This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo's Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

NEW YORK -- Quick -- what’s been the best big-money pitching contract in recent memory?

The list of candidates is short, and several of the most productive deals were for pitchers who opted out before their contracts became albatrosses. But even the best of those pacts -- Zack Greinke with the Dodgers, Max Scherzer with the Nationals, etc. -- turned out to be relatively inefficient compared to what the Mets did last year with Sean Manaea and Luis Severino.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why president of baseball operations David Stearns went down that path, and why, with his signing of free agent Frankie Montas to a two-year, $34 million contract, he appears to be doing so again.

Counting extensions for players who were already under team control, 27 pitchers in Major League history have signed contracts of at least $130 million. Some, like Jacob deGrom with the Rangers and Carlos Rodón with the Yankees, went underwater almost immediately. Others took time for their value to fade, but nearly all of them did in the end.

While there’s no definitive way to assess a pitcher’s value compared to the size of his salary, the calculation of dollars per WAR can give us a reasonable glimpse into how long-term deals fared.

For the purposes of this exercise, I’m not counting anyone who has yet to pitch multiple years on a current contract. The remaining 23 pitchers averaged $25.41 million in total salary for every 1.0 WAR accumulated. Even eliminating the outlier of Stephen Strasburg’s most recent contract, which was so inefficient that he produced negative WAR over the life of it, the total is $15.43 million per 1.0 WAR.

Compare that to Manaea, who made $4.83 million per WAR this season, or Severino, who made $8.13 million per WAR, and it becomes easy to see why these short-term contracts tend to be better deals.

“If we look at the history of long-term investments in pitchers, it is not overwhelmingly a rosy picture,” Stearns said in October.

Short-term pitching contracts have many advantages over long-term deals. For one, they’re cheaper. Even the worst short-term mistakes don’t hamstring franchises for years in the future. Such contracts are a way for clubs to diversify their assets, rather than investing huge chunks of payroll in one or two players. And they allow teams to avoid taking on too much injury risk.

But short-term contracts carry their own types of risk, mainly because the best pitchers in baseball tend not to sign them. As such, those willing to ink one- or two-year deals usually come with obvious flaws. In the case of Severino, it was a lengthy injury history that sapped his market. Manaea had been inconsistent throughout his career. Montas has been both injury-prone and erratic.

For these reasons, the Mets’ acquisition of Montas again puts Stearns to the test. The Mets’ baseball boss has a longstanding reputation for being able to find bargains in the pitching market, as he did with Severino and Manaea in New York and a host of others in Milwaukee. Some might call it luck. Others contend that he’s just way better at this than everyone else.

The truth, as usual, is probably somewhere in between.

With all that as context, the Mets now have two paths before them. They can continue to collect high-risk pitchers on short-term deals, dipping into a pool that still contains Walker Buehler, Nathan Eovaldi, Andrew Heaney and plenty of other intriguing candidates. Or they can break character to splurge on a Corbin Burnes or Max Fried type, or even a reunion with Manaea or Severino.

“There are pitchers who have gone into their mid- or late 30s and pitched very well,” Stearns said. “And so if we think we can identify that, then there could be exceptions.”

Of all MLB owners, Steve Cohen can afford to risk a bad contract (or three … or seven …), though that doesn’t mean he wants to. He and Stearns talk often about maintaining flexibility for future seasons, which is why they’ve generally avoided long-term deals for pitchers, even while operating like a big-market team in most other areas.

As things stand, the Mets have three presumptive rotation locks in Kodai Senga, David Peterson and Montas. They’ve collected a bevy of back-end candidates in Paul Blackburn, Tylor Megill, José Buttó and Justin Hagenman. And they have a pair of high-upside, near-ready prospects in Brandon Sproat (Mets’ No. 1 and No. 40 overall, per MLB Pipeline) and Blade Tidwell (Mets’ No. 8), who are likely to help at some point in 2025.

On paper, it’s still not enough. Mets officials know that and will continue looking to acquire more rotation help during the Winter Meetings next week in Dallas.

Which aisle they shop in will go a long way toward determining not just the shape of the 2025 roster, but potentially of the organization for years to come.