With all eyes on top pitching prospect Brandon Sproat this spring, it’s easy to forget some of the Mets’ other talented young pitchers who are in major league camp trying to establish themselves as potential call-ups this season.
One of those pitchers is Blade Tidwell, a second-round draft pick in 2022 out of Tennessee who got the start for New York on Saturday against the Tampa Bay Rays. In his second start this spring, the 6-foot-4 right-hander threw two perfect innings — including an immaculate inning — with five strikeouts and topped out at 99 mph with his fastball.
It was a rather impressive outing for Tidwell, who was excited to see how he “stacked up against a big league squad.” Evidently, quite well as he struck out big leaguers Josh Lowe, Eloy Jiménez and José Caballero on nine pitches in the second for an immaculate inning — something Tidwell didn’t even realize he had done until after he got back in the dugout by way of social media.
“I thought it was gonna be fun and gonna be a challenge, and it ended up being both,” he said after the game.
Needing just 16 pitches over his two innings of work, Tidwell showed pinpoint accuracy as well by throwing 16 strikes on the afternoon. Even more impressive is that the 23-year-old threw all five of his pitches (four-seam, two-seam, changeup, sweeper and gyro slider) on Saturday, meaning he had his entire arsenal working for him.
Tidwell recently ditched four of his pitch grips to go down from nine to five in an attempt to command his stuff better.
“It’s easier to control,” he said. “It’s like the saying, ‘it’s better to have five mastered pitches than it would be to have like nine average pitches.'”
The right-hander also credited his performance to his body “moving a little faster now than it was maybe last year at this time” and said when everything is synced up like it was on Saturday, it feels nice.
Ranked No. 9 on SNY’s Joe DeMayo’s Top 30 Mets prospect list, Tidwell spent last season between Double-A Binghamton and Triple-A Syracuse and finished with a 4.86 ERA across 122.1 innings. However, in 19 games (17 starts) with Syracuse, Tidwell struggled to find his footing and went 1-9 with a 5.93 ERA (1.56 WHIP) with his biggest issue being home runs (17) and walks (53).
So, coming into camp this year, Tidwell is doing his best to work on his command and trying to get ready for his season, which will most likely start at Triple-A.
“I feel like I can stack up with the best of them if I’m commanding the ball and that’s just what I’ve been trying to work on day in and day out,” Tidwell said.
His ultimate goal is, of course, making it to the big leagues, but whatever happens until then, Tidwell is “just riding the wave.”
But like Christian Scott did before him last year and what Sproat and several other pitching prospects are trying to do this year, the blueprint for a major-league call-up is there. And if Tidwell continues to have outings like the one he had on Saturday, his number will be called sooner rather than later.
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