What To Expect From José Quintana Post-All-Star Break

Veteran starting pitcher José Quintana made his fifth rehab appearance on Saturday. It was his second for Triple-A Syracuse and like the first did not go too smoothly. Quintana threw 4 1/3 innings allowing four hits and five runs while walking three. He threw 78 pitches, only 54 percent of the being strikes. On the bright side, he did strike out five and induced an encouraging 15 swing and misses.

Saturday’s uneven start projects to be Quintana’s last before he rejoins the Mets’ rotation after the All-Star break. He will endure a final tune up as he is expected to toss a simulated game on Thursday. In all, the total sample size of his rehab starts were not bad, but not exactly encouraging either.

Quintana made two appearances for Single-A St. Lucie where he threw 4 2/3 innings, allowing four hits and no earned runs. He struck out four and issued only one walk. He then made one appearance for High-A Brooklyn where he turned in his best rehab start, going four innings allowing only two hits and a run while striking out five and only walking a single batter.

As mentioned above, when he got to Syracuse (Triple-A) things started to go south. In his first start with the team on June 30, he was only able to go 2 2/3 innings as he struggled mightily with his control (three walks) which inflated his pitch count. Due to this, he was not able to complete what the Mets had scheduled for him, and was forced to make another rehab start on Saturday. If everything went well on June 30, Quintana may have been called up earlier.

Saturday’s outing, outlined above, closes the book on Quintana’s rehab stints at the Triple-A level. He totaled seven innings between the two starts, allowing eight hits, seven runs, and a troubling six walks. He did strike out seven and got his pitch count close to 80 in the second start, signifying he is ready to be stretched out. This by far being the most important part of his rehab program.

Now that all the rehab outings are complete, Quintana seems poised to join the Mets, fully healthy, after his bone-graft surgery that repaired a rib fracture. With that, what should the team expect? How does he factor in to the equation in the second half?

The 34-year-old veteran signed a two-year deal worth $26 million total in the offseason with expectations to serve as a back-of-the-rotation starter alongside Carlos Carrasco. Currently, the Mets are relying on David Peterson in this role. Peterson, who struggled mightily in his first stint with the team, has been much better since returning from Triple-A. After his performance on Saturday, he has only allowed four runs over 15 1/3 innings since his return.

Which his potential emergence makes the return of Quintana so intriguing. Does the team go to a six-man rotation? Is Peterson returned to Triple-A? It will certainly be an intriguing storyline to follow.

Regardless of that, we know Quintana will be in the rotation going forward. So, what can you expect performance-wise?

Quintana owns a career 3.75 ERA and 3.62 FIP. Each resembling a solid four-or-five starter in the rotation. Last year, Quintana posted a career season of sorts when he posted a season ERA of 2.93 across 32 starts with the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals.  He relied on inducing soft contact (89th percentile average exit velocity) and not walking batters (61st percentile walk rate) en route to the career year resulting in getting paid by the Mets.

If Quintana can pitch anything like he did last season, the Mets would be very pleased in the second half. He was a very strong pitcher last season, however, coming off injury and couple that with Quintana posting an outlier of a season in terms of his career, expectations should be tempered to an extent. Throughout his career, excluding the troublesome 2021 season where he posted a 6.43 ERA and 5.02 xERA, Quintana usually sits with an xERA in the low 4.00 range with an ERA similar.

Even if he regresses a tad off his career year last year, and reflects more the pitcher he was before the struggle that was the 2021 season, his presence will help New York tremendously during the second half of the season. Of course, coming off injury and missing half the season may make for some rocky beginnings, especially given the struggles with control in his Triple-A rehab outings, but, once he gets settled in, he should be a quality addition with tempered expectations.