Even in the loss, there was a significant win for Sean Manaea and the Mets.
The veteran southpaw, who had missed the first three-and-a-half months of the 2025 season due to a strained oblique, an elbow injury, and the complicated rehab that followed, made his season debut on Sunday in New York’s first-half finale in Kansas City against the Royals.
“It feels really good to be back and to be healthy,” Manaea said
Piggybacking off starter Clay Holmes, who went five innings, Manaea went 3.1 innings, struck out seven, and allowed five hits with no walks. He was clean into the ninth, which included a stretch of five straight strikeouts between the sixth and seventh innings, but allowed the game-winning, walk-off single to Nick Loftin in the Mets’ 3-2 loss.
“Typical Sean Manaea,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said when assessing his return. “Fastball playing at the top of the zone and getting swings and misses. The sweeper was really good. We saw that the whole year [last season], and it was good to see it again today.”
His return provides an insurmountable boost to a rotation that had been hanging on by a thread in recent weeks.
The Mets had gone considerable stretches without ace Kodai Senga, who returned on Friday after missing a month with a calf strain. Tylor Megill and Paul Blackburn are also on the shelf, while Griffin Canning was lost for the season when he ruptured his Achilles.
Frankie Montas had also missed the first two-plus months of the season with a lat issue before making his Mets debut last month.
Now, for the first time since a limited postseason run last year, New York has its top two starters in Senga and Manaea for the second half of the season, in which they are entrenched in a battle for first-place in the National League East with the Philadelphia Phillies.
Manaea was one of the Mets’ MVPs last season, particularly in their second-half playoff push. In his first year in Queens, he pitched a career-high 181.2 innings and went 12-6 with a 3.47 ERA and 184 strikeouts.
