Mets Notes: Finding spots for Sean Manaea, assessing Carson Benge's at-bats so far

Mets manager Carlos Mendoza spoke to the media before the team's series-opener against the Giants on Thursday and spoke about a number of topics... When to deploy Sean Manaea Manaea's role on the 2026 Mets is still in flux. He broke camp with the team, but as a part of the bullpen as a piggyback for the other starters.

After six games, he's appeared just once and Mendoza was asked about when the right time is for him to deploy the southpaw. "Ideally, I would like to find a spot for him where we could use a lot of his pitches," Mendoza said. "Especially with a lot of the extra-inning games we’ve played here…we’ve asked the bullpen to get an extra 15 outs.

That’s a lot. With Sean, the perfect scenario would be to use all of his pitches when we need to. " The Mets have played three extra-inning games already and with their next off day not until Monday, it's probably safe to say we'll see Manaea some time in this four-game set with the Giants.

Mendoza and the Mets have said that they want to keep Manaea stretched out while in the bullpen if they need him to make a start, and the Mets skipper gave the parameters on how he ideally wants that to look. In order for Manaea to use all of this pitches, as Mendoza prefers, he needs to have the southpaw throw 50-60 pitches, but admits that it's hard to cut out time for that in the midst of game action. "You go in, have a gameplan…you still got to make adjustments," Mendoza said.