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.
WASHINGTON -- Nolan McLean didn’t throw a sweeper in college. At least, he didn’t think he did.
At Oklahoma State, McLean mostly overpowered hitters with his four-seam fastball and sinker. Occasionally, he mixed in a cutter or slider, taking advantage of his natural ability to spin the ball. So big were some of his breaking pitches, in fact, that at Major League Baseball’s pre-Draft combine, a Mets official told McLean he liked the right-hander’s sweeper.
“I’m like, ‘What is a sweeper? I’ve never heard of that in my life,’” the Mets' top pitching prospect recalled.
With that, the seeds of a standout pitch were born.
As far back as high school, McLean knew he was good at spinning the ball. That spring leading up to the Draft, however, he began chasing spin with renewed focus. After his Combine meeting, McLean started tinkering in his backyard with sweeper grips. He eventually found one he liked and thought it had enough power behind it to work at a high level.
After some time, McLean had a chance to throw the pitch in front of a Trackman system, which flashed low-80s velocity and confirmed his suspicions: that thing could play.
Over the next two years, McLean perfected the sweeper and molded his curveball, establishing his Minor League reputation as one of the sport’s foremost practitioners of spin. In his MLB debut last Saturday, McLean averaged 2,995 RPMs on his sweeper and 3,279 on his curve. It’s a small sample, but for perspective, only three regular Major League starters feature higher average sweeper spin rates this season. No one has a better average curveball spin rate.
“The curveball is very unique,” Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner said.
For Hefner, the beauty of McLean’s curve is not necessarily its spin rate but its glove-side (right-to-left) movement, which also leads the Majors through one start. Hefner compared McLean to Phil Maton, the former Mets reliever who has made a career out of spinning glove-side curveballs. The difference is that Maton throws his curve in the mid-70s. McLean spins his around 80 mph while pairing it with a fastball that can reach the upper 90s.
“It’s very hard to teach,” Hefner said of that ability to spin. “I think a lot of it is you’re born with it. He just kind of has it.”
At the highest level, spin rates and pitch shapes don’t guarantee success. But they do make things a whole lot easier, as McLean demonstrated throughout his successful debut against the Mariners. Unlike almost every other top pitching prospect to come through New York’s system in recent years, McLean did not struggle upon reaching Triple-A. Things have likewise gone swimmingly so far in the Majors for McLean, whose next assignment will come Friday night in Atlanta in a nationally televised game.
Expect McLean to continue ripping off high-spin curveballs and sinkers in that one, as he looks to establish himself as a potential top-of-the-rotation MLB pitcher.
“It’s just something I was, I guess, blessed with,” McLean said of his ability to throw breaking pitches. “Some guys are blessed with a ton of [vertical movement] on their fastball. I’m able to spin the ball well. So I got lucky, I guess.”