The free agency dam might be breaking a bit. At least for starting pitchers, anyway.
Frankie Montas joined Yusei Kikuchi and Blake Snell in settling on a new team as he signed a two year, $34 million contract with the Mets late Sunday night. The contract has a player option for the second year.
The Mets have a lot of work to do with their rotation this offseason as 534 vacated innings in 2024 from Sean Manaea, Luis Severino, and Jose Quintana currently sit on the free agent market. Montas is their first stab at trying to replace some of that lost volume.
Here, I’m going to talk about who Montas is as a pitcher, what the Mets might see in him, and how the move impacts his outlook for fantasy baseball.
How Good is Frankie Montas?
This is a loaded question. His 4.84 ERA from last season would tell you, possibly not good at all. Things get even murkier when going back to his disastrous stint with the Yankees and eventual labrum tear that forced him to miss more than a calendar year between 2022 and 2023.
Really, he hasn’t put together a good year since 2021, his last full season with the Athletics, when he struck out 207 batters across 187 innings with a 3.37 ERA. Yet, Montas still has the foundation of a solid, mid-rotation arm.
His average fastball velocity bounced back to nearly 96 MPH and got faster as last season wore on.
Montas also still has a tremendous splitter. It had a 119 Stuff+ and 42.6% whiff rate last season as his go-to swing-and-miss pitch. That along with a plus slider, solid cutter, two-seam fastball, and four-seam fastball gives him a true five-pitch mix with multiple looks to show hitters from each side of the plate.
Ugly 2024 ERA aside, here’s a guy with above average velocity, a legitimate out-pitch, and a deep repertoire. That’s a solid pitcher.
How Good Can Frankie Montas Be?
This is where it gets fun for fantasy managers and Mets fans alike. Again, let’s look past that unsightly 4.84 ERA and try to figure out what the Mets’ plan will be for Montas.
He was traded from the Reds to the Brewers at the trade deadline last season and made some adjustments that helped his strikeout rate jump from 19.0% in Cincinnati to 28.7% with Milwaukee.
First, check out how much differently he sequenced his pitches against hitters from each side of the plate before and after the move. Top table is before, bottom is after.
The biggest differences here were way more…