New York Mets re-sign Sean Manaea

This one had felt tentatively coming for a while now, as the kind of deal Sean Manaea could get to return to the New York Mets was likely always going to be higher than another club would be willing to spend, given the addition of draft pick compensation.

So the 32-year-old lefty, who was quite good with the Mets in 2024, gets a significant deal back:

OVERNIGHT: Manaea to Mets, 75M, 3 years pending physical

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— Jon Heyman (@jonheyman.bsky.social) 23 December 2024 at 06.34

It’s a deal that makes sense, I suppose, in the overcooked starting pitcher market, and Manaea’s 2024 season certainly measured up to that kind of value. I guess I’m just thinking about how Manaea’s ERA in the four years prior to 2024 was 9% worse than the league average of ERA-. What guy do you get for his age 33-35 seasons at $25 million a pop?

But the Mets have plenty of money thanks to team owner Steve Cohen’s largesse, and with a monstrous commitment to Juan Soto, they have no excuse not to fill out the rotation as best they can. Getting Manaea back when he was successful as a Met makes sense. Good for Manaea’s reps to squeeze.

We’ll see if this squeezes more of the pitching market before Christmas, or during the partial week between Christmas and New Years. We know the Cubs are looking, and while they wouldn’t have gone with Manaea, you never know when there might have been overlapping suitors with other guys of interest to the Cubs.

(How good does Jameson Taillon’s two-year, $36 million look at this pitcher right now? Taillon is the same age as Manaea and in roughly the same performance bracket—but Taillon was better in 2024 and also better in the four-year window before that’s not comparing the pitchers, mind you, just thinking about what Taillon’s free agency would look like right now him.)