Mets right-hander Frankie Montas has a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow and will require surgery, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post. It seems unclear exactly what kind of surgery Montas will require but Heyman says it will “very likely” be a full Tommy John, which would wipe out his entire 2026 season. Even a lesser surgery such as an internal brace procedure would put him on the shelf for most of next season.
The news doesn’t come out of nowhere. Montas was placed on the 15-day injured list a few days ago with a UCL injury. Manager Carlos Mendoza described it as “pretty significant” and said Montas would not be returning in 2025. The news of the surgery has more of an impact on 2026, which could go down as a lost season for Montas. A full Tommy John surgery generally requires 14-plus months of rehab. The internal brace alternative can sometimes allow a player to come back around a year later, though even that is a rare outcome.
Time will tell what 2026 has in store for Montas. Either way, his signing is officially a regrettable one for the Mets. Coming into 2025, they gave him a two-year, $34MM guarantee with $17MM salaries in each year and an opt-out after the first season. He suffered a lat strain in February and didn’t make it back to a big league mound until late June. He posted a 6.68 earned run average in seven starts and got moved to the bullpen. After two relief outings, he landed on the IL.
Montas will certainly forego his opt-out chance and keep that $17MM salary on the Mets’ books for next year. For their $34MM investment, they have so far received 38 2/3 innings with a 6.28 ERA. There’s a chance he returns late in 2026 but only for a few outings even in a best-case scenario.
The news doesn’t impact 2025. As mentioned, Montas had already been bumped to the bullpen even before being ruled out for the rest of the year. This means the club won’t be planning on him contributing in 2026 either. Thankfully, next year’s on-paper rotation looks a lot like the current group. Kodai Senga, Sean Manaea, Clay Holmes and David Peterson will all be back next year. Senga’s deal has a post-2025 opt-out but it’s conditional on him pitching 400 innings over the 2023-25 seasons. Since he missed most of last year, he’s only at 280 1/3 and won’t vest that opt-out.
In addition to those four, the Mets are turning to prospects Nolan McLean and Jonah Tong late this year. Either or both could be candidates for next year’s rotation. The same is true of Brandon Sproat, who is in Triple-A. Tylor Megill is currently on the IL but can be retained for 2026 via arbitration. Christian Scott has UCL surgery late in 2024 and could be back in the mix next year.
While it’s not ideal for the Mets to be paying $17MM plus taxes to a pitcher who is out of action, he had seemingly fallen out of their plans regardless. They have plenty of other pitchers and one of the top payrolls in the league, so they can absorb this hit better than most.
For Montas personally, he will eventually return to the open market ahead of the 2027 season, which will be his age-34 campaign. He missed most of 2023 recovering from shoulder surgery, so he won’t have a lot of momentum going into that return to free agency. He will be coming off a four-year stretch from 2023 to 2026 where he was only healthy in 2024 and had a 4.84 ERA that year.
Photo courtesy of Brad Penner, Imagn Images
This signing looks worse and worse by the day
I would say the opposite. He isn’t pitching next year and that is drastically better than him pitching.
This was what I took from the news. Keeps him off the mound. Let insurance cover it.
Well, he’s done with the Mets. But considering how he pitched, that may be an improvement.
It’s great for the Mets that he isn’t pitching right now but what a waste of money that could have gone to a better position
Imagine if the Mets signed Carlos estevez in the off-season then they wouldn’t have had to acquire that many guys
sad tormented neglected mariners fan:
With Cohen‘s money, they could’ve signed Montas, Estevez, and more. But I agree, they should’ve invested more in the bullpen in the off-season instead of Stearns doing his dumpster diving.
Would have Ester signed with them and not being the closer?
This is not true, Stearns was given a budget, even if it was a little fluid on where the top was. Plus the penalties for being over the CBT are real and impactful, both in terms of money and draft picks. You know they want to get under the cap.
Trotski:
So you have no idea what Stearns was given and neither do I. But we can see whether there’s a budget or not when Cohen went out and signed Soto to that contract and then at the end of the off-season gave Alonso $30 million dollars. Don’t tell me about budgets when it comes to Steve Cohen. Getting under the tax is not nearly as important as winning for him.
Could have been worse; they could have signed Emilio…
Imagine being so bad at roster building that spending nearly 400m isn’t enough to fill your holes.
holecamels35:
Every team ends up with holes, no matter how much they spend
Montas is the only bad contract on the Mets. Nobody associated with the Mets should sweat this AT ALL.
And yet he almost got them to the WS in just his first season.
It’s easy in hindsight to figure out who would have been a better signing.
I know that, but it’s just funny a team like the Mets saying they should have spent more on bullpen. I’d say they have more holes or weak spots than teams like the Brewers, Tigers, Mariners, and Red Sox though who spend much less.
holecamels35:
It’s all subjective. You say that now, however, the Mets, for a portion of season, had the best record in baseball. You wouldn’t have said then they had more holes than those teams. Who knows what you’ll be saying a month from now. There’s a lot of ebb and flow.
Or spending 400mil doesn’t even put a dent into your financial gross.
It’s like one season of Anthony Rendon, not seven. And it hasn’t stopped the Mets from spending.
Time to pick up that Player Option, playa.
Honestly, that’s probably the worst part of the signing. They need to stop offering player options mediocre players. Make it mutual. Hopefully there’s insurance to cover most of it (although I’m sure it’s not going to bankrupt Cohen to pay it).
I highly doubt they were able to get insurance on Montas given his track record. The insurance companies are not fools.
Pretty sweet to have made $50 million and done so little to earn it
It’s the ugly side of pro sports in an age where so many live in poverty
Carl “American Idle” Pavano would like a word with you.
All that money and they couldn’t spend on better starting pitchers. They got Soto and didn’t address major upgrades in rotation. Hopefully, the kids pan out if they refused to go above and beyond for Skenes. The time is now BEAT LA!!!!
LA Angels? Possibly.
Would you trade Mclean after seeing him AND Tong for Skenes?
Neither would I.
He is retired
Vacationing with Ellsbury on some sunny beach
Ellsbury is the winner for sure in that contest.
In fairness, most of the owners have billions and did little to earn it. Montas at least worked hard to get into this position.
Jed Lowrie can give him tips on how to spend his time during the remainder of his contract
It was a bad signing from the start.
“Bad signing”..In hindsight, all signings that don’t work out or get interrupted by injury are “bad”.
Such is the life of a hindsight GM. It’s pretty good work, if you can get it. The only problem, is that practically anyone is “qualified” to be a hindsight GM.
Same. Not sure what the Mets saw in him to put that type of money on the table. Said so at the signing. Good for him, though. At least he got to bank some Cohen hedge fund cash.
Stearns has a fastball fixation, hence the bizarre love for Stanek and Helsley and the strange fixation with parallels in conventional romanticism, “if they just do x, I can fix them.”
A 1/17m deal for Montas almost makes a little sense, if you’re willing to pay a premium of a few million to lock him down early (Stearns signed him in early December iirc) then move on to realize the rest of your plan, basing the deal on seeing enough in his stop in MIL and getting a recommendation from the guys you know in the FO there, that the last two months of his 2024 season and 11K/9 rate was somehow repeatable.
But the player option for 2026 at 17m? Incomprehensible. He was going in to his age 32-33 seasons. Those are the years a guy with his track record tends to crash and burn. If the cash value of that player option is $6-8m then you were effectively paying Montas 1/$23m-25m.
Why do that?
Montas will be completely recovered by the 2027 season for somebody to sign him to a 2yr $40M contract.
The same thing happened to the Redsox’s L.Giolito(last year) and the Redsox are fairly happy with him this year.
Montas isn’t the first pitcher who’s year was ended or sabotaged by injury.
I think we can safely assume that it won’t be watching the the the Mets, unless he feels some obligation to sign a league minimum deal to make up for not pitching during this contract, which we know he’ll never do (OK, please stop laughing).
Friendly reminder that this is the guy they signed because they thought Sevy was too injury prone for the money. Re-signing Sevy literally would have prevented both Montas and Manea
What are you talking about?
3 years of Severino!
$67 million.
No THANKS.
thecheddahbob:
What are you blathering on about? Severino sucks.
The Serverino guys are starting to sound like the Bauer guys. haha
Really? You want Sevy for right now and for another two years instead of McLean? Really?
Sevy has pitched like an ace while on the road in 65 IP. Weird home/road splits.
In fairness it was as much the money, 3/67m, as it was Severino was injury prone.
Can’t blame them on either count. 2024 was his first full season since 2018, and other than being durable in 2024, what did he offer? His ERA+ was 101. He was very average, with an ERA that was less than it looked thanks to pitching half his games at Citi, where his ERA was more than 2 runs / 9 better than elsewhere.
A typical projection for Sevy in 2025 would have been 130-150 innings with an ERA worse than league average, call it a 95 ERA+. The commonly used projection system at fangraphs, “ZIPs,” had Severino throwing on average 144 innings with a 4.38 ERA in 2025.
Guys in that tier weren’t getting anything close to a 22-23m AAV on 3 year deals.
Before reading these comments, I was thinking of Carl Pavano..
Actually, I was thinking of a lot of “expensive “ non productive ex Yankees.
Frankie Montas joins the list.
Sonny Gray and Frankie Montas are why Cashman erased the A’s from his contacts list…
Kei Igawa, lol
A cool $34 million to put up -0.7 WAR over two seasons.
Built like an NFL fullback and tries to throw as hard as he possibly can and now he’s injured.
He played better and more games than I thought he would!
Yankees making him pitch while injured likely did him in.
He had shoulder surgery and a long rehab back with the Yankees. Then he made 30 starts in 2024. This is elbow.
The unfortunate thing is this signing was insane the day is was done. He was coming off of a terrible season and offering him that deal was stupid. This is entirely on Stearns who has repeatedly made dumb moves
And also repeatedly made good moves
This dude has become rich being a broken down piece of garbage for both ny teams
Insurance?