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· Brisbane Times
In a year that hasn’t gone his way, Mets left-hander Sean Manaea struck out nine batters over six innings in a 6-3 win over the Texas Rangers on Tuesday as the veteran looks to end the 2026 campaign with momentum before entering a crucial offseason in his career.
“He really battled,” Mets manager Andy Green said of the starter. “First inning punched the side and looked amazing. And then kinda hit a little bit of a funk there, couple walks, couple hit batters. Locked it back in for the last two.”
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And those last two innings were crucial as he delivered back-to-back 1-2-3 frames, including getting over the sixth-inning bugaboo with three straight groundouts, which set off a bit of a dugout celebration.
“We all were talking about the sixth inning coming off the field,” Green said, breaking into a big smile. “So I said something to him immediately, and he got pretty fired up to just get past it. [The sixth inning had] become a story, and now it won’t be a story because he got through six.”
“It just felt great to do that,” Manaea said with a broad smile. “I think everybody in the dugout kinda realized that, too. To be able to share that with the boys, it was really cool, really special.”
The left-hander's fastball may not be what it was in the past (averaging 91.6 mph on the night, which is at his average for the season), but it was effective with 14 whiffs on 29 swings (48 percent) in his second-to-last start of the year.
“Just attack guys, don’t do anything too crazy,” Manaea said of his night. “Just get ahead, throw sweepers, a changeup every once in a while, and then threw some cutters for strikes. Just kept it simple.”
While the season has been far from ideal for the lefty - a 4.67 ERA and 1.30 WHIP in 144.2 innings over 32 games (18 starts) – a bounce-back season next year is in his hands.
“It’s crazy to say somebody who’s [34 years old] has all the potential to get back to who he’s been,” Green said, mentioning what Chris Sale has been able to do with Atlanta at an advanced age after struggling for a few years in Boston. “Sean, if he takes advantage of this offseason and really gets after it, and he’s back at the 94, 95 [mph] range, his stuff really, really plays.”
Manaea’s velocity dip was a big storyline coming out of spring training, something he downplayed, and while he has been effective at times without hitting the highs he did in years past, the skipper stated the obvious about throwing harder: “It certainly helps.”
“It makes everything easier,” Green said. “There’s days when you get on the bump, and you might not have it over the course of a season. You can’t use that as a crutch; you still have to compete and win and figure out a way to get guys out.
“But the best version of him has always been one that carries more velocity than he carried at the start of this season. I think there’s more ceiling there.”
And with Nolan McLean, Christian Scott, ZacThornton, and Jonah Tong all hungry to pencil their names in the Mets’ plans for next year, Manaea will have to work to “climb the mountain” this offseason, Green said.
“We’ve had a conversation about that very thing,” the manager said about Manaea working back into the fold. “He can be in the rotation, he can be a fixture, he can be a guy; he has been a guy on a team that went to the NLCS. He’s been a guy that we relied on heavily.
“I would love for that to be the case again. He knows full well that he’s gotta pitch and pitch well. As we get to ‘27, nothing is gonna be handed to him.”
Green later put the stakes more bluntly about the coming months ahead of Manaea, who is under contract with the Mets through the 2027 campaign: “I think he needs to push for [higher velocity] this offseason. I think he needs to approach this offseason like he’s trying to continue pitching for the next four years.”