Sean Manaea Shines in Long-Awaited Return

Many Mets fans thought that once Sean Manaea was re-signed this past offseason, his first inning pitched this season would be the first inning of the year as the Opening Day starter. An oblique injury and multiple setbacks later, his debut came pitching the final innings of the first half instead. The result was a loss in the scorebook, but many more positives than negatives can be taken away from his outing.

Coming out of the bullpen isn’t completely foreign to Manaea, who had previously done it 30 times in his career. Sunday’s starter, Clay Holmes, made a living as a reliever before this year, though, so it was somewhat puzzling that the Mets made the decision to piggyback Manaea. Take the fact that the Mets have also been wary of Holmes’s innings total this season, the first-half finale could’ve served as an easy opportunity to skip a start for the righty.

Nevertheless, the Mets held firm to their plan, and you can’t say it was ineffective. After pitching Edwin Díaz for two innings on Saturday, hoping that Holmes and Manaea could split Sunday’s nine, they did just that, giving up just three runs as a duo. Unfortunately, the Mets’ stagnant offense only brought home two, and New York dropped its first-half finale for the tenth straight season.

Manaea gave up just a single run in his 3 1/3 innings, on a softly hit walk-off single by Nick Loftin. Manaea struck out an impressive seven, throwing his four-seam fastball about two-thirds of the time, and his patented sweeper the other third, save for a change-up to Bobby Witt Jr.

Any concerns of a velocity drop coming off injury were diminished, at least for one afternoon. Manaea averaged 93 mph on his fastball, up 0.8 mph from 2024. More impressively, he threw his sweeper 80.3 mph on average, an increase of 2.6 mph. With a whiff rate of 42 percent against the Royals, Manaea held steady his ability to miss bats with his lowered arm slot, despite the lack of a high-90s fastball.

“It was really good to be back,” Manaea said postgame, “Fastball and slider felt really good.”

The Mets are now set up for the first time in 2025 with the top five members of the starting rotation all healthy at the same time. With the trade deadline just 17 days away, the team now will have a clearer ability to assess if starting pitching will be on the wish list, along with the more obvious needs of a late-inning reliever and a bat to help the top-heavy lineup.

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