Free agent Chris Bassitt top of mid-tier starters New York Mets are pursuing

ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan conveyed that the New York Mets are active in this years mid-tier starter market by writing, prices being spent on back-of-the-rotation arms reflects teams' desires to enter a season with at least six, and preferably more, major-league-caliber starting pitchers.

They've been lofty, either in dollars or years. Merrill Kelly, at 37, got two years and $40 million from Arizona.

The St. Louis Cardinals gave Dustin May one year at $12.5 million. Adrian Houser, coming off a winter in which he signed a minor league deal, will receive $22 million from the San Francisco Giants over the next two seasons.

And one great year in Korea netted Cody Ponce a guaranteed $30 million over three years from the Blue Jays.

When addressing which pitchers he'd include in this tier, Passan wrote, Chris Bassitt is the best of the bunch for teams seeking innings, only five pitchers have thrown more over the past four seasons, and Lucas Giolito has the highest ceiling.

Nick Martinez and Zack Littell are steady strike-throwers, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander quadragenarians with enough stuff and know-how to succeed, and Tyler Mahle and German Marquez tantalizing to teams that dream on what they could get out of a full, healthy season.

Walker Buehler remains a prime bounce-back candidate, Patrick Corbin a lefty who can pitch forever and Michael Lorenzen an ever-ready swingman.

Last season, Bassitt made 31 starts, finishing the season with a 3.99 ERA and 4.03 FIP in 169.1 innings pitched as a starter.

He pitched the second-most innings on the team, only behind Gausman's 193 innings and slightly ahead of Berrios' 164 innings.

One area of concern throughout the season was his road and home splits. For the season, Bassitt pitched 93 innings at home, posting a respectable 2.71 ERA and 3.34 FIP, while his road ERA sat at 5.47 and his road FIP at 4.45 in 77.1 innings pitched.

Funny enough though, the five games that he wasn't able to give the Jays five or more innings all came on the road.

Two of those games, the ones already mentioned, saw him give up 14 earned runs in just 4.1 innings of work.

When removing those two games from all 15 of his road starts, Bassitt has a much more respectable 4.07 ERA on the road.

Simply put, Bassitt was a good backend-of-the-rotation starter, and likely will be the same in 2026.