For most of the season, MLB teams are prohibited from carrying more than 13 pitchers on their active roster. So it’s quite a feat when one team manages to use three-and-a-half times that number in a year.
That team would be the New York Mets, who used their 46 pitcher in 2025 on Wednesday to break a record held by last year’s Miami Marlins. The record-setting pitcher was Dom Hamel, who made his MLB debut with a scoreless sixth inning against the San Diego Padres.
The Atlanta Braves are right behind them with 44 pitchers used, followed by the Los Angeles Angels (41) and Arizona Diamondbacks (40). The team with the fewest pitchers used this season: the St. Louis Cardinals, with 24 per Baseball Reference.
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Using the most pitchers in MLB history isn’t a good thing. In the Mets’ case, the “feat” reflects a season in which nearly their entire pitching plan has blown up in their face, leaving president of baseball operations David Stearns to scramble for innings wherever he can find them.
It has been a case where the pitching staff rots from the top of the rotation. After an 89-win season and an NLCS berth last year, the Mets made some curious gambles like signing former New York Yankees closer Clay Holmes and making him a starter, plus reclamation prospects like Frankie Montas and Griffin Canning.
Very few of those plans have worked out. Holmes has actually been fine, all things considered, but the only other Mets pitcher to post more than 120 innings has been David Peterson, who has posted a 6.99 ERA since the start of August. Those struggles continued Wednesday before Hamel entered the game, with six earned runs in five innings.
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Kodai Senga just accepted a demotion to Triple-A. Canning ruptured an Achilles tendon in June. Sean Manaea, who signed a three-year, $75 million deal last offseason, has a 5.40 ERA and just moved to the bullpen. Montas also got moved to the bullpen and is now out for the season with a UCL injury. Tylor Megill has been out since June with an elbow sprain.
The Mets bullpen actually hasn’t been that bad by comparison, ranking 17th in MLB with a 4.08 ERA and seventh with 585 innings pitched. With so little going right, the Mets have recently relied on a a trio of rookies in Nolan McLean, Brandon Sproat and Jonah Tong in the rotation, with mixed results. None of them had appeared in an MLB game before August.
All of that has left the Mets sitting in the third and final wild-card spot as of Wednesday, with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Cincinnati Reds fewer than two games behind them. This is a team that had the best record in MLB in June, and the NL East lead as recently as Aug. 2.
That leaves Stearns with plenty on his to-do list, both for this season and the future.
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Every pitcher the Mets have used this season
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David Peterson (167 1/3 innings pitched)
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Huascar Brazobán (56 1/3)
* denotes a position player pitcher