With a strong six innings on Sunday afternoon, Brandon Sproat became the third rookie pitcher to make an impressive major league debut for the Mets in the space of about three weeks.
It makes for a bright future but what about the present?
Is it realistic to think the Mets can make a deep playoff run with three young starters as saviors of sort for their beleaguered starting rotation?
For the moment, in fact, after losing two of three games to the Reds in Cincinnati this weekend including Sunday’s 3-2 defeat, the more pressing task is holding off their pursuers for the third NL Wild Card spot, especially as they head to Philadelphia for a four-game series.
The Mets were fortunate the surging San Francisco Giants lost in St. Louis on Saturday and Sunday, keeping them four games back in the Wild Card standings, along with the Reds.
Now they turn to Nolan McLean to start in Philadelphia on Monday, the third straight game in which they’ll start a rookie — can his brilliance continue?
The rarest of circumstances has forced the Mets to lean so heavily on a trio of pitchers with so little major league experience, but the poor performance of their starters, especially Kodai Senga and Sean Manaea, has forced their hand.
How it plays out remains to be seen, but the truth is that so far the kid starters have done about all the Mets could have expected.
There are bound to be growing pains, as was the case Saturday night, when Jonah Tong learned that it is a lot harder to blow his high fastball by major league hitters than it was in the minors, as he gave up three home runs in the first four innings.
Same went for Sproat, to some extent, when a couple of mistake pitches — a lazy-breaking curve ball to Elly De La Cruz and a hanging changeup to Austin Hays — cost him a couple of runs in the sixth inning on Sunday that proved decisive.
But let’s be real: those mistakes only loomed large because the Mets didn’t hit much on Saturday and Sunday.
In truth, both Tong and Sproat showed why they are regarded so highly.
After Tong — in his second career start — paid for trying to overpower Reds hitters in the early innings, he adjusted, mixed in his off-speed stuff nicely and showed some grit in getting through six innings, striking out his final hitter with a 98-mph fastball.
That those home runs were the only hits he allowed spoke to Tong’s potential to dominate, just as the 13 swings-and-misses he induced were proof of the quality of his stuff.
And then there was Sproat, the third of the three top prospects to make his debut.
He’s not McLean when it comes to spinning the baseball, but he showed an impressive array of breaking balls, throwing three variations of them at different speeds — a slider at 90 mph, a sweeper at 84-85 mph, and a curveball at 79 mph.
Using those pitches in combination with his 95-97 mph fastball, Sproat did a nice job keeping the Reds’ hitters off-balance over six innings, as he allowed three hits while racking up seven strikeouts.
That prompted praise from Carlos Mendoza:
“He pitched,” Mendoza told reporters in Cincinnati. “I was impressed with the way he used his secondary pitches. He was able to use his curveball to get back in counts at times, and he made pitches when he had to.”
For a while it looked like Sproat might even do something special, as he no-hit the Reds through 5.1 innings.
By then he’d given up a run, thanks to a walk, a stolen base, a ground out and a sac fly in the fourth inning. He walked four batters on the day, something he’ll need to clean up to succeed in the big leagues.
Yet there he was with a no-hitter in the sixth inning, and a bit unlucky to give up that first hit, as he jammed Noelvi Marte with a 95-mph sinker, only to see Marte muscle a broken-bat blooper to the opposite field for a single.
Then, finally, mistakes cost him. He got ahead 1-2 on De La Cruz, and wanted to bury a curve ball in the dirt, hoping for a chase, but left it in the strike zone, at the knees but in De La Cruz’s nitro zone, and the result was an RBI double to the wall in right-center to put the Reds ahead 2-1.
Against Hays he got ahead in the count again at 1-2, but then Francisco Alvarez called for a changeup, a strange decision as it’s arguably Sproat’s least effective pitch, especially against a right-handed hitter.
And when it hung in the strike zone about thigh-high, Hays laced it hard on the ground past Brett Baty for a single to make it 3-1 Reds.
At that point it felt like the inning was getting away from Sproat, but much like Tong on Saturday night he didn’t buckle, instead he came back to strikeout Gavin Lux swinging with a curveball and then Sal Stewart looking at a 95-mph fastball.
On another day, when Mets’ hitters weren’t being overmatched by Hunter Greene, who allowed one hit and struck out 12 over seven innings, Sproat may well have been in position to get a win.
As it was, the Mets rallied in the ninth, putting the tying and go-ahead runners on base after a solo home run by Juan Soto, and threatened to win for the first time this season when trailing after eight innings.
But it wasn’t to be, as Starling Marte hit into a game-ending 6-4-3 double play and the Mets lost the series, failing to close the door a little further on the Reds and the Giants as well.
It wasn’t a lost weekend, at least in the big picture.
Even in defeat Sproat and Tong looked like they belonged.
But now, after McLean pitches Monday, it will be up to the veterans in the rotation — not to mention the offense — to win a couple of games in Philly or this Wild Card chase could get too close for comfort.
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