The Mets have identified their next starting pitching project.
After a year in which Sean Manaea and Luis Severino were added for relatively low prices and enjoyed bounce-back seasons, it will be Frankie Montas who attempts to revive his career in Queens.
The Mets and the 31-year-old have agreed to a two-year deal worth $17 million per season with a player opt-out after the first year, The Post’s Jon Heyman reported Sunday. The deal is pending a physical.
Montas, who at his best is a strikeout artist who finished sixth in AL Cy Young voting in 2021, had a combined 4.84 ERA over 30 starts with the Reds and Brewers this past season.
The season represented a step forward for a righty who pitched in one game in 2023, when his season with the Yankees was nearly completely wiped out after right shoulder surgery. Montas’ results did not improve with his health, though, pitching to a 1.367 WHIP and walking 3.9 hitters per nine innings. He showed better signs at the end of the season, striking out 70 hitters in 57 ¹/₃ innings after the deadline trade to the Brewers.
Montas becomes part of a still-unwhole Mets rotation that right now is led by Kodai Senga and includes David Peterson, with Tylor Megill, Jose Butto and Paul Blackburn depth options. Manaea and Severino, who were coming off similarly disappointing 2023 seasons before joining the Mets last winter and then helped carry the club to the NLCS, are free agents.
Last month, David Stearns acknowledged the Mets could try a similar tack — finding pitchers who are rehabilitation candidates — this offseason.
“I think the way we built our rotation last offseason was successful,” Stearns said at the GM Meetings. “I think we are seeking to build another successful rotation however it occurs and you can do that in a variety of different ways. I don’t feel beholden to do it in any particular way.”
Montas is known for a particularly devastating splitter, against which opponents hit .218 last season while whiffing in 42.6 percent of swings.
He rode that pitch to plenty of success with the A’s for five and a half seasons in which he totaled a 3.70 ERA. He then was sent to The Bronx at the 2022 trade deadline and never was healthy for the Yankees, with whom he pitched 41 innings in a season and a half.