a handful of them against Houston, including one to strike out Victor Caratini.

Throwing that splitter in games, Megill said, is very different than practicing it in the bullpen. He wants his arm action to be the same on his splitter as it is on his fastball, and there’s a tendency to want to slow the arm down to ensure the proper break during games.

“It’s just going out there and getting more feel in-game reps,” Megill said.

Inside baseball

Given that I wrote about the pitching lab this week, it makes sense to point out that it’s not just a pitching lab. Sixty feet, six inches away from the pitcher’s mound in the lab is a batter’s box outfitted with the same kind of force plates, capable of doing the same kind of analysis on hitters as they do for pitchers.

The Mets have sent hitters through their lab as well, with the same goal of collecting data in hopes of improving their analysis down the line. Don’t expect quite as much immediate feedback as there was for pitchers; hitting mechanics haven’t been broken down quite as granularly as pitching mechanics across the sport, and there’s a little less baseline knowledge to go off right now.

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“I don’t want to say pitching is further ahead of hitting, but there’s more things that are known and it’s a little more applicable instantly,” hitting coach Jeremy Barnes said. “It’s a matter of trying to figure out why something is working the way it is. It’s not necessarily good or bad.

“It’s: Can we tweak this? Is this a movement thing we can fix? Is this just how this guy moves? And then it’s trying to systematically work through: Can we improve X, Y and Z?

“It’s another tool we have in our toolbelt to hopefully help a player or two perform better in the game.”

Injury updates

Jeff McNeil has been shut down from swinging a bat since Thursday because of soreness in his left biceps. McNeil has been able to field, throw and run the last few days, and he’ll be reassessed on Tuesday.
Joey Wendle was slowed earlier in the week by soreness in his right shoulder. Wendle appeared in a minor-league game on Sunday at DH and is expected to be in a Grapefruit League game by the end of the week.
Reliever Kyle Crick (calf strain) is out of his walking boot and making progress toward throwing. Crick, who suffered the injury two weeks before the opening of camp, thinks he should be game-ready in another three to four weeks. Crick’s goal remains breaking camp on a roster in the organization, though he may have to stay back in Port St. Lucie, Fla., to build up beyond the end of camp.

Last week in Mets

Notes from inside the Mets’ pitching lab
The Mets have stayed in touch with starting pitchers on the free-agent market. Should they make a move?
An early sign of Francisco Alvarez’s increased responsibility
No reliever yields stolen bases like Adam Ottavino. He thinks he’s found a new solution
A thorough look at the Mets’ bullpen depth
TWIM: How does David Stearns evaluate spring training?

Trivia time

FanGraphs recently compiled spring training statistics dating to 2006. In that time, which Met has hit the most spring training home runs?

HINT: He hits left-handed.

I’ll leave the answer in the comments.

(Top photo of Adrian Houser: Jim Rassol / USA Today)

Tim Britton is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the New York Mets. He has covered Major League Baseball since 2009 and the Mets since 2018. Prior to joining The Athletic, he spent seven seasons on the Red Sox beat for the Providence Journal. He has also contributed to Baseball Prospectus, NBC Sports Boston, MLB.com and Yahoo Sports. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBritton