It was a lost season for New York Mets pitcher Sean Manaea, but it ended with a hopeful note.
It turns out the lefty starter might not need surgery to remove “loose bodies” from his pitching elbow, SNY's Andy Martino reports.
“He finished the season with the elbow feeling very good,” Martino explained via X. “Decision about removal will come after he physically cools down from the season.”
By most measures, Manaea had the worst season of his career in 2025, his second year with the Mets. It started with an oblique injury that he suffered in Spring Training, delaying his debut until June.
When he finally took the mound, he had a 5.62 ERA in 15 appearances, including 12 starts and a late demotion to the bullpen. To be fair, his 4.39 FIP to go with a career-high strikeout rate (28.5%) and his lowest walk rate since 2020 (4.6%) suggests he was a little unlucky, but at some point, you are what your numbers say you are. The numbers also say opponents were hitting more line drives off Manaea than at any point in his career (26.6% line drive rate) with a bloated home run rate of 4.9%.
After the Mets' 4-0 season-ending loss to the Miami Marlins on Sunday, Manaea didn't mince words, calling his season “a complete failure.”
But as Tim Britton and Will Sammon of The Athletic wrote the morning after, the Mets may not have set him up for success to begin with.
“But multiple people within the Mets feel they failed Manaea and [Kodai] Senga,” they wrote. “The regret that stands out for July isn’t so much what the Mets did and didn’t acquire at the trade deadline. It’s the decision three weeks earlier to bring both Manaea and Senga back before the All-Star break.”
“The Mets made that unorthodox decision, preferring not to wait the extra week like most teams do around the break, because of the precarious state of their rotation at the time. They had just survived a turn with both Justin Hagenman and Brandon Waddell in the mix. And they wanted the best read possible on Senga and Manaea ahead of the trade deadline.”
Manaea is under contract through 2027, so it's likely he will be back in Flushing next year. It remains to be seen whether he will crack the starting rotation.
