Sean

Manaea

Manaea authored a brilliant performance on Monday night at Busch Stadium, scattering six hits over seven scoreless frames, while also notching his third double-digit strikeout performance of the year. The 32-year-old southpaw has been magnificent this season in his Mets debut, compiling a sparkling 3.30 ERA, 1.18 WHIP and 122/46 K/BB ratio across 120 innings (22 starts). He’ll aim to keep the momentum going on Saturday when he faces the Mariners in a road matchup.

Things couldn’t have gone much better for Manaea, who allowed just three baserunners on the night. Manaea didn’t allow an extra-base hit in this one, and his 11 strikeouts marked a new high for him on the year. It was a solid month for Manaea, who went 2-1 in July with a 3.34 ERA while striking out 25 batters and walking 11. Now sitting at 7-4 on the year, he’ll look to pick up his eighth win in his next start, which is scheduled for Sunday against the Angels.

It’s a shame Manaea couldn’t hang on for one more out as the Mets ran away with this victory. He got through the first two batters before walking Juan Soto, hitting Aaron Judge, and walking Austin Wells. Adam Ottavino came in to retire the right-handed Anthony Volpe and Manaea lost the opportunity for a win. This was a very regular Manaea start otherwise with spotty command and very little hard contact.

Manaea didn’t do much differently in this poor start than any of his previous good ones, the Marlins just put the ball in play and kept finding holes. Most of their hits came on objectively good pitches as Manae lived on the edges as he often does. That is, until Jake Burger parked a belt-high two-seamer over the center-field fence. This was the first time Manaea allowed more than three earned runs since June 8th.

Manaea, who holds a stellar 2.02 ERA and 36/15 K/BB ratio across 35 2/3 innings over his last six starts since June 14, will kick off the second half with an extremely favorable matchup against the floundering Marlins at pitcher-friendly loanDepot park. It’ll be Jose Quintana, Luis Severino and rookie Christian Scott following him over the next few days.

It would be Luis Severino’s turn on Friday, but the Mets are apparently sneaking in some extra rest for him. If everything goes as planned, they’ll soon utilize a six-man rotation following Kodai Senga’s return.

The Mets spotted Manaea a big lead early and he responded by artfully drifting all the way through the seventh inning. He’s talked about his sweeper having more depth of late and it was working on Friday, forcing five swings-and-misses. This marked the third straight start for Manaea where he completed at least six innings. He hasn’t done that since June of 2022.

Manaea had a rocky start to this game going to multiple three-ball counts in the first inning and throwing 40 pitches total over the first two. Then, he locked in and faced just two batters over the minimum over the rest of his outing. The Pirates had zero left-handed batters in their lineup against the southpaw Manaea and he responded with a heavy diet of sinkers and sweepers. He seemed to make an adjustment with his sweeper too: it was down two ticks and had significantly more depth than usual. He even said, “it felt more like a curveball today” when talking about the pitch after the game. It all worked and Manaea has allowed just one earned run across his last three starts.

Manaea struck out five and walked two on the day to lower his ERA to 3.67. While the surface-level stats are good, Manaea got just nine whiffs on 47 swings for a 19 percent whiff rate and 27 percent CSW. He filled up the strike zone with his sinker but struggled to throw his other pitches in the zone with each of them getting under a 50 percent zone rate. You can’t argue the results, but there doesn’t seem to be much in the arsenal that suggests Manaea is a much different pitcher this season; however, he could be a solid streamer against the Pirates this weekend.

This was almost the night Manaea would finally complete six innings for the first time since May 13th. Almost, that is, until a massive thunderstorm held this game up for almost two hours when he had thrown 77 pitches through five innings. Otherwise, Manaea was his usual self: missing some bats, avoiding hard contact, and dishing out plenty of walks.