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Jose Quintana spent much of the 2024 season as the weak link in the Mets’ rotation. Through August 20 — a point when I happened to check in at Citi Field — he was lit for a 4.57 ERA and 5.13 FIP in 25 starts covering 134 innings. But after that date, just when the Mets needed him the most, he went on a roll, allowing five runs (three earned) over his next eight starts totaling 47 1/3 innings; the last two of those starts were the Wild Card and Division Series clinchers. Though he was shellacked by the Dodgers in his NLCS start, he was hardly alone in that regard.
Despite his high-profile hot streak, Quintana has yet to find a home for 2025. After making $13 million in each of his past two seasons, the 36-year-old southpaw reportedly rebuffed an offer from the Pirates that was larger than the $5.25 million deal to which Andrew Heaney agreed last week. While a return to the Mets might appear to be in order now that Sean Manaea will miss a chunk of April due to an oblique strain — that following the loss of Frankie Montas to a high-grade lat strain that could keep him out until mid May or later — the team doesn’t appear ready to add another starter from outside the organization.
As the Pirates’ turn from Quintana (who pitched for them in 2022) to Heaney illustrates, teams in search of starters at this late stage still have multiple options from among the current crop of free agents, and they’re somewhat interchangeable, unlike last year, when two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell and 2023 postseason stud Jordan Montgomery didn’t sign until mid March (though the latter’s deal hasn’t work out very well). The starters I’m highlighting in this companion piece to my position player roundup are guys who can eat significant innings at the back of a rotation, while the relievers have plenty of late-inning experience. In contrast to the position player piece, where I tried to connect the dots to potential employers either based on previous reporting or spitballing, here I’ll note that most teams besides the Dodgers could use another fourth- or fifth-starter option or a bullpen arm, and where these guys land could depend upon the injuries that befall pitching staffs before Opening Day. Help is just a phone call away.
I’m listing the pitchers alphabetically within each group while highlighting their Depth Charts projections, which have plenty to do with assumptions of playing time.
Starters
Kyle Gibson (2025 DC Projection: 1.4 WAR, 4.36 ERA, 148 IP)
In a post-pandemic world where starter workloads are being dialed back, Gibson is one of just seven pitchers to take the mound at least 30 times in each of the past four seasons. He’s certainly not the best of them (Dylan Cease or Kevin Gausman probably merit that distinction) or the most accomplished in October (Charlie Morton), but he is a dependable workhorse who has averaged just shy of 2.0 WAR over the past three seasons. The 37-year-old righty’s streak may be in jeopardy if he doesn’t sign soon, though.
After spending 2022 with the Phillies and ’23 with the Orioles, Gibson toiled for the Cardinals last year, pitching to a 4.24 ERA and 4.42 FIP with a 20.9% strikeout rate in 169 2/3 innings. The Cardinals, who loaded up on contact-oriented pitchers last winter, declined his $12 million option for 2025. Gibson isn’t a guy with particularly imposing stuff; his sinker averaged just 90.7 mph last year, and only his slider scored as above average via our two pitch modeling systems. Perhaps most worrisome, his 9.2% barrel rate was a career high, up 1.6 points from 2023, and his 9.4% walk rate was his highest full-season mark since ’18. Still, he generates a steady supply of groundballs, so he could appeal to a team with a solid-or-better defense.
Lance Lynn (2025 DC Projection: 1.2 WAR, 4.41 ERA, 126 IP)
Gibson’s St. Louis teammate is a more accomplished pitcher, a two-time All-Star, with his second selection — and a third-place Cy Young finish — as recent as 2021. He’s declined considerably since then, but after getting torched for a 5.73 ERA and 5.53 FIP in 183 2/3 innings for the White Sox and Dodgers in 2023, he trimmed those marks to a 3.84 ERA and 4.31 FIP in 117 1/3 innings last year, not that his improvement prevented the Cardinals from nixing his $12 million option as well.
Lynn’s improvement owed largely to his nearly cutting his home run rate in half, from a gruesome 2.16 per nine to 1.23. Unfortunately, his strikeout rate fell for the third straight season, from 23.6% in 2023 to 21.3% in ’24. He also yielded his highest barrel rate (10.5%) and xERA (4.94) of the Statcast era.
Lynn missed about eight weeks last season due to two stints on the injured list for right knee inflammation, making just two starts after July 30, an issue that led him to shed 20 pounds even before the Winter Meetings rolled around in an effort to take pressure off his knee and to improve his flexibility. At the time, he sounded open to revamping his arsenal and approach, telling The Athletic:
“I kind of came to the conclusion that I wasn’t done,” Lynn said. “And if I’m not done, I’ve got to change some stuff up, just to make sure I can do the things I need to do and give myself the best chance to stay healthy for as long as I want to do it.
“I think I’ve revamped every five or six years. Here’s another revamp to maybe get ready for my last act here going into my late 30s.”
In late January, Lynn told The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal that several teams were interested in him as a closer, harkening back to his early years when he pitched in relief for the Cardinals. No deal has come to pass, but his willingness to change roles probably bodes well for him finding a job soon.
Jose Quintana (2025 DC Projection: 1.2 WAR, 4.31 ERA, 144 IP)
Quintana is far removed from the 2013–19 stretch in which he averaged 32 starts, 193 innings, and 3.8 WAR for Chicago’s two teams. That said, after being limited to just 13 starts in 2023 by a stress fracture in his rib, caused by a benign lesion that required bone graft surgery, he did make 31 starts totaling 170 1/3 innings last year. His 3.75 ERA was more impressive than his 4.56 FIP, 18.8% strikeout rate, and 1.0 WAR, but again, he did have that late-season run.
“He stopped nibbling and he started attacking,” said Mets manager Carlos Mendoza when asked in October to explain Quintana’s turnaround. “He’s going to move the ball around, he’s going to go in and out, up and down, change speeds and keep hitters off balance… He [had been] getting behind, walking a lot of people, and he said, ‘Screw it, I’m going to go after people,’ and just went with it and fixed it.”
One big aspect of Quintana’s improvement was his ability to keep the ball in the park; after serving up 1.48 homers per nine through August 20, he went 47 1/3 innings before Shohei Ohtani led off NLCS Game 4 with a solo shot. He relied more on his sinker during that latter stretch, increasing its usage from 29.4% to 34.5%, and batters slugged just .236 against it. During that hot streak, they also slugged .105 off his changeup while whiffing on 46.4% of their swings against it. In other words, the lefty showed he could still be quite crafty.
Spencer Turnbull (2025 DC Projection: 0.8, WAR, 4.30 ERA, 72 IP)
On May 8, 2021, while pitching for the Tigers, Turnbull — a former second-round draft pick out of the University of Alabama — no-hit the Mariners. It’s been rough sledding since that point, as injuries have limited him to just 17 starts, 10 relief appearances, and 101 innings. First came Tommy John surgery, which cost him the rest of 2021 and all of ’22, then a fractured neck and torn ligaments limited him to seven starts and a 7.26 ERA in ’23. He spent last April starting for the Phillies and pitched well (1.67 ERA, 3.26 FIP in 32 1/3 innings) before being shifted to the bullpen to accommodate the return of Taijuan Walker. He was wobbly in that role (4.26 ERA, 4.17 FIP in 19 innings) before returning to the rotation to face his old team on June 26, but he suffered a lat strain in his third inning of work and never made it back to major league action.
Turnbull finished with respectable numbers (2.65 ERA, 3.85 FIP, and a career-high 26.1% strikeout rate) in his 54 1/3 innings. He owes much of his improvement to the addition of a sweeper, which he threw one-third of the time; batters hit just .145 and slugged .226 against it while whiffing on 30.8% of their swings. Given the success of that pitch and his age (32), he may well have the highest upside of this group, even with the questions about his durability.
Relievers
Kyle Finnegan (2025 DC Projection: 0.2 WAR, 3.97 ERA, 56 IP)
Last season, Finnegan made his first All-Star team and placed second in the NL with 38 saves (and seventh the year before with 28), but he was unceremoniously non-tendered by the Nationals in November. A rough second half couldn’t have helped; after he pitched to a 2.45 ERA (but a 3.98 FIP) before the All-Star break, he was rocked for a 5.79 ERA (4.41 FIP) the rest of the way. Command issues were largely to blame, as his strikeout rate fell from 26.1% to 16.4% while his walk rate rose from 8.1% to 10%. By PitchingBot, his overall command score dropped from 62 to 52 on the 20–80 scouting scale. A major league-leading 11 pitch clock violations didn’t help, nor did the fact that he was hit much harder as he struggled to find the zone. His 91.3 mph average exit velocity against last season ranked in the first percentile, with his 48.1% hard-hit rate allowed in the second.
Even with 88 saves over the past four seasons, Finnegan’s modest strikeout rate (22.1%) and stuff probably cast him as more of a middle relief or setup man than a closer, at least on a good team. But bad teams need closers too, especially when there’s a chance they can flip them in late July.
Craig Kimbrel (2025 DC Projection: 0.3 WAR, 3.93 ERA, 52 IP)
If anyone from this list is going to wind up in the Hall of Fame, it’s the 36-year-old Kimbrel, a nine-time All-Star who ranks fifth all time with 440 saves. Selected for the Midsummer Classic as recently as 2023 while with the Phillies, he pitched for the Orioles last season and finished the first half with a 2.80 ERA and 2.97 FIP, numbers similar to AL All-Star selection Clay Holmes. During that first half, he blew five of 28 save chances, but still struck out 37.6% of the hitters he faced.
Unfortunately, the bottom quickly dropped out for Kimbrel, who has led something of a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde existence dating back to his days with the Red Sox (2016–18) and Cubs (2019 to mid 2021), at times dominating opponents the way he did during his stellar run with the Braves, but sometimes falling into bad habits mechanically, struggling with his release point and sacrificing deception, command, and unpredictability. He was bumped out of the closer role by the acquisition of Seranthony Domínguez in late July, and designated for assignment with just 11 games remaining in the regular season, as the Orioles ran out of time to fix him.
While Kimbrel’s average four-seamer lost about two miles per hour from 2023 to ’24 (from 95.8 mph to 93.9) — costing him some movement and causing the pitch to get pulverized — anybody who can miss bats with the frequency that he does is likely to get another look if he wants one. That’s not to say he’ll be racking up another 20-plus saves, but as noted, he’s picked himself up off the mat before.
David Robertson (2025 DC Projection: 0.7 WAR, 3.49 ERA, 61 IP)
Robertson turns 40 on April 9, but he’s coming off his best season in more than half a decade. Pitching for the Rangers, he made 68 appearances totaling 72 innings, posting a 3.00 ERA, 2.65 FIP, 33.4% strikeout rate, and 1.9 WAR; those last three marks were his best since 2017, with the last of those tied with Texas teammate Kirby Yates for eighth among all relievers. Though he notched just two saves, Robertson’s work generally came in high-leverage duty in front of Yates. His cutter was as effective as ever, holding hitters to a .163 AVG and .209 SLG as they whiffed on 30.8% of their swings. Particularly given that he’s drama free when it comes to his role, he’d fit into just about any bullpen.
