Sean Manaea’s Biggest Problem Is Now A Bigger Mets Problem

There is a problem that has chased Sean Manaea for almost his entire career, but it's reached a new level in his last two seasons: the inability to survive when he falls behind in the count. This season, Manaea has allowed the fourth-highest OPS+ (129) among qualified pitchers with at least 180 batters faced, only behind Spencer Arrighetti (151), Shota Imanaga (142), and Joey Cantillo (136).

Against Manaea, the big difference has been marked by right-handed hitters. This season, he has posted the lowest K/BB rate (11.4) and the worst xFIP (4.93) against them. His ability to generate ground balls has also fallen from 51.4 GB% against lefties to 33.7% against righties, who are also managing to make contact with pitches outside the strike zone 16.7% more than lefties. Behind all these inconsistencies appears the most concerning point about the 34-year-old left-hander with 11 seasons: his four-seam fastball is not adding the value he needs to avoid depending so much on the sweeper. Manaea has allowed 21 home runs this season and 14 of them have come against his fastball. Opponents are slugging .472 against him, the second-highest mark of his entire career since the .503 he allowed in 2016.

Manaea’s inability against right-handed hitters carries the most weight in the offensive disaster he has allowed in his last two seasons with the New York Mets. If we compare the span of these two most recent seasons with the two previous ones, 2023-2024 vs. 2025-2026, we can find several interesting trends. It is important to keep in mind the notable differences between the 2023 Manaea with the Giants and 2024 in his first season with the Mets, and then the one we have seen over these last two years, when he missed practically the first half of the 2025 season.

2023-2024: 19-12, 3.85 ERA, 3.86 FIP and 3.1 bWAR

2025-2026: 7-11, 5.06 ERA, 4.46 FIP and –0.3 bWAR

According to Baseball Reference data, these last two seasons mark the first time in Manaea’s entire career with two consecutive seasons of negative WAR. FanGraphs gives him much more credit, placing him at 0.4 fWAR in 2025 and 0.8 in 2026. However, it is clear that this decline from Manaea puts him in the worst stretch of his career, two seasons after posting 2.8 fWAR in 2024, the second-highest of his career.

That said, let’s now get into the big challenge that Manaea is failing to overcome. Here is an interesting summary of the offense in the two periods against right-handed hitters when he falls behind in the count.

There are major differences that are notable: the growth in Manaea’s home run rate, and how, with a hard-hit rate that has increased by just 0.8%, right-handers have unleashed more contact and power. The 5.9% decline in the whiff rate does not go unnoticed, but the result of the at-bat suggests a much more difficult problem to reverse.

The two graphs on the left belong to the 2023-2024 stretch, and the other two to the most recent one. In the first, we can observe more dominance from Manaea in several of the zones where he recorded the highest percentage of pitches. The high pitches, inside and on the outside corner worked for him. Everything changed in the following stretch. That similar tendency to throw the fastball against right-handers at a high point outside the zone, well inside or far and outside, is being destroyed this time.

There are several reasons pointing to Manaea’s problem, beginning with the loss of 2.5 mph on his fastball over the last three seasons, from 93.8 mph (2023) to 91.3 mph in 2026. Another concerning point here is the loss of total vertical drop on his fastball, which has increased from 20.0” in 2023 to 22.2” this year. His Induced Vertical Break also dropped to the lowest point (10.7”) of his career since 2016 (10.5”), and this is causing his high fastballs to drop more than before and run the risk of staying in the strike zone or being more reachable by right-handed hitters.

If there is something that has characterized Manaea throughout his career, it has been his ability to provide deep starts, but he has always been a pitcher prone to allowing home runs. That story has not changed this season. In nine of his last 12 outings, he has allowed at least one home run, despite completing five innings or more in 11 of them.

The reality is that he has not worked in any role, and he has been part of another inefficient investment by the Mets. And the worst part is that they do not have much to do about it, beyond working to see if he can make the adjustments, perhaps finding another role for him on the pitching staff for next season or, most complicated of all, trying to get rid of his contract. With $25 million remaining for 2027, that will prove to be an entirely different problem.

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