Mets enjoying young pitching riches not seen since ’15

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- On Tuesday night at NBT Bank Stadium, Brandon Sproat leaned on the dugout rail as his teammate, Nolan McLean, was carving up the Triple-A Charlotte Knights. A cutter on the outside corner froze one hitter. A sweeper, McLean’s signature pitch, nearly forced another to a knee. A running four-seamer sent still another flailing.

Sproat watched intently. He remained there long after McLean retired to the clubhouse, having authored another scoreless performance. In a game that became a blowout win for Syracuse, Sproat spent the latter innings parked on that dugout rail, fiddling with a baseball.

He is not long for Syracuse and NBT Bank Park. Neither of them is.

Those two are part of the Mets’ finest crop of arms in a decade, the type of pitching prospects who can change a franchise’s short- and long-term fortunes. To date, the Mets have been reluctant to call them up, citing various developmental and timing issues. If Sproat and McLean keep pitching like this, however, the Mets cannot keep them sequestered upstate forever.

“I’m a firm believer if you’re healthy, you’re going to end up pitching where you’re supposed to pitch,” said Syracuse pitching coach A.J. Sager. “It’s just, a lot of times, not on your timeline.”

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For much of their Minor League tenure, McLean and Sproat have been roommates. McLean is the more outgoing of the two. When he initially met Sproat, who is reserved by nature, he “kind of went out of my way to mess with him a little early on. … Get him out of his shell a little bit.”

It worked; the two became fast friends, often spending their off-days golfing or playing video games. Sproat was the Mets’ second-round Draft pick out of the University of Florida in 2023, a pitcher so talented that the Mets selected him two years in a row. McLean, a two-way player from Oklahoma State, went one round after Sproat. They are now both 24 years old.

“It’s one of those people that you come across in life and just instantly bond with,” Sproat said.

Initially, Sproat experienced more professional success, dominating High-A Brooklyn while McLean adjusted to the realities of pitching and hitting in the pros. By his second season, McLean was ready to concentrate on pitching alone, which Mets officials had long considered his most likely path. When he did, he almost immediately blossomed, finishing last season with a 2.35 ERA over his final three starts at Double-A Binghamton.

“You take a good athlete with good makeup and talent,” Sager said, “and those ingredients can make a pretty good meal pretty quickly.”

The key is McLean’s sweeper, a chameleon of a pitch that he manipulates in various ways. Most often, McLean attacks hitters with that offering plus three fastball variations -- a four-seamer that rides across the strike zone, a two-seamer that dives and a cutter that tends to home in on the corners. He also mixes in a curveball and a changeup. To combat the movement of all those pitches, hitters must defend nearly three feet of real estate from east to west.

They rarely do so effectively, which is why McLean features a well-above-average chase rate.

“He spins it like not a whole lot of people can,” Sager said.

None of this is to paint McLean as a finished product. Earlier this season, Mets officials cited the right-hander’s platoon splits as an area he needed to improve. He has attempted to do so, modifying his changeup grip and forcing himself to throw more inside sinkers to lefties. In Tuesday’s start against Charlotte, he allowed just one left-hander to reach base -- his final batter, who walked on a 3-2 sinker that nearly nicked the inside edge of the strike zone.

Since moving to Triple-A, McLean has a 2.81 ERA over 14 starts. He has risen to become the organization’s third-ranked prospect and No. 64 across professional baseball, as ranked by MLB Pipeline. When president of baseball operations David Stearns holds press conferences, McLean’s name tends to come up.

“We always talk about how awesome it would be to get an opportunity, but at the end of the day, we’re trying to be where our feet are,” McLean said. “If we end up getting the call, we get the call. If not, you can’t take anything for granted in Triple-A as well. These guys will go out and beat you.”

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At one point not so long ago, Sproat considered quitting.

For his first two and a half years at the University of Florida, Sproat struggled. During his sophomore season, he was in the middle of a particularly poor stretch when his father contracted a serious illness. He told his coach he wanted to leave Florida -- leave baseball -- to go help his mom.

Sproat’s coach told him what he was feeling made sense; he asked only that Sproat run the plan by his father before doing anything rash. So Sproat did, calling his dad and telling him he wanted to come home -- that baseball? “I don’t think it’s my thing.”

“And I’ll never forget his answer,” Sproat said. “[He said], ‘Hey, I’m going to be fine. I’m going to be OK. The one thing I never want you to do is give up on yourself.’”

So Sproat stayed, making it through his sophomore year before breaking out as a junior to earn his first real taste of national recognition. The Mets drafted him once, then drafted him again. From there he raced through the Minors, briefly becoming the Mets’ top-ranked prospect before adversity resurfaced. When Sproat reached Triple-A late last season, he hit another wall, producing a 7.53 ERA over seven starts. He held a 5.95 mark through 15 outings back at Syracuse this year.

Once again, he required an intervention of sorts. Once again, it came from his father, who told him he looked like he was pitching defensively. Sproat bounced ideas off his agent and his mental coach, who both delivered the same message: “Let it eat.”

That mantra was not new to Sproat, who had been saying it since college. To Sproat, “Let it eat” meant throwing every pitch as hard as possible, with as much conviction as he could possibly muster. When he realized he wasn’t doing that, he took a marker and wrote the phrase under the brim of his cap. He now reads those words before every start. On the mound, he often speaks them out loud to himself.

On the night he began letting it eat again, Sproat threw his fastest pitch of the season, a 101 mph fastball. He has an 0.55 ERA in six starts since that time, earning July honors as the International League’s Pitcher of the Month.

“Really, that’s the only thing that’s changed,” Sproat said of his mantra. “It sounds simple, and it is simple, but it’s really not at the same time. I can sit there and tell myself to ‘let it eat’ all day long, but I actually have to go out there and do it.”

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The last time the Mets employed multiple pitching prospects of this caliber was early in 2015, just before Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz joined Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Zack Wheeler in the big leagues. The organization’s highest-ranked pitching prospect right now isn’t even McLean or Sproat, but Jonah Tong, a 22-year-old freak athlete who leads the Minor Leagues in strikeouts.

Unlike his older organization-mates, Tong is still at Double-A Binghamton. Although the Mets are developing him deliberately, without imminent plans to promote him, he should still reach Syracuse before summer’s end.

By that time, McLean or Sproat -- or both -- could be in the Majors.

That the Mets haven’t called up either remains a matter of public contention, particularly as multiple starters on the big league club have struggled. But early on, the Mets didn’t want to promote their top arms without knowing they could give them a long runway in the rotation. Team officials have cited baseball reasons, too, quibbling with McLean’s platoon splits and Sproat’s relatively brief run of consistency.

Yet even Stearns admitted this week that both pitchers “are getting close.”

“I think it’s always a combination of when, developmentally, those guys are ready, and also when there’s the need and how to fit it on the roster,” Stearns said. “And so we may get to the point where we decide that it’s the best thing to do to bring one or both of them here. But we’re not at that point quite yet.”

Although continued poor performance from Frankie Montas could force the issue, the Mets ultimately may not promote either prospect unless an injury strikes their rotation. That could happen tomorrow, next month or not at all. Pennant races also have a way of changing things in a hurry. It’s worth noting that in Milwaukee, Stearns was willing to use prospects Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff as relievers early in their careers. It’s possible he could break in McLean and Sproat similarly.

He’s just not willing to go there right now. Until something changes, all McLean and Sproat can do is continue pitching, continue winning, continue making themselves too successful to ignore.

“The first step to getting to the big leagues is putting yourself in position to be in the big leagues,” Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner said. “They’ve done that. And so now, it’s just about opportunity.”