Sean Manaea appeared to have found his gear with a bit of a mid-season resurgence, but things quickly have taken another turn for the worse.
Manaea delivered his fourth straight ineffective outing on Tuesday, as the Mets were defeated by the AL-best Rays.
The left-hander found himself in immediate trouble with Yandy Diaz and Junior Caminero combining to erase an early Mets lead just three batters into the bottom of the first.
Tampa scratched across another run in the third.
Manaea was able to work around even more traffic in each of the next two innings, but then the roof completely caved in on him in the bottom of the sixth.
The Rays bombarded him for three more runs in the frame, the last of which came in a Diaz homer to left-center, chasing him from the game with just two outs in the inning.
The southpaw ended his day with five runs on his line on a whopping 11 hits while walking one and striking out just two batters across six innings of work.
“I thought he battled up until that last inning,” Andy Green said. “Felt good about him against the bottom of the order there, but they were able to spray some balls and scored -- it was just a tough battle up until that point.”
That’s exactly how you could describe Manaea’s past few outings.
After a string of quality starts, he’s allowed 4+ runs in each of his last four, pitching to a 7.73 ERA over that span.
The veteran has quickly gone from looking like a potential piece at the backend of the 2027 Mets starting rotation, to being a big-time question mark once again.
“I’ve been terrible,” Manaea said. “Getting some length out there, but ultimately just not many quality out there, so I don’t really know what I have to do but I have to figure something out and try to salvage this season.”