New York Mets' 2025 season rests with rotation, for better or worse

The New York Mets have a lot of promise in their pitching staff, but need another breakout year to keep pace in the NL East.

New York Mets pitcher Clay Holmes (35) pitches against the Houston Astros in the third inning at Clover Park. | Jim Rassol-Imagn Images

The New York Mets have a formidable lineup after the addition of free agent outfielder Juan Soto, but it is the success or failure of the team's rotation that will ultimately decide if the season ends with a World Series championship.

Last season's rotation was a success despite the injuries to Kodai Senga that kept him out of all but one regular season game. Luis Severino and Sean Manaea both had breakout years, combining for 23 wins and 263 innings pitched.

But there lies the problem: neither pitcher will be in the rotation on Opening Day. Severino departed New York for Sacramento, signing for three years and $67 million with the Athletics. The Mets will receive a compensatory pick for his services but undoubtedly would have rather had the pitcher in 2025. While Manaea returned to New York on a three-year, $75 million contract, he is starting the season on the injured list with an oblique injury suffered in spring training.

The team has other options, of course - Senga is back and healthy after last season's issues, while free agent signing Clay Holmes has converted from the bullpen to starting and will get the ball on Opening Day. Despite the returns of David Peterson and Tylor Megill to this year's rotation, there are still questions about the pitching staff that will either make or break the team's World Series aspirations.

What everything going right looks like for the Mets

There are two main goals for Mets starters in 2025, and they are to provide both quality and quantity.

'Everything going right' from a quality perspective is counting on Manaea and Senga to duplicate their best seasons, as well as Clay Holmes breaking out as the potential ace that he is thought to be.

Manaea's best season of his career came last year, with the lefty making 32 starts and pitching to both a career-low 3.47 ERA and a career-high 181.2 innings. His big breakthrough came after a July 25th contest against the division-rival Atlanta Braves, one where Manaea watched eventual NL Cy Young winner Chris Sale carve up New York across 7.1 innings with only two hits and one walk allowed while striking out nine.

Manaea promptly copied Sale's sidearm delivery and immediately saw results, pitching to a 3.09 ERA in his final twelve starts of the season. Throwing 69% strikes, he struck out 83 across that span and the team won 10 of his 12 starts.

Holmes, meanwhile, has added new pitches to his arsenal this offseason and worked on his conditioning in an effort to make it through an entire season. "Everything going right" for Holmes means a full compliment of starts from the righthander with ace-caliber stuff.

Read more: Mets' Clay Holmes flashes ace-caliber 'stuff' versus Astros in spring opener

If Holmes is able to ascend into the upper tiers of MLB starting pitchers, combined with Senga returning to his 2023 form and Manaea continuing to dominate, the Mets have three postseason starters on roughly the same level as the Braves and Philadelphia Phillies, who serve as their chief competition in the NL East.

Clay Holmes is ready for his #OpeningDay start after striking out 8 over 5.1 scoreless innings!

He finishes up his #SpringTraining with:

0.93 ERA
0.78 WHIP
23 K pic.twitter.com/foSndZvDEH

— MLB (@MLB) March 21, 2025

New York's depth can also help mitigate some of the potential workload concerns for those top three starters. Depth starter David Peterson threw a combined 144.2 innings between the minors and majors last season, while Tylor Megill added 126.2 combined innings. Both pitchers were quality contributors, as well, with Peterson having an ERA of 2.90 in New York and Megill putting up a 4.04 mark.

Offseason addition Griffin Canning, who joined New York in large part because of their pitching lab and development of their arms, has made improvements this spring that may push him into being able to provide both quantity and quality for the Mets this season. Despite a career ERA of 4.78 with the Los Angeles Angels, there is confidence that his new approach and arsenal tweaks can allow him to be an efficient mid-innings arm at a backend starter price.

Griffin Canning put an exclamation point on an excellent spring today, locking up his rotation spot with six strikeouts over 4.1 innings against the Marlins!

Pitching backward with his two best pitches—the slider and changeup—has done wonders for him! pic.twitter.com/bRDHBp798g

— Pitch Profiler (@pitchprofiler) March 23, 2025

Finally, top prospect Brandon Sproat has a history of putting up quality innings. Pitching 106.1 frames in his draft year at the University of Florida and then 116.1 innings across three minor league levels in 2024, team officials are high on his ability to come up and provide meaningful innings coverage behind the main rotation this season.

What everything going wrong looks like for the Mets

But there is a flip side to the cases for each of these players, and it is that New York is counting on another season of several of their players outperforming expectations.

Initial projections from FanGraphs have the Mets rotation as putting up only the 16th-best ERA (4.02) and 20th-best WAR total (11.3) this season, largely because the ZiPS projection system is not a big believer in many of the changes from these players.

The workload issue looms large here; no Mets starter is projected to qualify for the ERA title by throwing 162 innings. Manaea and Senga are both in the 150 innings range, while Peterson and Holmes are in the 140s. Sproat's lack of usage hurts the team here as well, with the youngster projected for only 16 innings as the 9th option for starts in 2025.

Several of last year's breakout performers are also projected to take steps back with their run prevention in 2025, with Manaea having an ERA over 4.15 and the trio of Senga, Peterson, and Holmes all being over 3.50.

Nonetheless, President of Baseball Operations David Stearns had a well-deserved reputation for "building" pitching back in Milwaukee during his time running the Brewers; his teams were perpetually overperforming their preseason projections from both their rotations and their bullpens.

Has that magic come with him to New York? It sure appeared like it did last year, and if it truly is transferrable, the Mets have all of the tools needed to not only win the National League East in 2025, but compete for a World Series championship.