The Rockaway Wave
Originally published May 3, 2024
From the moment Shohei Ohtani burst onto the scene as baseball’s first true two-way player since Babe Ruth, he instantly became the most exciting player in baseball. Not only does he pitch and hit, but he can do both at a truly elite level.
It’s led to the natural question: Who’s next? Who will be the next successful two-way player in Major League Baseball?
Nolan McLean, the 22-year-old 3rd-round pick by the Mets in 2023, has a chance to be that player.
“Hopefully, we’re starting to trend for more guys to do what we’re doing, because it is possible,” McLean said. “Nobody thought anything of it when we were little kids, so let’s just stay little kids as long as we can.”
There have been a handful who have tried, most notably Brendan McKay of the Tampa Bay Rays. The No. 4 overall pick in the 2017 MLB Draft — about six months before Ohtani signed with the Angels — McKay initially developed as a starting pitcher and first baseman. However, he hasn’t played the field since 2018 and hasn’t hit since 2021.
Bubba Chandler in 2021 and Reggie Crawford in 2022 were both drafted with two-way potential but quickly gave up hitting. In 2023, Bryce Eldridge was a hot name in the draft for his two-way potential and went in the first round to the San Francisco Giants, but gave up pitching before he even stepped on a professional mound.
There were seven other two-way players drafted after Eldridge in 2023 according to MLB.com, and five who signed. Only one has appeared as both a hitter and a pitcher to this point since being drafted, and that’s McLean.
He hasn’t just done both either, he’s done both really, really well.
On the mound, McLean has a 3.86 ERA over his first four starts and 14 innings, posting an even 1.00 WHIP with a 14-6 hit-to-walk ratio and four hit batsmen. Three of his four starts have been scoreless, with one six-run, 2 and 2⁄3 inning outing being the lone blemish on his resume.
His most impressive start to date was his third of the year, throwing five scoreless innings with six strikeouts while allowing just four baserunners.
“I was just trying to fill the zone up,” McLean said. “That’s something that kind of got away from me a little bit in the second start against Jersey Shore. The main goal was to go into the game and throw my stuff in zone and force the other team to hit it.”
McLean throws a fastball that can hit 98 mph on the radar gun along with a cutter, sweeper and changeup, Cyclones pitching coach Daniel McKinney said. He also said McLean will manipulate the shape of his cutter at times, which turns it into more of a slider.
In the Spring Breakout game, Statcast clocked his slider/sweeper over 3000 rpm on multiple occasions, which McKinney called an “elite threshold.”
The top seven pitches in that game with the most spin from either team were all thrown by McLean.
One of the more interesting things about McLean’s pitching so far this season is that he’s even starting games at all. Until he reached the Mets organization, he had been used almost exclusively as a relief pitcher.
“It’s been a little different,” McLean said. “I’m trying to learn how to be a pitcher a little more than just a thrower out there with nasty stuff. I’m having to face guys more than once through a lineup, so not really using my whole arsenal early and just trying to figure out how to get outs early without necessarily throwing my full hand. That’s been fun to really try and dive deep into building that arsenal and that repertoire to just get multiple outs throughout the game against the same guys.”
In three seasons at Oklahoma State, McLean threw just 57 and 1⁄3 innings over 39 games, just three of those being starts. In high school, it was the same deal.
Derik Goffena, the head baseball coach at Garner Magnet High School in Garner, North Carolina, said McLean never started a game when he played for him. Due to a combination of being protective of his arm and the rotation being stacked with multiple Division I pitchers — including current Cyclone Brett Banks — McLean ended up as the closer.
Now though, Goffena is all for McLean starting.
“I think it’s awesome,” Goffena said. “He’s a big, strong kid. He prepares as well as anyone. I know his body can certainly handle it. He’s got a strong arm, strong lower body to be able to handle the workload, and I think he’ll be very successful.”
The Mets believe in him as a starting pitcher.
“I knew when they drafted me they wanted me to build up as a starter,” McLean said. “I’ve shown the ability to throw four pitches at a high level, and I think that’s what they saw. And it was just a matter of fine-tuning that arsenal and being able to throw it in zone consistently.”
In 2023, his final season at Oklahoma State, McLean threw a total of 30 innings. Through his first four starts of 2024, he’s thrown 14, almost halfway to his total from all of last season. If he continues on this pace, he’ll likely blow past last year’s number.
It’s something Cyclones manager Gilbert Gómez said the team is aware of, that he will throw more innings than he’s ever thrown before, and they will be monitoring it as the season goes on.
“Our guys that have the ability to throw multiple pitches for strikes and have really good stuff, we want to get them out there as a starter, because the more reps they get the better they get,” Gómez said. “Even if at the end they go back to the bullpen, that’s something that can happen to any of the starters that we have. But the experience of facing multiple hitters and making sure that they’re working on multiple pitches eventually gets them better, whether it’s to start or to be a reliever in the long run.”
Communication, Gómez said, will be the most important thing, which is something that McKinney also stressed.
“We’re just in communication across all departments on how best to handle him and monitor the workload,” McKinney said.
While McLean is now considered by some as a stronger pitcher than hitter, Goffena actually said he thought he was a professional hitter first.
“He was regularly hitting balls 450, 500 feet as a 16-year-old,” Goffena said. “So for me, there was no doubt in my mind he was gonna play in the major leagues. I thought it was as a position player, I think it’s still to be determined.”
Goffena said he was the best player around from pretty much the time he stepped on the field as a freshman.
“He was the best hitter in our area, if not the state, the day that he got to high school,” Goffena said. “As a ninth grader he hit, like, well over .500, which, the conference we play in, every team has multiple DI arms. He was seeing kids going to NC State and North Carolina and Clemson on a pretty daily basis and having his way with them most of the time.”
He was the catcher in his first two years in high school, and then he transitioned to shortstop in his final two years.
Even as a freshman, Goffena said he let McLean call his own game when behind the dish.
“He’s just a baseball guy,” Goffena said. “He’s not just good at playing the game, he understands situations, he understands what he’s trying to do. He throws upper 90s now, and I guarantee he’s not going out there just trying to blow it by everyone. Him and his catcher I’m sure have a great game plan on how to pitch, not just how to throw hard.”
One memory of McLean that stands out to Goffena comes from when he was a freshman the final game of the season. The conference championship was on the line, and McLean was his catcher. The aforementioned Banks was the starting pitcher, but he hit his pitch limit with one out in the final inning.
McLean had just taken a foul ball off his knuckles.
“I went out, I was gonna put Nolan in, and I kind of just said ‘Hey man, I know you just took one off your pitching hand. Maybe I’ll just let someone else come in,’” Goffena said. “And he just kind of looked at me and said, ‘If you want to win the game, just give me the ball.’”
Goffena put McLean in the game, and he struck out the final two batters on six pitches to win the conference championship.
After high school, McLean went on to Oklahoma State not only as a two-way baseball player but a two-sport student-athlete. As a freshman, he was a redshirt quarterback on the football team. He decided to give up football after one season though, partially due to conflicting practice schedules, but also because he said he just loves baseball too much and wanted to go all in.
He hit .267/.398/.551 with 38 home runs over four years and 161 games for the Cowboys, while of course, also pitching.
McLean was actually drafted by the Baltimore Orioles in the 3rd round of the 2022 draft, but did not sign. He said he thinks they were going to give him a chance to be a two-way player, but didn’t know if they were as open to it as the Mets ended up being.
It was very important to McLean that he would have the opportunity to both pitch and hit — something he said he’s sure narrowed down the field of teams willing to draft him — but he knew what he wanted.
The Mets have given him that opportunity.
At the plate, McLean has been red hot to start 2024. Over his first 14 games at DH, he hit .243/.300/.622, good for a .922 OPS. Eight of his nine hits have gone for extra bases, including three home runs, and he’s reached base safely in all 14 games.
His swing-and-miss tendencies are high. In his first 37 at-bats, McLean has 20 strikeouts. When he makes contact though, it’s hard contact.
“We all know the kind of power he has, so whenever he makes contact, he’s gonna do damage,” Cyclones hitting coach Eduardo Núñez said.
He stressed that it’s the minor leagues, and the minor leagues are for development. McLean’s power is real, and they are working on cutting the swing and miss down.
Núñez said he believes McLean’s primary position is pitcher, but they’re going to give him a shot as much as possible to swing the bat.
“I think if he keeps doing well, he’s going to keep doing both things because he’s a pretty good pitcher and he’s showing he can hit too,” Núñez said. “Hopefully at the end of the season, we get a bigger, clearer view of what’s gonna happen.”
Hypothetically, if the pitcher version of McLean ever had to face the hitter version, he said he’d use his sweeper to get himself out. It’s a good pitch against righties with big bats, he said, so that’s what he would throw.
Who would win that matchup?
“I’d probably go 2-for-4, so, right in between,” McLean said.
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