Entering Thursday night, Sean Manaea was already in a slump. He came in looking to rebound but his regression in August continued against one of baseball’s best teams.
Manaea allowed six runs on eight hits over 5 2/3 innings in Thursday’s 8-2 loss against the Brewers. He walked one and struck out three, throwing 63 of his 95 pitches for strikes.
Milwaukee got to him immediately. Jackson Chourio opened the game with a single, and Andrew Vaughn later drove him in. Gary Sánchez followed with another RBI to make it 2-0, and Chourio struck again in the second, launching a two-run homer that put the Mets in a 4-0 hole.
Manaea settled down briefly, retiring the Brewers in order in the third and working around a hit batsman in the fourth, but Milwaukee was able to add a run in the fifth and another in the sixth. He finished with only seven swings and misses on 95 pitches.
The slippery mound at Citi Field did not make things any easier Thursday, though Manaea refused to use it as an excuse.
“We’re both dealing with it,” Manaea said. “Just sounds like an excuse.”
The outing pushed Manaea’s August ERA up to 4.94 in 31 innings. More concerning is how sharply the month has changed for him. In his first two August starts, Manaea allowed three earned runs across 13 innings, striking out 18 and surrendering only one home run. Over his last three, he has allowed 14 earned runs in 18 innings for a 7.00 ERA. He gave up six home runs in those 18 innings.
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With just a month remaining in the season, Manaea knows what he wants to accomplish.
“Just want to give quality, go deep into games, give the team a chance to win,” Manaea said.
Going deep into games is one thing Manaea has been pretty successful at this season. He has completed at least six innings in eight of his 14 starts and has failed to make it through five innings just twice.
It has obviously also been encouraging to see his fastball velocity returning. On Thursday, Manaea averaged 92.1 mph on his four-seamer and hit 94.7 mph. For context, in his first long relief outing of the season, on April 2, Manaea’s fastball averaged 89.9 mph and topped out at 91.3.
The bigger issue has actually now been the pitches he uses to play off his fastballs. His sweeper has been worth 13 runs below average this season, and his cutter hasn’t done much either, leaving Manaea much more dependent on his fastballs to navigate through lineups.
For example, even Manaea’s seldom-used changeup has been hit hard when he has gone to it. Opponents have averaged 92.7 mph in exit velocity against the pitch, which is even higher than the exit velocities he sees against his fastball. It’s of course a really small sample size, as Manaea has thrown just 67 changeups (3.4% of his total pitches), but its results this season haven’t given Manaea much reason to return to the offering more frequently like he did in 2024 when it made up 11.7% of his arsenal.
There is at least some reason to believe the results could improve. This season, opposing hitters have produced a .351 wOBA against his sweeper, his primary secondary pitch. The pitch has a much lower .282 expected wOBA and a 31.9% whiff rate. That should suggest that the pitch has been punished more than the quality of contact would normally indicate.
Still, his Statcast profile is mostly a sea of blue right now, and he has been allowing far too many long balls as of late. It seems that finding the right balance has been tough for Manaea. His velocity and life on his fastball have returned, but the rest of his arsenal has not been complementing it as well of late. If he wants to turn things around over the final month, he needs more consistent results from his secondary pitches, or the gains he has made with his fastball may not be enough.
