The Mets signed Jose Quintana to a two-year, $26 million deal ahead of the 2023 season with no intention of the 11-year veteran becoming a top-of-the-rotation presence.
And then 2023 happened: Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander were traded, Carlos Carrasco got hurt, and all of a sudden Quintana was the late-season, stable veteran presence on a team where Tylor Megill and David Peterson each pitched more than 100 innings.
That did not make Quintana the ace—Kodai Senga took that title fairly quickly—but it made him an important part of the rotation, and he brought that stability once again in 2024 with 175 innings of thoroughly average pitching—plus another 14 1⁄3 pretty good postseason innings.