Mets to sign Sean Manaea: Under-the-radar free-agent pitcher gets two years, $28 million, per report

Left-handed starter Sean Manaea has agreed to a free-agent contract with the New York Mets, The New York Post’s Jon Heyman reports. Heyman puts the terms at $28 million over two years with an opt-out after the 2024 season. 

Manaea, 31, spent last season with the Giants. In 10 starts and 17 relief appearances for San Francisco, he pitched to a 4.44 ERA and a 3.05 K/BB ratio. For his career, Manaea owns an ERA+ of 100 across parts of eight MLB seasons. 

While Manaea didn’t crack our list of the top-50 free agents coming into the offseason, he does have the potential to qualify as a “pleasant surprise” for the Mets. As CBS Sports’ Mike Axisa recently noted, Manaea added velocity to his fastball this past season after spending the winter training for just that at Driveline. As well, Manaea debuted a sweeper-style slider in late May and came to rely more and more upon it as the season went on. Once he became more comfortable with his new breaking ball, he transitioned from a fastball-changeup approach to a fastball-slider approach with the changeup as his third offering. Speaking of all that, Axisa writes: 

“And thanks to that new pitch mix, Manaea went from a 5.49 ERA in the first half to a 3.43 ERA in the second half, and he struck out 25.7% of the batters he faced. That’s comfortably above the 22.7% league average and matched Manaea’s career best in a full season. He also set a new career best with a 36.4% hard-hit rate allowed. That’s below the 39.2% league average.”

The Mets and new lead decision-maker David Stearns are of course betting that the second-half version of Manaea is sustainable moving forward. If that’s indeed the case, then the Mets may have found themselves a useful rotation addition at a very modest price.