Evenings like Tuesday’s Game 3 of the NLDS between the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies were not always a given for Sean Manaea.
The veteran southpaw took a two-year deal with the Mets last winter after being demoted to the San Francisco Giants’ bullpen in 2023 before working his way back out to the starting rotation in the final weeks of the season.
But after a year of experimentation and tweaks — he honed his sweeper and changed his mechanics twice — Manaea completed the best full season of his career, going a career-high 181.2 innings with a career-best 3.47 ERA to go with 184 strikeouts and a 1.084 WHIP.
“The ultimate goal for me is 200 innings and making all my starts and 200 strikeouts, and all these cool goals,” Manaea said. “At the end of the day, it’s just the north star; it’s something I’m striving toward. Even though I didn’t accomplish some of those things, it’s definitely my proudest season I’ve ever had, just from a health standpoint, everything I was able to accomplish. It’s been a very fun season for me, personally. I was very proud of what I was able to do.”
He was nothing short of stellar throughout the second half of the season. In 17 starts from June 26 to Sept. 21, he went 8-2 with a 2.70 ERA — one of the headliners of a rag-tag rotation featuring Luis Severino, Jose Quintana, and David Peterson that joined forces to be one of MLB’s best units down the stretch.
“We all just fed off each other,” Manaea said. “We all had the same goal in mind of making the postseason and on a selfish level, too, just wanting to be great. If [Severino] does well, I want to do well, [Peterson] wants to do well, [Quintana] wants to do well. It’s the team mentality of where you just want to do it for the boys.”
After yielding two runs on six hits in five innings in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series against the Milwaukee Brewers, Manaea now gets the ball for Game 3 of the NLDS against the Phillies, which is the Mets’ first NLDS home game since 2015. He faced Philadelphia as recently as Sept. 21, allowing three runs on three hits in seven innings of work with six strikeouts and zero walks.
“They know what I’ve got,” Manaea said. “They’ve got all the scouting reports, they’ve got all the information. So do we. I’ve got got multiple times by them. That’s just the way it goes. But the playoffs are a different beast. At the end of the day, it comes down to competing and throwing your best stuff out there and trusting the guys behind you that we’re going to do this thing. That’s a very talented group over there, so it’s not going to be an easy thing, but at the end of the day, I believe in my stuff and know I can go out there and help this team win.”
