The range of possible outcomes for the rotation is wide.
With the Mets’ 2025 season set to get underway in a couple of days, the team’s rotation presents the greatest uncertainty of the various segments of the team’s roster. There have been encouraging developments over the past few weeks in Port St. Lucie, two of the pitchers who were slated to begin the year in the rotation will instead be placed on the injured list, and the pitching depth that has been touted all winter will be put to an early test.
The current rotation
As spring training came to a close, the Mets’ rotation for the first five games became clear. Beginning with their Opening Day game in Houston on Thursday, the Mets will deploy their starting pitchers as follows.
- Clay Holmes
- Tylor Megill
- Griffin Canning
- David Peterson
- Kodai Senga
Paul Blackburn, who is out of options, will begin the season in the bullpen. The order of the rotation might look a bit unconventional, as a healthy Senga still seems like the best bet to be the ace of the staff. And based on 2024 performance, Peterson has a good case for being the team’s second-best starting pitcher entering this season. But the sequence of these pitchers doesn’t matter much once the season gets underway.
Holmes was excellent in his Grapefruit League appearances and has successfully stretched out enough that he should be ready to handle a starting pitcher’s workload. If he sticks as an effective or above-average starter, it’ll be a major win for the Mets.
And if Holmes has to prove he’s rotation material for the long haul, so do Megill and Canning. They’ve shown some promising signs, with Megill putting up a strong showing down the stretch last year and Canning flashing some impressive stuff in his spring outings this year.
It’s reasonable to view this as a rotation with a top-of-the-rotation arm, a couple of mid-rotation guys, and two back-end starters. We’ll see how these five pitchers—or six if Blackburn gets starts—end up doing. In the event that everyone’s healthy, which is always a big if for any pitching staff, it might be obvious which pitchers need to get bumped to make room for the guys returning from injury.
Injuries
That brings us to Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas, both of whom went down to significant-but-not-catastrophic injuries during spring training. Manaea’s timeline should have him back much sooner than Montas, as the lefty could be back with the Mets by the end of April.
Montas, meanwhile, could be shut down until the middle of April based on the timeline the Mets gave for his injury in mid-February. Shortly after that estimate, Montas himself said that he thought he’d start working his way back slightly sooner, but it wouldn’t be surprising if his return happens in late May or later.
Christian Scott, who made his major league debut last year before needing Tommy John surgery, is not slated to pitch this season as he recovers.
Manaea broke out in a big way in the second half of the 2024 season, and his return should give the Mets’ rotation a significant boost. Even if he doesn’t quite live up to the numbers he posted after making changes to his arm slot, he could be one of the top two or three options in the team’s rotation.
Montas is a bit more of a wild card, as his numbers in recent seasons—and issues staying healthy enough to pitch—are a cause for concern. The Mets and their pitching lab have shown an aptitude for getting the best out of pitchers, though, and given the contract to which they signed Montas, they obviously see something they like.
Additional depth
A mix of prospects and recent additions are set to begin the season in the upper minors, and it’s incredibly likely that injuries or performance will create opportunities for a few of those pitchers.
On the prospect side of things, Brandon Sproat leads the way—literally on our list of the team’s top 25 prospects—in Syracuse. He’s not alone there, though, even if there’s a gap between his status as a prospect and those of his teammates. Blade Tidwell and Dom Hamel struggled in the time they spent in Triple-A last year, but Tidwell looked very good in Binghamton earlier last season and flashed some very good stuff in spring training this year. And it’s worth noting that Joander Suarez, who pitched effectively for Binghamton for most of last season, finished the year in Syracuse and could get innings there again this year.
The Mets added Justin Hagenman, José Ureña, and Brandon Waddell over the offseason, and assuming all three stick around, they could show that they’re ready for major league innings with good performances in Syracuse.
Looking at Binghamton, two of the Mets’ best pitching prospects should start the year there and figure to have at least some shot at shooting up the depth chart: Jonah Tong and Nolan McLean. Those two ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, on our top 25 list for this season. There are plenty of other pitchers they’d need to leapfrog, but it’s not impossible that either one of them could get a big league debut later in the season.