The Mets are asking a lot from their young arms.
Nolan McLean and Jonah Tong have already come up and contributed in the midst of a playoff push.
Next up? Brandon Sproat.
Sproat will join them this weekend to make his highly-anticipated debut during Sunday’s series finale against the Reds, the team trailing the Mets in the NL wild-card race.
Certainly a big challenge, but one the Mets are confident Sproat is up for.
“He earned it,” Carlos Mendoza said. “He’s another guy that had to work, had to fight to get to this point. It wasn’t easy for him early on this season, but his last few starts he’s been a completely different guy — he was frustrated when he didn’t get the call, now here he is.
"You don’t want to put too much pressure on him — just go out there and be yourself, but you have to give him a ton of credit and it’s another win for the scouting and development team, it’s going to be really fun to see.”
Sproat was widely-regarded as the organization’s top pitching prospect entering this season, but he quickly dropped behind both McLean and Tong on the depth chart as they soared through the system.
His early-season results also didn’t help, posting an ugly 6.69 ERA over his first nine outings.
After making some tweaks over the past few months, though, the 24-year-old has been able to rebound nicely and he’s pitched to a much-improved 3.19 ERA over his last 17 appearances.
His most recent outing was arguably his best during that stretch, as he struck out nine batters and walked just two over seven scoreless innings.
It's those signs of a front-line arm that president of baseball operations David Stearns says solidified the Mets’ decision to give him the call.
“We’ve seen it over the last two-two and a half months now,” Stearns said. “He’s carried his velocity consistently into games, his secondary offerings have picked up in consistency and crispiness, he’s throwing his changeup more which has helped.
“We’ve seen a number of really positive trends — he is still a young pitcher, this is still his major-league debut, but we feel confident that he can come up and compete at the level, and we look forward to watching him take the mound on Sunday.”
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